Education

Resources for Educators

©2024 TANENBAUM | Center for Interreligious Understanding | 200 Broadway, 3^rd Floor, New York, NY 10038 | www.tanenbaum.org

A Family is Like a Circle

by Nicole M. O’Neal

A family is like a circle.
The connection never ends,
and even if at times it breaks,
in time it always mends.

A family is like the stars.
Somehow they’re always there.
Families are those who help,
who support and always care.

A family is like a book.
The ending’s never clear,
but through the pages of the book,
their love is always near.

A family is many things.
With endless words that show
who they are and what they do
and how they teach you so you know.

But don’t be weary if it’s broken
or if through time it’s been so worn.
Families are like that—
they’re split up and always torn.

But even if this happens,
your family will always be.
They help define just who you are
and will be a part of you eternally.

Teacher Preparation Document

This lesson is designed to help students learn there are many ways of describing what a family is and that some of the definitions may be very different from their own. Understanding that families come in many different shapes and sizes helps children expand their perspective about the many ways in which people in their community may be different from their own way of being, knowing and believing. It is designed to enhance students’ understanding of their own identity, to foster empathy and respect for people who are different from them, and to value diversity.

Because of the diversity found in families, Sonia Nieto and Patty Bode offer important advice in Affirming Diversity: The Sociopolitical Context of Multicultural Education, 5^th edition (2008):

The topic of family is an attractive theme for teachers because it offers many promising possibilities. The promise lies in the idea that every student from preschool through high school may be able to tell a story about family and relate to ideas about family change. Such stories and ideas provide ways for teachers and students to collaborate and involve every student in the curriculum. Yet, if these attributes are not approached with a problem posing, multicultural perspective, a curriculum about family can prove to be problematic – and even damaging to students.

It is very important to anticipate the multiple and various ways the children in your classroom may define family and we urge you to be prepared to embrace all the responses that children provide so that all children in your classroom feel valued and respected. Provided below are some national statistics about the children in our nation’s classrooms:

From the 2017 American Community Survey (US Census Bureau), here is information about the households in which our nation’s children under 18 live:

• 66% live in two parent households (94% of these children with two married parents—including blended households of remarried parents each of whom may have children from a previous marriage; 6% of these children live with two unmarried parents)
• 8% live with their father only
• 25% live with their mother only
• Almost 1 million Americans are same sex couples living in the same household; 16.4% of these households include children under 18
• 23% of children under 18 speak a language other than English

From 2016-2018:

• 4% of children were in kinship care (often with one or both grandparents)

Children are considered to be in kinship care when all of the following conditions are true: a parent is not present in the household; the child is not a foster child to the householder; the child is not a housemate/roommate/border with relatives in the household; the child is not a householder; and the child is not a spouse or unmarried partner of the householder.  The analysis excludes group quarters population.

In 2015-2016 (Child Trends analysis of data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, National Survey of Children’s Health):

• 8% of children have had a parent incarcerated

Implications for the classroom in any lesson about families:

• Families headed by single parents are still often not included in many curricula.
• The perspectives of adopted children are frequently omitted in classroom discussions about family.
• Families that are headed by adults who are not married – whether same-sex or opposite sex – are usually excluded from traditional definitions of family, and the children of these families are sometimes subject to questioning about the validity of their family structure.
• Families who are headed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people continue to be the target of negative political and other campaigns and are frequently ignored or deliberately silenced in school curricula.
• Students who have family members who are incarcerated rarely see a welcome opportunity to share their story, and they are silenced by some teachers if they attempt to raise the topic.
• Children may define family as a group of people from their neighborhood, their faith community, their school, their homeless shelter, their after-school program and others who provide them with care (adapted from Nieto & Bode, 2008, pp. 384-385).
• Families caring for members with mental illness may be reluctant to participate in a classroom invitation to share stories from home.

Please keep these issues in mind as you work with your students to decide how to define family in a way that supports a collaborative community that values and respects differences.

The teacher may want to use a gallery walk in this lesson. Prior to the walk, the teacher posts a question at the front of the room that students will answer after they have completed the walk. This teaching strategy requires students to move around the classroom to look at either texts or pictures (or both) that have been posted on the walls. It is an excellent technique to use to enable students to share their work with one another. A good strategy in a gallery walk is to divide the class into four groups and start each group at a different wall with directions to move to the wall to their right when they finish examining the documents posted on their first wall. This technique helps ensure that all students are actively engaged and can move at their own pace. Depending on the age and maturity of the students, the teacher may also want to alert students with a “two-minute reminder chime” when they should be prepared to move to the next wall if they have not done so already.

If the teacher wants students to work in small groups, a carousel is another similar strategy. Divide the class into small groups that will work together at the end of the activity to answer the question posed by the teacher. Each small group moves together around the room

examining the texts and/or images posted. When all groups have completed the carousel, each group discusses what they have seen and formulates the group’s answer to the question and decides upon a spokesperson to report the group’s findings. The class reconvenes as a whole and each group shares its ideas.

Both strategies provide students with a good opportunity to get up and move to learn.