MEDU 203 Building Family Relationships & Engagement
This course introduces students to considering the attitudes and approaches to working with families and includes an examination of values, beliefs, and assumptions for both themselves and families. Students explore the differences between family involvement and family partnerships as they investigate family centered care and learn about the five (5) principles of family centered care. Students will think about concrete ways to build essential partnerships with families and learn effective communication strategies as well as techniques for navigating some challenges to effective communication. Students will explore some of the possible differences in socialization goals that occur between parents and early care professionals.
This course also encourages students to examine the role of the early care professional in supporting parent-child relationships and offers strategies for supporting those relationships. Students will explore play through a cultural lens, identifying strategies for discovering family practices and cultural beliefs about learning through play, and continue the investigations of culture by identifying how cultural practices may lead to stressful disagreements and how they can manage these cultural differences. Students will examine program practices that foster partnerships by implementing family centered principles and identify practices that build community partnerships and enhance services for children and their families. Students will do their own research and investigation and offer possible strategies for working effectively with families who have unique challenges related to addiction; disability; age (teen parents); foster care with family re-unification plan in place; abuse; extreme poverty; homelessness; and incarceration (mother and/or father).
Prerequisite
Open to Metropolitan School of Professional Studies undergraduates only