50 Strategies for Communicating and Working with Diverse Families (2nd Edition)
Janet Gonzalez-Mena taught in the California university and community college systems for 35 years.  She was on the full-time faculty at Napa Valley College in the Child and Family Studies Department for 15 years until her retirement. Janet started her early childhood career in a cooperative preschool as a parent volunteer back in 1966.  She became a preschool teacher and taught in three types of programs including Head Start, a program for Spanish-speaking children and their families and a home-based preschool program.  Later she became a director of child care programs and helped open several pilot projects including a therapeutic child care program and an infant-center. Besides preschool, Janet’s special interests include working with parents, diversity, family child care, and infants.  In the 1970’s she studied with Magda Gerber, an infant expert from Hungary.  Recently she has studied at the Pikler Institute in Budapest where Magda came from.  Janet has written 4 ECE textbooks, plus a book on diversity and 2 parenting books, including a humorous one that is calledDragon Mom.  Presently Janet is involved in helping create a training project called “Strengthening Family and Professional Partnerships” with the National Association for the Education of Young Children.  In 2002 she co-authoredBridging Cultures in ECE,a training manual, also for WestEd.  She has been on the faculty of WestEd’s Program for Infant-Toddler Care training of trainer institutes since 1991.  Since 1998 she has been on the faculty of Beginning Together, another training of trainer institute for helping professionals learn to include children with special needs in early care and education programs.    Janet lives in a multicultural family in a state where there is no longer a majority culture.  In California, everyone now is a minority.  Janet earned a B.A. in English from University of California, Davis (1959) and a M.A. in Human Development from Pacific Oaks College (1976).