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/