Adoption Issues and School

Increasing the Adoption Sensitivity
of School Personnel

There are several ways that you can work to increase the sensitivity of school personnel to adoption issues. Maybe you will not be able to accomplish all of these, but hopefully you can achieve some.

Encourage principals, counselors, and teachers to use positive adoption language. To use it, they have to know it. Photocopy “Using Positive Adoption Language” and give it to as many school personnel as you can.

Donate a book about adoption to your school's library. If your child was adopted from another country, donate a book about the culture of that country. Round up other adoptive parents of children from other countries and have them do the same.

Suggest other adoption-related titles for the school's librarian to include in the next order of new books. Bibliographies on books about adoption for children of different ages are available from Information Gateway and a number of other national adoption organizations.

The National Adoption Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Adoptive Families of America in St. Paul, Minnesota, and the North American Council on Adoptable Children in St. Paul, Minnesota, are just a few organizations that can provide this kind of help.

Make a presentation about adoption to your child's class or to teachers at a faculty meeting, but think carefully about the messages you want to get across. Perhaps you will want to work in tandem with an experienced adoption worker from a local agency.

If the principal wants to know why a presentation on adoption is relevant when only a few children in the school are adopted, point out the similarities between adoption issues and many other kinds of loss issues that children experience.

Provide school personnel with information about adoption conferences being held in your community that are open to the public. Or plan your own!

Carol Dolber McMurray, a consultant in Richmond, Virginia (see "Resources" below), was able to develop a full-day workshop about adoption for a Virginia school system's staff development department that educated school personnel system-wide.

She then developed a similar course for college students pursuing a degree in education. Imagine what an impact that is making!

Some schools already have support groups for children whose parents are divorced. Suggest the formation of a support group for adopted children and a person to facilitate it.

Volunteer for the family life education curriculum review committee. Make sure that positive adoption messages get into the curriculum.

Written by Debra G. Smith

Resource

Adoption consultant and educator with expertise in the area of adoption and school issues.

Carol Dolber McMurray

1915 Floyd Ave.

Richmond, VA 23220

804.353.7607

This material was obtain from Child Welfare Information Gateway

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