Home Visits

Home Visit as a Tool for Family and Community Knowledge

Early childhood home visiting has been shown to be an effective service model and a tool to learn from all young children and their families. Through the undergraduate CREATE (Communities are Resources in Early childhood Teacher Education) program teacher candidates experience home visits as a way to learn and become familiar with local communities and children’s learning experiences at home.

As part of this academic experience teacher candidates are expected to do a couple of home visits for each semester during fall and spring semesters. We work together with current classroom teachers (in-service) to identify 1-2 families with a preschool age child that might be willing to be part of this educational learning experience. These home visits are scheduled always at family’s convenience and as token of appreciation they will receive an educational gift. During these visits teacher candidates observe a child in order to describe the child’s learning during classroom time (e.g., circle time, story reading) and during after school at home (e.g., afternoon routine at home playing or doing literacy activities) to learn about the families funds of knowledge and families histories. Furthermore, teacher candidates We help prepare and support teacher candidates for this experience and support through the process by helping them brainstorm about possible scenarios and guiding them to ask questions that will allow them to learn about the child’s early literacy experiences and particular knowledge acquired at home.

In addition to home visits, student learn to participate in community literacy events organized with families and children through our CREATE Community and Family Liaison together with participating early childhood programs. Please see our community literacy events and project link.