Community Resources

What a great tour of community resources yesterday. Thanks to "Jeannie"--our tour guide. No matter what county/state you live in, you can look for these types of resources for your classroom. 

"But Divine Ms. Gen, how would I get the information to the right families? I wouldn't want to make assumptions." No, you would not. The easiest way to do this would be to make sure that either your classroom or your school has a place for brochures for all of the different resources somewhere prominent in the school. Because not all parents come into the actual school building regularly, you could also highlight a few resources at a time in a corner of your classroom newsletter, have a stack of brochures at conferences, post them at the school web page, and just send home a list of resources with brief descriptions and contact info. (in English, Spanish, and any other prominent languages spoken at your school) and send it home the first week of school.

Sometimes, you will become aware of a family's needs and that is different. You can sensitively work with the school counselor or social worker to offer information to the family. As our tour guide said, many families are served by multiple agencies and the school will just be asked to join the group as a matter of course.

We will debrief a bit in class tomorrow and then much more at a later date. I just wanted to have the field trip early in case you find some interesting places to do your hours.

By the way, one of your blogs could deal with our class field trip. Go ahead and mark down 1.5 hours. Be sure to make some connections to course goals. (See p. 6 of the syllabus.)

On a different note, check out this interesting link about Oprah's latest book club book: http://feministing.com/2011/09/06/not-oprahs-book-club-fatal-invention/

It deals with a topic we will most definitely address in class: the social construction of race.