Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have when thinking about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds is that they feel appreciated and accepted. I know a major issue some families and children have is feeling accepted. These families will not want to participate in programs if they do not feel accepted or appreciated. For example, the agency I previously worked for is a Afrocentric early childhood program and we had families who were not of African decent to enroll and quickly leave because they did not feel accepted. The curriculum was based around African heritage and teaching the children terms and language in Swahili. The other families wanted to know why their heritage couldn't be celebrated as well. I agree because if we are going to enroll families from diverse backgrounds, then the curriculum needs to change and the program needs to change. 

One goal that I have for early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is to make all programs diverse including the staff. I believe that it is important to have a diverse staff who are bilingual. I believe that this would make families feel a little less uncomfortable. If someone was there who could communicate with the family in their home language. It is difficult to enroll a family who only speaks Spanish and the person doing the enrolling does not know how to speak a tap of Spanish.

I wanted to thank all of my colleagues for responding to my blog post and discussion post. I really appreciate all of the feedback and the feedback was always positive. I enjoyed being in this class with each and every one of you and I wish you well in your endeavors. Good luck!

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Welcoming Families from Around the World

For this assignment, imagine the following scenario:

You are working in an early childhood setting of your choice—a hospital, a child care center, a social service agency. You receive word that the child of a family who has recently emigrated from a country you know nothing about will join your group soon. You want to prepare yourself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, you are enrolled in a course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated you need to know more than surface facts about their country of origin.

I am a teacher for a early childhood program and the family is coming from the country Australia. 

Ways in which I would prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family:

1. Recognize any bias or stereotypes. 
2. Do my best to sensitive to terminology 
3. Become more informed about the history and culture of Australia.
4. Treat the family and student as an individual
5. I would prepare my classroom with pictures of Australia to welcome the family and acknowledge their country.

I would hope that the family would appreciate the efforts I took to learn about their country and to highlight their country in my classroom. It is important for families of foreign countries to know that their culture would be accepted and appreciated when they come to the United States. The family should not feel that they have to loose their culture or beliefs just because they no longer live there. I believe that by celebrating cultures in a diverse classroom is very important and make the families feel appreciated. All families from foreign countries that come to the United States just want to feel respected and as an educator I feel it is my responsibility to do so within my classroom. 

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The personal side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

An incident of bias and prejudice that I experienced was when I was in high school. The other children did not want to interact with me because they thought I was poor and they made fun of my clothing. They would walk pass me and laugh or knock my books out of my hands. When it was time to split up into partners in class I was always the last one picked. It hurt deep down inside because I did not know why they were treating me like this. One day a friend that I grew up with came and told me what they were saying. They said that my clothes look like they came from target or Walmart and my shoes came from payless. They did not want to hang out with me either because I wasn't a small either. They were not being fair because I was not being picked first because of my appearance. This made me always stay quiet and hide in the back of the classroom. My mother and father did not have much and did they best they could. I was just grateful that I did not have to wear hand me downs, I was not focused on who name was on my clothes. All I knew was that I had on new clothes. Because of the shame I felt I went home and yelled at my mother for not buying me name-brand clothes. She said it is not what you wear, but who is wearing the clothes. I said I don't get it, she said clothes do not make the person the person makes the clothes. I said okay. I accessorized the clothes that I had and I went to school the next day and everyone thought I had been shopping again. I walked with my head up and I had gained confidence in myself from what my mother had told me. I walked around like I was wearing a million dollars worth of clothing. The other girls started talking to me after that. Older students who were there knew me from church and the neighborhood and they started introducing me to their friends and so I began to be more popular. When the girls who were being bias against me saw that I was hanging out with Juniors and Seniors, they began to want to hang out with me. I use to come home to my mom every day and tell her how those girls were acting like they never treated me wrongly. She laughed and said I told you it is not the clothes, it is the person in the clothes! I had to change me!

http://www.waldenu.edu