4
Challenges and Opportunities There are many challenges that arise in the establishment and sustainability of Family Literacy Programs, but there are also many opportunities to expand on in order to make them more efficient and impactful. The following is a breakdown of individuals who play a role in the success of any given Family Literacy Program and the challenges and opportunities they can overcome to make an FLP successful.
Teachers and Educators Teachers and Educators have opportunities to contribute to family literacy. Since they make up the other half of the student literacy equation, teachers play an integral part in establishing grounds for family literacy to take place. Unfortunately, there are several challenges that teachers face when trying to understand family literacy and the role they play within it. Challenges Most of the challenges that teachers and educators face when addressing family literacy are directly and indirectly related to a lack of communication with parents and with other educators and administrators. Teachers become heavily invested in their responsibilities to standards and getting students to pass assessments that they tend to forget about the importance of communicating with parents to make sure they are on the same page. Although studies have shown that teachers agree that parents should be involved with literacy, many of them place a stigma on parents saying that “they are not qualified to give input” (Griffis , 2003) and instead
pass up the opportunity to involve parents in as many activities as they could. Similarly, the lack of communication between teachers and administrators is a hindrance in the potential of family literacy because there is no common thread of thought taking place between those who are educating and those who are establishing a means for education and learning to take place. Aside from a lack of communication, another challenge that arises for teachers and educators is the difficulty of measuring literacy differences between school and home, especially on a student by student basis. Additionally, it’s hard to monitor children’s familial support and whether they are receiving the adequate amount of motivation from school and from home to engage in literacy to the highest degree. Although these two factors are hard to quantify, they are still important to consider in terms of challenges. Opportunities Based on the challenges I have already mentioned, the biggest opportunity that teachers and educators can embrace is to build stronger communications with parents (and students for that matter). This can be done by meet and greet events that cater to follow-ups with parents, or even bi-weekly or monthly newsletters/email blasts that ask for parent input on various topics. Any way to get teachers and educators communicating with each other frequently is a great start to learning more about the family literacy that takes place in the homes of our students.