Adoption in the Schools: A Lot to Learn

Background and reasons for educating educators 

Learning is the "work" of childhood. For very young children, learning comes primarily through play and, as they enter school, classroom learning takes up the better part of their days. It is the primary arena in which children's performance is judged in relation to peers, and they experience pressure to perform. Likewise, there is pressure on parents to facilitate children's adjustment at school. When children have difficulty fitting in at school or measuring up to expectations, many areas are affected. Even when children perform well, their school experiences play a major role in shaping key aspects of adjustment, including:

• The children's self concept,
• Their peer group experience,
• Their ability to have educational needs met in order to learn successfully, and
• The parent-child relationship, including parents' views of their children, the stress they experience in parenting, and their feelings of competence as parents.

In addition to these general influences experienced by all children, adopted children's interactions at school - with both teachers and their classmates - provide important messages regarding adoption that help to shape their identity as adopted persons.

While this paper focuses primarily on adoption, the same (or sometimes comparable) issues apply to children in foster care who are not living with their birthparents. Most adopted and foster children confront situations at school that highlight their perceived "different" status from classmates who are being raised by their biological parents. For example, consider the following statements from children:

Teachers need to be prepared with both sensitivity and knowledge about adoption in order to assist all children and their families in successfully dealing with issues on an ongoing basis. These questions and challenges may arise in class discussions, during interactions among students, and in completing assignments. Their explicit and implicit messages about adoption and/or foster care, or their lack thereof, have an impact on adopted and foster children - and help to shape other children's attitudes and beliefs.

Educators clearly want to do well for all the children whose lives they shape - it is the principal reason they choose teaching as their professional careers. But they receive no systematic training in two important aspects of many students' lives: adoption and foster care. As a result, they may inadvertently use language, teach lesson plans, and/or display attitudes that can hurt children's feelings, perpetuate inaccurate stereotypes, and transmit the message that some families (i.e. those formed through biology) are more normal and acceptable than others.

Recommendations 

The best way to provide all children with the education and support they deserve is to make systemic changes that will have broad, permanent effects. Research and experience indicate these changes would benefit adopted and foster children:

• Education about adoption and foster care should be included in courses (such as on diversity) that are required for students in teacher education programs - as well as in professional development trainings for current teachers, psychologists, guidance counselors, social workers and other relevant school personnel.
• Studies should be conducted focusing on the outcomes of adoption-related educational programs for teachers (as well as other relevant school personnel), and the findings should be utilized to improve trainings, lesson plans, etc.
• Trainings should be developed for adoptive and foster parents on ways to advocate for their children in the schools; expert educational advocates should also be available to parents - as should access to support networks and resources such as occupational therapists, psychologists and other local, out-of-school professionals knowledgeable about adoption issues.
• Child welfare and educational organizations should collaborate to remove systemic barriers that impede the education of foster children, for example, to create policies that promote educational continuity for foster children so they do not have to change schools in the middle of a school year.

Educating educators about the realities of adoption and adoptive families is important as a diversity issue, because children should not be less understood or more stigmatized simply because of the type of family they happen to be in. It is a fairness issue, because adopted and foster children are sometimes derided in ways we would never accept if the taunting or stereotyping referred to other aspects of their being - such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion or disability. And it is an inclusion issue, because the knowledge gained in learning about adoptive and foster families also applies to families headed by single parents, divorced parents, step parents, gay or lesbian parents, parents of different races or ethnicities, and on and on. In other words, doing the right thing for one group of children means doing the right thing for a majority of children.