Communication is Not Always Straight Forward

Communication skills and styles vary depending on culture, gender, and context. This week I watched a television show that I do not normally watch with the sound off first and then with the sound on. Between the two observations of the same show, I was granted different ideals about characters’ relationships, feelings, and expression.

The TV show: Gypsy Sister’s
Episode: When Mellie Gets Married

Sounds off:
With just relying on mostly nonverbal cues I feel that each character has aggression within them. There is fighting, yelling, and people storming off. Nettie and Mellie are sisters but do not have a “typical” relationship between sisters. They yell at each other during the dress making process and are shown arguing throughout the show multiple times. Nettie and her children seem to have a close bond because they are always together. It seems that she is very open with her children because they are shown in scenes when there is fighting and during scenes that might be called “inappropriate” by popular standards. Mellie’s relationship with her husband does not seem so secure. They also fight a lot and are not shown together and being “loving”. Physical contact is not made between them much and neither is eye contact. During the wedding when Mellie is crying down the aisle and getting upset I sense that she does not want to marry her husband but goes through with it for what I believe is family pressure.

Sound on:
Mellie and Nettie’s relationship is not a “typical” sister relationship because of their age difference. Their mother was in prison when Mellie was a young adult which cause Nettie to become more of a mother figure. Nettie is upset with Mellie for her behavior that is not part of their culture and family traditions. Mellie and Nettie are close and do love each other which is stated throughout the show. Nettie’s children are always with her because she is the primary caregiver and some of the children are also her grandchildren. It is typical for gypsy women to marry young and have children at young ages as well making it more acceptable in their family culture to interact differently to such a span of ages. Mellie is ready to marry her husband, but did have hesitations before the wedding. During the wedding she was not having mixed feelings for the groom but was aggravated from her dress, bridal party, and other various factors.

I feel that my assumptions would have been more correct if it was a TV show that I knew well because I would have a background of previous relationships and typical behaviors from individuals. I have learned that communication needs to be both verbal and nonverbal to receive an accurate understanding of every situation.

Communication of Others

This week I am looking at someone who demonstrates competent communication. I choose to talk about my father because he is the best communicator that I know. What makes his exhibit great communication skills is his understanding of others and how he portrays himself verbally and non-verbally  My father understands others and knows what to say and what not to say. He is able to decipher a person’s personality in a simple conversation and understand how to best communicate with a person. My father also sends out great nonverbal communication tactics by having eye contact, his posture, and nodding throughout conversations. He is the person that taught me about nonverbal techniques that send out negative vibes as well. I do and will continue to model my own communication behaviors after him because I know his communication skills have made him successful in his career, friends, and a valued family member.  

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.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This week I was learning about microaggression. I really was looking around and concentrating hard throughout this week to detect an example of microagression. Today, I finally received an example, and it was from my little Kindergartners. In class this week we are learning about American symbols. In my class I also have a boy that was born and raised in America, but still does not have what would be considered “normal” English because of his second language and the accent that he has developed from this. I was having my students turn and talk to each other about American symbols and one other student in my class raised their hand and stated, “Why does he (the little boy in ESL) have to learn about American symbols when he doesn’t belong here anyways?” I was shocked by this and could not believe how blunt the statement was.  I explained to the class that the little boy does live here and was born here, he is just lucky enough to know two different languages. We talked about how hard it is to learn how to talk, and if they could imagine learning to talk in two different ways. We also discussed how it is not nice to single out other people like this and how they would feel if someone said that they did not belong. I feel my students understood more about being nice to others now and how we cannot make racial/ethnic remarks about others.

My observation of my experiences this week affected my perception of the effects of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping by understanding that these ideas and personas start with young children. If young children are exposed and have an understanding of all different types of people and grow up knowing this as the norm, the ideas of discrimination, prejudice, and stereotyping could eventually vanish. I hope that one day, this concept could become a reality. 

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

This week I am diving into looking at different people’s definitions and ideas amour culture and diversity. I have found 3 people that have shared their views with me that are all culturally diverse from myself in either the areas of gender, race, class, religion, abilities, or age.

The first person I asked was my husband.
His definition of culture is – People that have a commonality in ethnicity or language.
His definition of diversity is – How people different from each other.

The second person I asked was a co-worker.
Her definition of culture is – People that have the same basis of language and writing system
Her definition of diversity is – what makes people unique

The third person I asked was one of my neighbors.
His definition of culture is – People that are located in a certain area with genetically similar traits.
His definition of diversity is – How individuals are unique and how people are categorized.

When looking at these answers and how different they were, they all had key points in them about what culture really is and how people view it. Culture to me contains so much. Culture is; a person’s beliefs, social forms, traits, religion, race, values, goals, traditions, attitudes, and language. Culture involves so much that it can be hard to find a short definition of what culture truly means. I feel that all of my three interviewees made a good attempt at defining culture, but I also feel that not all of them thought about all the different aspects that go into culture. I feel that for diversity, the people I interviewed has good definitions for that. I specifically liked the definition my co-worker gave. It is a definition that puts a focus on the positive of diversity instead of the negatives that can come with it. I feel that by interviewing these people about their definitions I now have a better understanding of how others view these two major concepts of our world. The influence these definitions have had on my own thinking about these topics is to look beyond the basics and into the details and to also turn these definitions that can be thought of as negative, into something with rejoice and with pride.