Validating Parental Strategies As a Bridge to Learning

At the beginning of each academic school year, educators recommend strategies parents can use to help their children with academic school success: such as parents reading to their children or helping children with their homework.

How can working-class, low-income parents who are not literate, or have limited literacy and English skills, or who must work long hours, six days a week, use these suggestions?

Validating Parental Strategies as a Bridge to Learning features ideas and suggestions based on research gleaned from college graduates who were the first ones in their families to graduate from high school, as well as attend and graduate from college.

Validating Parental Strategies as a Bridge to Learning by Irene Calzada Cota:

• Is perfect for parents! The guide explains practical activities how parents with limited formal education including literacy and English skills, can utilize their surroundings and use non-traditional strategies, or modified traditional strategies, to create a home environment that supports academic school success. 
• Is a great teacher resource! Teachers can encourage parents to use these indigenous strategies and insights to make a positive impact on their children's academic school success.
• Includes a story about an English learner who will be the first one in her family to graduate from high school and attend college. The story incorporates the insights and strategies that were consistently noted by interviewees as helping to achieve academic school success.
• Includes questions that teachers can use to help parents reflect about how they support their children's learning and to generate discussions between teachers and parents in a workshop setting.