Home-school-community partnerships to support parents living in a minority francophone setting

Masny (2001)assigns parents the responsibility of supporting the social, linguistic and cultural well-being of their child in a Francophone preschool. In a Francophone minority setting, this means that the parents make a commitment, without denying the family's previous history, to create an environment that fosters the development of a Francophone identity and a feeling of belonging to the Francophone community.But parents also need the support of the school and the community to create such an environment. The appropriate support for eligible parents varies according to their linguistic, cultural and regional background. Whatever the family's history, it will be necessary to put in place a coordination service for the following purposes:

• Reassure parents by glvmg them tools that will enable them to learn best practices for developing additive bilingualism: for example, developing communication kits to distribute in schools that explain the basic principles and practices that guarantee a solid acquisition of the two languages.
• Acknowledge the validity of varieties of French that are different from the French used at school (e.g., the use of casual French at home and more formal French in school) and provide an opportunity to enlarge the linguistic range of parents who do not know French well.
• Support the experience of living in a minority setting and promote French in the context of additive bilingualism by making available lists of resources (e.g., games, Internet, television and radio programs, videos, DVDs etc.) and services in the French language offered by the municipality and the provincial and federal governments.
• Organize networks that support parents who want to encourage their child to do sports or participate in artistic activities in French, and help them learn the terminology that belongs to the area of interest.
• Develop policies of inclusion so that parents who do not speak French are comfortable at the daycare or school and can support the French-language school's mandate.
• Anchor parents in their Francophone society, facilitate the reception of new arrivals and make them aware of their responsibility to contribute to the school and the community.

In addition, it is important to develop community responsibility for daycare services at the preschool level. One example would be locating the daycare in a French-language school or community centre. This mean the children do not have to move around as much and they develop a sense of belonging to the community, which contributes to building their Francophone identity (Masny, 2000).It is also important to establish a close connection between the programming at the daycare and preschool and the elementary school curriculum (Masny, 1995,in Masny, 2000).

The home-school-community connection plays an important role with families that have a low socioeconomic status. A research carried out in Quebec by Kanoute (2003)looked into the educational support of parents in underprivileged contexts. Her findings show that the failure rate of children is higher in underprivileged areas in Montreal. However, the parents are aware of their responsibilities and of the importance of school. They want to be made more welcome in the school and want the school to take into account the limitations they have in helping their child at home. Kanoute suggests that the schools need to know and recognize the home environment and the resources available to the family,take the parents into account in educational projects and respect their capacity to support their child.

Family literacy practitioners working with these parents could design ways of implementing interventions that create a stronger connection between the home and the school.