Pradnya Patet for Goodheart-Willcox Author Testimonials

Speaker: Pradnya Patet, Family, School, and Community Partnerships

Pradnya Patet: I am so excited to share my new book titled Family School Community Partnerships, Nurturing and Empowering All Young Children with you today through this video. Thank you for tuning in. I believe that there is one basic struggle, basic, yet very very significant struggle that most teachers face in this course area, especially pre-service teachers. And that is just not feeling prepared to step into the classroom and work with families. Research suggests that this is the area that students feel the least prepared in. Anecdotal evidence also suggests the same. Typically when I start this course, I ask students. So what are you excited about? What are you apprehensive about? And I hear things like I'm excited to get to know people and you know, I love doing that. I love getting to know people, but I'm really apprehensive about disagreements and conflicts and how to handle those. So it centers around that one of the features that I use in the book. There are several but I will highlight a few. One of the features that I use is titled What's Your Mindset. And you can have all the knowledge like, you know, maybe most people would agree that a parent is the first educator. Most people would agree that these relationships are very important for a child's development. But in order to put it into practice, you have to have the right mindset. You have to have a cluster of attitudes that, that allow you to recognize the complexity of the environment to be able to appreciate that complexity. And so thinking about the mindset enables students to or, or it wakes up that self-awareness within them that then helps them to get to know the family better because to get to know someone and build a relationship, you should first know about yourself. And so it's a scenario that's given to them with different statements, they choose, agree, strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. And at the end of the chapter, they revisit that to really think about. Was there a change? Because throughout the chapters, this idea of mindsets is addressed. You know, if you have this mindset, you're gonna approach it this way. And even the slightest change from agree to strongly agree or strongly agree to agree can make a big difference in a person's world view. So that is one of the features that help students to reflect and really think about themselves. The other reason I feel that students struggle with not and not and don't feel prepared is the rising diversity and encountering so many different viewpoints. Trauma that is coming into the classrooms and students are afraid to handle that. And part of them developing that through the book is to put the emphasis on embracing diversity, not just because you want to acknowledge it and you know, it exists and acknowledge that it exists, but to see diversity as something that enriches your own life. And that is a change, that is a transformational change when you can do that because then you're gonna want to get to know more. So there are numerous exercises in the, in, in the book that kind of get students to think about this. I also stay away from labeling a family as a single parent, family or you know, adoptive family rather than make those clusters really think about all the factors and the complexity of the factors that are going on in this particular situation with this particular family. And how are you going to address that? So it's infused throughout the book um in, in various different ways. And finally, I will talk about this more in the next question, but the idea, it's not a struggle, but it is to really emphasize that the family, school and community share the responsibility of raising a child. And what does that really mean? I will talk more about that in the next questions. I hope you give this book a try and help students to build those skills and mindsets that are necessary for turning that knowledge into practice and feeling prepared

Pradnya Patet: There are several things that I am excited about in this book, but I will highlight two of those things. First is uh related to a comment that I made in the previous section. They talked about what does it really mean that the family, school and community share the responsibility of raising Children? Not just that they exist as three different nests, but how do, how they layered together and how do we come together and share that responsibility. And to do that, I use the analogy of a nest which is carried on throughout the book. In the first unit, I use birds nests. The second unit, I use nests of social insects and their nesting practices. And the third one, it's the coral reef and has such a vast ocean, how it houses so many different smaller relationships when we think about our community and how everybody fits in and what those relationships are. In the fourth unit, some fables about building nests and then the fifth unit is the human nest, three layered human nest, the home school or family school and community. I've used this analogy in my class and my students seem to be able to take the abstract concepts and be able to think about them in a more concrete way through this analogy. Um, I think it's familiar enough, but along the way they also learn new things about nests and be able to draw those parallels for the family. There's so much that we can learn from nature and it was a wonderful process for me as I went deeper in order to pull this together and use that analogy throughout. So, I'm curious to see how other instructors uh use it. How meaningful they find that students as well, how they receive it. So I'm very excited about that analogy. The second thing that I'm really excited about is the number of voices that I was able to bring in many of my colleagues, students, former students who are now teachers and administrators, the work that they are doing, perspectives of families, things that they have encountered and being able to reach out to people that I knew and then through them, I got to know other people and that networking just grows. And I think that is the basis of building relationships and partnerships. That's how it happens because we are ultimately all connected, but we have to also reach out and be able to do that. And so I was able to learn so much by doing those interviews and reading some of the contributions that people made. I have, about, I believe 29 different voices and I'm really, really excited about that. And I do hope that by bringing in so many different perspectives about work that's happening in this country, but also outside of the country. That readers would use this information and walk away after reading all of those with at least one idea that they can identify with and say, oh, I can do this or that would work really well for what I'm trying to do. And so being able to bring all those voices together has been wonderful, including 1/5 grader who's, who donated her painting and allowed me to use it for a chapter as well as she also, I did an interview with her and to be able to see her vision of community and what community means and those words of wisdom from a child that really made such a big difference for me. And I hope that it does for the readers as well. So I hope that readers enjoyed that piece just as much as I enjoyed. Ok, getting all that information and reaching out to people and being able to showcase the amazing thing that things that people are doing.

Pradnya Patet: Along with the nest analogy that I spoke about in the last section um which I believe is unique because it's information presented in a different way. There are other features in the book that I think make the book unique. And all of these features are put together because of that one basic struggle that most students have. Most pre-service teachers don't feel prepared enough to go in. And so with that in mind, these features have been designed. So I'd just like to go over briefly what those features about. Like the feature titled What's Your Mindset. I have another feature that also allows students to dig further deeper. And that's called, What's Your Personal Theory of Practice? Long before we hear about expert theories like the gods. Ph a everybody else, we have a personal theory because of our experiences. And so in some ways, it demystifies this idea of a theory for students and they're more likely to consider it rather than just have one section on theory and then the rest of the book that it, it, it helps to blend those together. Brandan Brenner's Eco Ecology of Human Development is the overarching framework, theoretical framework that launches the discussion. But then in each chapter, a theorist comes in. So the idea is also to help students understand that one theory does not answer everything. You have to build an eclectic theory. But for that, you have to start with that personal theory. So the question is posed and then you have the expert theory and then it wraps up. But now that you've read this expert theory, what will you take from this theory to enrich your personal theory? So again, an emphasis on self awareness and, and thinking about your experiences and how they play a role in who you are. Another feature that I have that titled Windows, Mirrors and Glass Sliding Doors. It is my hope that when people read these reflections and perspectives from other people, it may open a window into somebody else's life, it may be a mirror held, you know, to someone's face because you can identify with what's going on in that story or it could be a glass sliding door where you're ready to walk out into someone else's world. And I think that's another way in you can prepare yourself to feel good with those perspectives and, and, and be able to connect in that way. Trending Topics which are current issues, debates, headlines from news, magazines that are pertinent to early childhood development. Another way to help students feel prepared going and knowing what those issues are and what they will be dealing with. Nesting Tips from educators from families, tried and true ideas that people can share or have shared. Many of the contributors have shared. and to look at what advice would you give someone who might want to do something similar? What are those nesting tips for someone creating a nest for children at school? And then I wanted this book to be action oriented. So there is a feature titled Invitation To Act. Little projects, information that maybe they can use as they step into the real world. Try It Out Now, you know, another way to prepare them to take that action and do something before stepping out into the real world. I also, when I say that I deliberately would use, I deliberately chose to have 12 chapters rather than 14 chapters in this book. Typically a class is 15 weeks, allowing instructors to find ways to bring authentic projects in or spend time in discussion with its mindset theory, whatever it is that makes it your own course. I do a community project in my class. We celebrate the week of the young child and students get an opportunity to invite community and, and know everything that goes into planning such an event. So it allows for things like that authentic projects that can come in, in many different ways. So I hope that you consider this book. Thank you.