It is the last night of tutoring and a cacophony of voices and languages can be heard coming from tutoring rooms drifting lyrically down the corridor. Small children spill into the hallways to gather snacks and scurry back into the rooms to hear stories read and watch readers’ theater in action. All the tutoring rooms are filled with adults eager to see their child’s literacy skills on display. In one room you can hear a reader’s theater written and performed by the children, another room has children sitting in the “author’s chair” as they read their original stories, and in yet another room you can hear a conversation in Spanish as families, tutors, and instructors communicate with one another. The scene is electric as excited children show their families what they have learned in concert with their tutors and instructors. Laugher and clapping can be heard as performances end and children take their bows. As the families and their children exit, tears of joy can be seen on adult faces as appreciative hugs are exchanged and goodbyes until next time are said.

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In another setting, a tutor meets with a student and their family on Zoom. The tutor shares the digital story the student created online, and they smile as the story plays. The child explains the story to their family with excitement and explains how they did it by themself. The tutor shares assessments and asks the child to read a familiar story. The family is happy to see that their child enjoys reading and has written their own book. These scenarios demonstrate the importance of making time to share your students’ work with their families and teachers if you tutor within a large established program or through a smaller volunteer program in schools or community centers. Inviting family members to participate throughout the tutoring program is an integral part of any student’s success.

Purpose of the Chapter

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the importance of reaching out to families in your tutoring. Including family members not just in the literacy activities but also as active members of the literacy program provides an enriching experience for all involved stakeholders. There are several ways you can communicate with families and include them in the tutoring process: (a) informal check-in and drop-off conversations, (b) sharing student work, (c) providing brief reports on student progress, and (d) sharing in-depth assessment reports.

Families may come from very diverse social, economic, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds. Understanding the funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) or the types of literacies and texts used in the students’ household and community is essential to incorporate this information in individualized lesson design and development.

Valuing the literacy and linguistic skills and knowledge of families is crucial to establishing relationships with the student. This chapter will provide details on the different ways you can interact with families and include them in the tutoring process. Before you read the chapter, please take a moment to answer the pre-reading questions that follow. Record your answers so when you are done reading you can go back and review what you have learned.

A few key terms that will be used throughout the chapter are listed.

Working With Families: The Four Cs

We rely on the four Cs in our approach to tutoring: care, communication, confidentiality, and connection. While these ideas may be taken for granted, you want to make sure you understand how to include families in your tutoring as much as possible. As mentioned in Chapter 2, families are the first teachers, and therefore respecting the family’s wishes is key to making sure your student is successful. Please note that we use the term families rather than parents due to the variety of family structures students may have. We value all family structures and the participants who attend our tutoring programs. Each area will be described in detail.

Care

Students and families can quickly tell if you truly care about them. If you are going to tutor struggling readers it is very important to make sure you enjoy working with children. We have supervised tutoring programs for a long time and, unfortunately, we do see students who say they want to be teachers and love children and yet when they run into students who struggle with reading and who at times do not want to read or write, they become frustrated. Students in tutoring programs are typically there because they are having trouble. They are not always initially excited to come to tutoring sessions. They may anticipate that they will have to do skill worksheets, read texts that are extremely hard, or be embarrassed. Some of the students may be pulled out of their classroom for tutoring, which can cause them to become self-conscious. Being empathetic, patient, and caring are the most important parts of tutoring. It may mean that if your student is having a bad day, you elect to read to them instead of having them read. Or you modify your lesson to include writing about their favorite topic for that one day rather than a more difficult topic. You can also find their favorite book that might be too difficult for them to read independently and read it to them during a read-aloud lesson. Basically, you are observing them and providing the time to take their feelings and abilities into account as you teach each time. While we advocate for always trying to complete all the tutoring activities, we also know that a stressed child is one who is not ready to take on challenging tasks. At times, we have also noticed that some tutors become frustrated and tend to blame the child. They make statements such as “He won’t read” or “She is just trying to avoid writing” or inappropriate statements such as “He’s just lazy.” These are signs the lesson needs adjusting, not the child. If lessons are planned based on students’ developmental levels and interests, each activity is brief and focused, and you are praising their attempts, then most children find tutoring sessions enjoyable. If lessons are not thought out, if the activities are too difficult and take too long, the lesson will not go well. Therefore, we emphasize caring about your student and examining your teaching if things are not going well. As teachers, we are in charge of the lesson, the time, and most of all the environment and attitude. It is our responsibility to make the most of each session but also keep it enjoyable. This extends to families and how you interact with them.

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Communication

Ongoing positive communication is extremely important. Keeping in communication with the families throughout the tutoring program is important for several reasons. First, the safety of the student is of utmost importance, so knowing where you will tutor, who your supervisor is, and who will pick up the student after each session is vital. In each session you should communicate briefly with the parent, caregiver, or teacher. Initiate a conversation by saying hello and asking how they are doing both online and in person. Families will usually take this opportunity to chat informally about tutoring or their child’s school experience, giving you the opportunity to get to know more about their child and how their day is going. It is important to be positive and emphasize what the student is doing well by showing writing samples and books read during the session. To keep families informed about the tutoring we send home a note with information about what the student and tutor accomplished at each session.

Confidentiality

Often families or the student share other issues that may be occurring within the family dynamic. For this reason, you must know that maintaining confidentiality is important.

We must maintain confidentiality and comply with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99). FERPA protects the educational records of students. While family members or teachers may share information with you, you want to make sure you keep the information to yourself. Family members may also share personal information about the family and/or the child. While not covered by FERPA, the information can at times be sensitive, so you need to ensure you do not share it with anyone. You, as the tutor, will have the most contact with the family, so you want to make sure you are professional. Confidentiality does not extend to issues of suspected abuse or neglect. Should you have reason to suspect abuse or neglect, inform your supervisor or program director who is committed to the safety of all participants. The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act is federal legislation that mandates reporting throughout all 50 states and the District of Columbia (Child Welfare Information Gateway, 2019).

Whether communication is through traditional means such as electronic access to technology or through email or telephone, connecting with families and keeping them informed helps build lasting relationships. Due to financial circumstances, some families may not have phones nor consistent access to the internet at home. Communicating with them at each tutoring session at pickup and drop-off is vital to keeping the lines of communication open.

Connection

Making connections between student’s lives and your teaching can make a huge difference. You want to encourage families to participate by communicating with them but also by making specific inquiries about how they think their child is doing. Families who speak no or limited English can be as fully engaged as the monolingual English-speaking families. Full engagement from the families helps create a true partnership. Having families interested and fully invested in your tutoring helps keep the students motivated and lowers absenteeism. Ensuring that the student attends all tutoring sessions is beneficial for both the student and the tutor. There are two common ways to connect with families: informal daily visits, as discussed in the previous section, and conferences.

Family Conferences

A more formal way to communicate with families is to have a family conference. Families are the experts on their children, and honoring their knowledge is key. Before you begin any meeting, you will want to listen to their thoughts to see what they consider important in their child’s literacy. Once you have spent time listening to the family, you can begin to share your observations and assessments about their child. Each conference should focus on the student’s reading levels and their writing abilities. Demonstrating their learning with examples and materials is important, as is making sure the student participates in the meeting. We recommend that you and your student prepare a lesson together to show the family what their child has learned. The student, with your help, also takes responsibility for preparing for the conference. You and the student will, for instance, consult and select activities to share at the conference and together walk the family through the lesson, explaining what was learned and showing the family how the student used word sorts, displaying writing artifacts, or reading sections of a story for author’s chair. Groups of students may take part in readers’ theater to entertain families while displaying their newly acquired literacy skills. Having an interpreter to assist with translations during the family conference is an excellent way to communicate with parents who do not speak English. There is no set number of conferences, but the more you are able to communicate with families, the more you can adapt your instruction. See Table 3.1 for details.

Table 3.1 Family Conference Guidelines

Open House

If you tutor in a large program, open houses are great ways to connect with families. For many families, this is not just an opportunity to meet the tutors and instructors but to also visit the tutoring site or conduct a virtual open house focused on the online platform. The open house can be an excellent opportunity for you to prepare a brief introduction about yourself and what you hope to accomplish during the sessions and communicate this to families. At this time families should be provided with the opportunity to ask the instructors any questions. Once you have introduced yourself to the child and family, you should explain what will occur during each tutoring session. It is important to show the family the various tools and technology available for tutoring. Families can be expected to ask the tutor specific questions regarding tutoring and will often share any concerns they may have about their child’s literacy skills or information regarding allergies or health issues. You can ask families what goals they might have for their child. You can also ask the student questions about their reading interests to help the student select texts for the first tutoring session. Having a display of books with different genres available for the student to review is also a good way to see what types of texts might interest them. You should end the session by thanking the families for coming and express your excitement about the opportunity to work with their child.

Table 3.2 Open House Agenda

At the end of the tutoring program families can be invited to a family conference to engage in a literacy celebration.

Assessment Reports

We also recommend providing the families with ongoing reports to share how their child is doing. An example is provided here:

Student Assessment Report

Overview of the Informal Observational Assessments

Overall, Tim reads at approximately a first-grade level. The following report describes the assessments administered during the 3-week summer session. The first section describes assessment information and analysis while the second section provides additional information about reading difficulties in general to provide background information and more detailed explanations of your child’s current developmental levels in relation to reading and writing.

Report completed by: _____________ Date: _____________

Table 3.3 Assessment Tools

Table 3.4 Reading Assessments

Table 3.5 Text Reading Assessment

Table 3.6 Recommendations

Summary

Inviting parents and families to participate fully in the tutoring program allows for open communication between the tutoring program personnel and the families. Families feel comfortable asking questions and seeking information that will benefit their child and often share this information with other friends and families who are not part of the tutoring program. Our current families help recruit new students to the programs through word of mouth. Now review your initial responses to the pre-reading questions, adding any new information you learned.