Home, School, and Community Collaboration: Culturally Responsive Family Engagement

Kathy B. Grant, EdD, is an associate professor of Curriculum and Instruction at SUNY Plattsburgh’s School of Education. She taught undergraduate courses in family involvement, as well as graduate courses in educational psychology and child development. She also worked as a home-school coordinator through Title 1 in the Missoula School District in Missoula, Montana. During her six years in this position, she oversaw the development of family resource centers at the elementary and middle school levels, worked with family outreach specialists and social workers, established parent libraries, and conducted home visits. As home-school coordinator, she helped develop an Even Start program serving children and parents. Having taught second, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades, as well as high school, she has worked collaboratively with families for more than 30 years. In 2014 in collaboration with two rural upstate New York school districts, she consulted on establishment of two elementary family resource centers. These two centers will be part of a larger SUNY clinical field experience effort to prepare teacher candidates to authentically work with families.

Julie A. Ray (Ph.D., University of Missouri, Columbia) is a professor of Education and Department Chairperson at Southeast Missouri State University. She has been in the field of early childhood and elementary education for over 31 years. As a primary grades teacher and librarian, she worked hard to develop positive relationships with the families of her students. As a teacher educator in Early Childhood Education at two different four-year universities, she has taught both undergraduate and graduate level courses in family engagement, as well as done numerous presentations and publications on collaborating with diverse families.