Week 8 Professional Hopes and Goals

Wk8-Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have when I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds is that I continue to have an open mind and accept everyone for who they are. I feel as if I am always welcoming to my students and families that come into my classroom regardless of their culture. I provide all my students and families the same opportunities. I love each of my students for their special traits and for who they are. I make no judgements about my students based on diversity. I strive to make my classroom an environment where everyone feels safe, respected, and valued.

A goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is to advocate for diverse children and help better support their transitions. I feel as if I have many families that come to my classroom that really don’t know what to do to support their own children. A student I have this year is really struggling behaviorally and does not speak English. His mother is going to school full time at the University near my building and his father just left to go back to China. The student seems lost and confused in addition to his unique needs. His mother is also at a loss about how to better support him through this.

Thank you to all my colleagues for your responses and posts. Reading everyone’s thoughts and opinions made me really reflect on the course’s topics. I wish everyone the best of luck throughout the program and in your careers! 

Week 7- Welcoming Families From Around the World

Welcoming Families From Around the World

I am working in an early childhood setting and received word that a child of a family who has recently immigrated to the United States will be joining my group soon. I want to prepare myself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, I have been enrolled in this course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated I need to know more than surface facts about their country of origin. The student and her family have recently emigrated from the country of Nepal. Five ways in which I would prepared myself to be culturally responsive towards this family would be to research their customs/traditions, have pictures and art work up around the room reflecting Nepal’s customs, have common simply pictures with labels (using both languages), have all translation programs set and ready, find toys, music, books that the child would find familiar, and try to plan activities into the day that would reflect her culture. My hope is that these preparations will benefit my student, her family, and me. I believe that they will benefit my student because she will be around familiar things that she can relate to. The environment won’t seem so foreign to her. Her family should benefit as well from the familiar environment and also by seeing how I have invested my time and effort into learning about their country. Lastly, by investing time in the preparations, I should benefit by having a student who adjusts quicker with familiarity and by setting a positive tone with the family. A mutual trusting relationship should evolve between us all.

Week 6 The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

A memory I have of experiencing oppression, was growing up having a speech impediment. I was subjected to teasing and embarrassment in elementary school. There was one boy in particular that was cruel. This specific oppression diminished equity by isolating me from peers.  I avoided many social interactions and events because he made me feel “different”.  Reflecting on this brings back memories of embarrassment, anger, sadness. Growing up I was always afraid to speak aloud in class and be overly social with my peers. Family members thought it was cute and funny and even mimicked words I said. This hurt my feelings even more. My parents took me to different speech classes to try and help correct the problem. “While there is usually little impact on intelligibility, the impact of a lisp on a child's 'image' can be quite powerful. Of course, some children grow up in an environment where their lisp goes unnoticed, or where it is not regarded as cause for concern. Other children gain positive recognition because they lisp, particularly when the lisp is regarded as sweet, funny, or endearing. By contrast, others face criticism, ridicule, nagging and teasing” (Bowen, 2011). In order to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity I had a lot of soul searching and maturing to do. It took a long time but I was able to overcome the inequity I felt. Now that I am an educator myself, I understand the impact speech impediments can have on a person’s self-worth. I am an advocate for students and families facing this and provide as much support as I can for them.

References

Bowen, C. (2011). Lisping: When /s/ and /z/ are hard to say. Retrieved from http://www.speech-language-therapy.com/ 

Week 4- Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

An example of microaggression in which I remember from another time was this year in my classroom. I was meeting a new family in my classroom when the secretary walked in to help register the family. She looked at the family and asked if they only spoke Chinese. The mother looked at our secretary and said, “We only speak English. We moved from Haslett (a district close by) and we are Korean not Chinese.” At this point I felt embarrassed for the building’s secretary and bad for the family. Our building is very diverse and we do have many families that do not speak English so I know that the secretary was only trying to help and was not trying to be rude. It was very uncomfortable for all of us.

My observation experiences this week affected my perception of the effects of discrimination, prejudice, and/or stereotypes on people by making me more aware and sensitive to my own comments and actions. I currently have a father of one of my students, attending school each day with his son. He is doing this due to severe behavior problems that his son has. They recently moved here from a different country. The young boy is having a difficult time adjusting.  I have to communicate with the father throughout the day about the classroom routines, schedule, activities, etc. It takes a lot of extra effort on my part and at times is very frustrating. This class has made me self reflect on how I am approaching both the father and son. I am trying to make sure that I am not being microaggressive in any way. 

Week 3- Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

My three friend’s/families’ responses:

*80 Year Old White Male

 Definition of Culture

Culture in this definition refers to human male and female behavior.   It refers to:  knowledge; religious, political, and other beliefs; language, traditions, art, law, morals, customs, capabilities, and habits acquired by members of a society (an organized community).

Definition of Diversity

Diversity in this definition refers to human diversity.  It refers to the differences/variations in:  race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, mental abilities, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, and other ideologies, language.

*50 Year Old White Female

Definition of Culture

How you are raised. Your customs, holidays, celebration traditions.   It is our custom to celebrate Thanksgiving at my parents’ house with my immediate family. It is the custom with Bill's family to sing Happy Birthday to baby Jesus on Christmas. It was the family custom on my mom's side to take dance and music lessons. Culture can also mean the type of surroundings that are the norm. A farming community might have a different culture than a big city. For example, kids drive tractors early and work in the fields in the country and that becomes part of your culture. A positive, loving home offers a different culture to a child than one where the parents are alcoholics or abusive. It's kind of what you get used to and it can effect who you become.

Definition of Diversity

How people are different from each other...skin color, gender, religion, socio-economic, even where you are raised (country vs city...east coast vs midwest). Diversity can affect your culture.

*40 Year Old Hispanic Female

Definition of Culture

I define culture as a group's shared customs/traditions, art, values, language, sometimes religious beliefs.

Definition of Diversity

I define diversity as having many cultures within an environment.

Each of the participants’ answers to culture I feel have been touched on in my studies in this course. They all discussed the customs and traditions, which I have learned, are the surface culture. Two responses added that culture includes values, language, religious beliefs as mentioned in my studies. Another response mentioned a child’s living environment affecting ones culture.

This course has focused a lot on the dominant culture and all three responses omitted anything about the dominant culture and any experiences concerning this. It would have been interesting to hear what each person thought. I know when the Hispanic female came to America she did not know English and she had a teacher that put her in the back of the classroom and would not support her much.

Thinking about the others’ definitions of culture and diversity has reaffirmed my beliefs/definitions. Through my discussions, reflective journals, blogs, and applications I have touched on all the same points the responses did. 

Week 2: My Family Culture

My Family Culture

If an unfortunate catastrophe happened in our country and I had to choose three items that I hold dear and that represent my family culture to take with me I would choose a family photo album, bible, and my wedding ring. The family photo album means a lot to me because it holds many dear memories I have with my family and of my children. This album would show my surface culture easily to others. The bible means a lot to me because it holds/represents my belief in God. Being a proud Christian is a part of my social identity. I would also choose to take my wedding ring as an item that I hold dear because it’s a big part of my social identity. With choosing to become a wife I have now become a mother. Being a wife and mother is my pride and joy and a major part of who I am. Upon arrival if I were told I could only keep one item and had to give up the other two items would be heart breaking. All three of these items I hold dear to my heart and it would be hard to give two up. Reflecting on this exercise reminds me how important and critical my family culture is to me. My family culture makes me unique.