Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope I have when I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds is for these families to not be scared/uneasy/nervous about asking for help. I feel that some families, especially ESL families, have trouble asking questions because they do not know how to communicate or they do not want to be viewed as unintelligent. I hope that in the near future those families of diverse families will find a support and a voice to ask for help or ask questions in the realm of education.

One goal I have for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is for all professionals, students, support staff, and any person that comes in contact with the schools to not judge students based on their outward appearance. I feel that by stopping negative feelings , thoughts, and stereotypes in the early childhood field that as a human race we will be able to stop negative topics a lot sooner with more effectiveness.

I would also like to take a moment to thank all my colleagues that have been on this journey with me. It is through your support, guidance, viewpoints, and questions that have made me become a better educator and person. I hope that each of you reaches your goals and dreams with your professional and personal lives. I look forward to moving on with this journey with some of you in the next classes to come. 

Welcoming Families Around the World

This week we were given this situation to dissect:

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.

In order to complete this assignment, first choose a country you know nothing about as this family’s country of origin.

The country of origin I picked was Aruba.

Five ways in which I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family are:
1. To give them information and knowledge about resources that might be in my community that differs from them.
2. Incorporate information and have a “share” week all about this country in my child care center.
3. I will research surface facts about the country so I am aware of the families’ previous environment.
4. I will make sure to personalized contact with each member of the family so they feel that are wanted and needed in the center and that they matter.
5. To have the family become involve in the center by giving them many different ways and different times to come into the center.

How I hope these preparations will benefit myself and the family is so have a mutual respect for each other and work together to build a good relationship together.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I think throughout a person’s life they will unfortunately be the source of bias, prejudice, and oppression or witness someone else as the target of these things. These encounters can be seen in online environments as well as fictional ones such as moves, books, and television shows.

One movie that I saw that really showed me bias, prejudice and oppression was the movie, “The Help”. This movie shows so much bias, prejudice, and oppression that it was able to bring me into it and made me feel like I actually experienced it.

This movie diminished equity by first showing how black individuals of that time are viewed and talked to. It also showed how a society stigma diminishes friendships between the maids and the little girls and then when the little girls grow up, they lose that relationship. That diminished equity by looking at person’s worth and how the relationships change, based on the more popular or dominant view.

The emotions this situation provoked in me was very hurt and negative. I could not ever imagine having someone basically raise me and then disowning them because of society views. I did get into the viewpoint of both parties and can understand what happened with both people. Basically, the society pressure with prejudice and bias against race played into their relationship.

In the end, the book is published that does star to be change and order to turn this incident into opportunity for greater equity. It will be this and other radical individuals that are willing to stand out and take charge and show that a bias, prejudice, and oppression like this is not right, diminishes equity, and respects the human race.