Epstein Model Analysis

It is important to involve family and community into the educational process. Better performance occurs when parents, family, teachers, and the community are engaging and working together. To fully show how integration works we will use the example of a recently visited child care facility for children and infants aged six months to six years old, and compare what they are doing and how they can improve.

To understand what the school is doing we must understand the base model we are trying to use. The model we are using is the Epstein model. It has six different parts to promote integration. These are parenting, communicating, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with community.

The day care that I visited

With parenting the goal is to have safe home environments that promote learning. The school includes meal plans and all of their teachers are state certified in early childhood development, the former allows for more flexibility on the parts in the morning and ensure the children have food in the beginning of the day. The latter allows for better detection of abuse or knowledge of early signs and call intervene before problems escalate. They could improve parenting by offering some classes to the parents to improve technique on positive reinforcement or by providing parenting books to the parents of younger children. They could also provide a space for parental meetings with other parents and form support groups. They should also give out information on social services and community support, including faith

Volunteering recruits and organizes parent involvement. Most of the volunteering comes during special events or holidays and in fund raising activities. They should encourage stronger engagement among parents and family. This includes have parents bring snacks spending time in the class. Have parents teach lessons in areas they have expertise and play with the kids.

Learning at home provides parents with the opportunity help their child learn and grow while still under their care. The care center does this by having an interactive worksheet given to the child to complete at home from Monday through Thursday. If they varied the type of at home activities, activities that have parents read to the child and one that have the child learn a song in addition to worksheets it would foster stronger bonds and give better parent child interaction. On Fridays the teachers could give out activities to complete over the weekend that are more complex.

Decision making allows parents to take stronger roles in their child's education process. The parents role in decision making was pretty minor. They chose when to drop off their child and when to pick up but nearly all decisions were made by the teachers and caregivers . They need to create it would foster strong relations and bring more parents into the