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 am careful not to offend them, remember that their differences don't make them wrong, respect their culture, accommodate them as much as possible, and make them feel welcomed in an environment where their culture is not the dominant culture. One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is that all early childhood educators be required to attend a training on diversity, equity, and social justice to ensure they have a good understanding of the previously mentioned topics and can better educate the children of varying backgrounds. I would like to thank all my colleagues for the support, encouraging words, and resources that were made available to me throughout this course. I wish everyone the best of luck in the courses to come.

Welcoming Families From Around The World

The early childhood setting I chose is a child care center and my family's country of origin is Kuwait. The five ways in which I would prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family is

1.Deal with myself first. Do a self-reflection of my personal cultural values, beliefs, and attitudes. Make sure I have first developed cultural self-awareness in order to prevent any stereotypical knowledge of the family's culture

2.Educate myself on what type of interaction protocol is used....how are the children taught to communicate with adults? Do they respond to adults by saying yes, or yes ma'am, do they use eye contact, is participation solicited by the adult, etc.

3.Educate myself on gender role socialization....When the parents of the child come to the classroom or if I have to contact the family, do I speak with the mother or the father? Some countries don't allow women to speak and in some countries it is disrespectful to speak to the father.

4.Incorporate the family's culture into the classroom curriculum. Use their culture as a basis for learning

5.Make sure the classroom is conducive to learning for the child. Represent the child's culture through displays of posters, pictures and drawings on the wall as well as their culture's clothing and food in the dramatic play area, etc.

I hope this preparation would benefit the family by assuring them that their culture is being represented in a classroom with a culture more dominant than their own, making them feel welcomed and included in the classroom, as well as know that their cultural values and beliefs are respected. It would benefit me by gaining knowledge about the family's culture as well as allow me to better educate the child and interact with the family

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

The memory I have of an incident which prejudice was experienced was actually last week.  There is a commercial that shows children of different races describing to a Caucasian man how they would build things using candy.  At the moment I can’t remember exactly what the children mentioned, but for example one child may have said they would build a house using twizzlers, the door would be made using jelly beans, the roof would be made using peppermint, etc. The African American boy then asked what would the windows be made of, and the Caucasian man said very frankly, “I’m assuming they would be made of candy”. My son actually thought this was a racist incident because he stated the man could have given an example of the type of candy that could be used in making the windows rather than make the comment he made. My remark to my son was that although I understood how he felt, it was already understood that everything would be made of candy so the little boy probably shouldn’t have asked the question.  My son said well that’s true too but the fact remains that the African American boy was made to look like a fool……my son asked why couldn’t one of the other children asked that question?  He said every time there is something silly or dumb to be said on many commercials, it’s more than likely the African American people who say it. Equity was diminished because in my son’s opinion the other children were allowed to use their imagination and be creative, but all the African American boy did was look as though he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation and therefore asked a silly question. The feeling  brought to me was the fact that my child pays more attention to equity issues than I imagined. What would have to change to turn this incident around would have to be the way people look at things. People would have to be more open minded and look at things from different perspectives.  My son saw the boy being made to look silly. I saw the question he asked having two answers (he could have been given examples of candy or he could have been answered exactly how the man answered him).