As teachers in general and be a lead teacher in our classroom, seeking out these Funds of Knowledge offer us a chance to see a more complex view of the families we serve and develop deeper relationships with them which can be harder to do when working cross-culturally but brings great benefits to both the students and our teaching practice.

HOW TO USE FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE IN YOUR CLASSROOM AND CREATE BETTER CONNECTIONS

Funds of Knowledge are collections of knowledge based in cultural practices that are a part of families’ inner culture, work experience, or their daily routine. It is the knowledge and expertise that students and their family members have because of their roles in their families, communities, and culture.

Funds of Knowledge can include learning quilting or spinning wool into yarn. It could be how to fix a car, how to care for a crying baby, or how to prepare a Seder. What makes using these Funds of Knowledge so powerful is that it is culturally relevant to students.  It brings more diversity into your classroom for students that don’t relate culturally. It offers teachers a chance to become researchers of their students’ lives.  This allows us to better connect with our students’ home cultures and ultimately to act as a bridge when needed. And it creates a deeper connection to learning materials and classroom activities for our students. As teachers, seeking out these Funds of Knowledge offer us a chance to see a more complex view of the families we serve and develop deeper relationships with them which can be harder to do when working cross-culturally but brings great benefits to both the students and our teaching practice.

• Make home visits and parent orientation before school starts in our preschool setting and use these meetings to get to know the parents about their careers, their favorite topics, their favorite foods, their favorite thing to do with their children.

• Creative curriculum that we use in our classroom, it has many topics we choose during the year. Before teaching each topic, we need to send out the letter to all parents and ask them engage in activities that relate to our topic. Invite parents/ caregivers into your classroom to share their talents and expertise. This is where knowing the parents helps. We learn about community helpers, we invite one mom is a fire-fighter; ask her to come in an talk about fire safety, many moms are nurses, nursing assistants, we invite them her with their uniforms and the tools they use at work, we invite one dad makes the best cookies; ask him to make them with the children. When we learn about building topic, we invite parents who work in construction field to come and share their job and what are they doing in their field and also show us what they use to protect their hat, their bodies….Most parents will come in if we ask a head of time. On lunar New Year, we invite families come and celebrate New Year with us, they share their family traditions and read stories in circle, we also receive red envelope and do the Lion Dance….parent-teacher partnership is very important in our classroom and we need to respect and appreciate other cultures and help children understanding about that.
• Use the knowledge we learn from the families both with visits/ parent meetings and when they come in to share as a tool for connecting with their child. Those small significant bits of knowledge about each students family, of course, allow us to better connect with each one of our students.
• Develop empathy in our children. Firstly, We model the behaviors that we want to see. It makes a big impact to first see one’s parents acting with compassion. It makes it more likely that children will try as well. Secondly, we can build helping behaviors into daily life in our classroom and talk to our children’s parents about how helping is incorporated at school or at home. We have a “classroom helper chart” with jobs that rotate among children in the class. this way help children inspire the same kind of thoughtfulness and care to one another.
• We use Second Steps in our classroom, many real pictures and picture books that show how to play, talk, empathy… to our friends. Also how to control our feelings when we have uncomfortable feelings…
• How to use money wisely. Teaching moment at house center when we learn about clothes topic, we use coupons to save our money when we buy clothes or accessories at our store. Which one we need or we want. Explain about that.
• Benefits of nature for children: Learn how playing outdoors in nature can benefit your children intellectually, socially, emotionally, and physically, and discover activities for fostering their development.
• Working with play dough, we can learn how to make play dough, cookies, pizza, sizes of them….

Funds of knowledge can be everywhere in our classroom, we need to spend more time with children to teach and learn about that.