My name is Adelina DiTullio. I am a junior at Duquesne University, located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I am studying Early Childhood Education, working toward a Masters in Instructional Technology. My love for learning, teaching, and children has inspired me to pursue the field of education. I have always had a teacher mentality and cannot imagine myself anywhere but in front of a classroom.
With teaching not only comes students, but also families and communities. While at first glance a school may be made up of individual classrooms, each student has a story, each room is a family, and when put together, the individual classrooms make an entire school community. An emphasize on the importance of creating learning environments that not only foster student academic achievement, but also safety and security for all students, while instilling a sense of belonging, is critical in every school. Along with all classrooms and school communities comes the need of family involvement. Families play a critical role in all classroom and school communities. The importance of creating open and honest contact and communication with families, while allowing the presence of families within the classroom to be seen and letting all families to feel involved and informed is often overlooked. On top of the importance of family presence and communication in schools comes the importance of incorporating the surrounding community into the classroom and school culture. Community partnerships within schools enhances students’ sense of belonging within the community web they are a part of. By combining classrooms, schools, families, and communities into learning, students are able to see where they fit in their own life and community.
My purpose for this blog is to give research and resources that allow teachers to create a positive classroom and school community, ensuring that the overarching community is incorporated into learning, as well as providing ideas and resources on how to connect and communicate with families. This blog will feature community resources in the Greater Pittsburgh Area, but the idea of each resource will be one that can be found in many places. My goal for this blog is to enhance the way that teachers view the relationship between families, schools, and communities.
