Professional Hopes and Goals

My hopes for any child or family that comes from a diverse background than that they are living within is that they are accepted.  Diversity as it relates to ethnicity, gender, religious belief, economic status, or anything is a part of our world.  My hope is for a generation to be raised, as well as older generations to grow to understand that we are each made different.  We are a melting pot all around us of different attributes that connect together into understanding how to make this world into a better place.  This mixture of differences that meld together whether we desire it or not.  I wish for a world that could understand the benefits and grow to understand how we can make it work for the best.

One goal I have for the early childhood field in relation to diversity, equity, and social justices would be for a better understanding of these topics.  Parents, students and educators alike, we all have much to improve on.  Better ways to understand and have compassion for people, healthier ways to communicate our concerns and ideas with one another, and the many avenues and opportunities available to reach these.  My goal for the early childhood field to better understand these topics begins with us as educators.  We as educators need to be passionate about relaying this information and building an awareness to those around us.  What will we do with this information that we've learned throughout our past 8 week?  How will we improve the professional world around us as well as the families that we come into contact with along the way?

A huge thank you to those that have challenged my thoughts, encouraged my growth, and assisted in executing my topics.  We have grown together in understanding this topic of diversity, equity, and social justices and are each better within our personal and professional lives because of it.  Thank you for your heartfelt stories shared and being open to listening (or reading) mine.  I'm a better educator because of each of you.  Thank you!

Welcoming Families From Around the World

It is certain that as an early childhood professional you will encounter children from diverse backgrounds whose families may have come from many different countries. In what ways can you prepare yourself for working in early childhood settings which represent such diversity?

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.

True story:  Wednesday at work this week, I was told that we were going to have a new student.  "I know you're going to hate me, but she's from Peru, and doesn't speak any English." 

"Hate you, no way!  I wouldn't hate you!  Plus I speak Spanish so I can communicate with her.  Hate you over what?"

This conversation made this assignment easy to research.

The name of “your” family’s country of origin: Peru

At least five ways in which you will prepare yourself to be culturally responsive towards this family:

1.    Asking the family to fill out our welcome packet that our students at the beginning of the year fill out will assist in our teachers understanding more about their culture and how we can incorporate them and it within our classroom setting!

2.    Connecting this child with a class buddy the first week of school will help the child feel more like they belong in a classroom that the others have been building friendships in for 5 months already.  This friend will travel to centers, eat meals with, and have quiet times together.  This friend is a well trusted and matured friend within the classroom that will show "the ropes" in a respectful manner and help them understand our centers and the rules by showing since speaking two different languages would be a problem.  (obviously, if I have a friend that also speaks their language I would have this person as their "buddy".)

3.    Understanding basic Spanish (Peru's national language) and asking the facility to have an interpreter for our parent/teacher conferences.  Basic Spanish words like hello, friend, bathroom, and teacher.

4.    Ensure we give positive feedback for even the smallest of things happening.  Making sure that each student is praised is important in an ECE class; in this instance ensuring we praise our English Language Learning (ELL) student more will confirm a good choice if we're unable to communicate with her what is good.

5.    Create areas in the classroom that I know my new student will be successful at.  It's not fun being new to a classroom, feeling like you can't do anything; so ensuring that there is a space that they are successful at will help them.

6.    Ask for family pictures and add them to our family tree wall as well as our family photo album in our safe place (place in the classroom if a student is sad, hurt, or not feeling well they can go to and feel comforted by a soft quiet place full of things to console themselves including a family photo album)

It is my hope that by preparing to understand the culture of the family, language, and child as an individual that we will foster a healthy atmosphere for both learning and maturing together.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

Disney movies are fantastic!  While I can admit, I've honestly only watched a handful of them, my daughter is obsessed with being a princess!  Although we try our best to not allow this fantasy life of a prince on a white horse riding in and sweeping her off of her feet into a problemless world . . . she is 4 and she deserves the right to allow her imagination to flow and be creative.

We [my husband and I] recently took her on a date to watch the movie Frozen.  What a fantastic movie!  Elsa, the soon to be Queen with special powers of turning things into snow/ice, and Anna, the young sister that lost her freedom of growing up with the windows of the castle open and playing in the garden or outdoors in order to contain and protect Elsa.  When Elsa reaches the age of coronation, the castle is opened to the village and in an act of anger Elsa freezes the entire village with a forever winter.  Anna is lost, she's wanted only to live with freedom from the castle and to fall in love and to live life.  Yet, she feels guilt that Elsa's anger was caused by her actions [which they were] so she begins a journey to get Elsa to return . 

Both of these actions ruined the life for those within the village.  They took away their freedoms, their rights, and their liberties.  They became angry at Elsa, without understanding Elsa's feelings of pain.  Elsa too was hurt, she's stricken with this punishment of freezing things (anything she touches), and she too wants a normal life just like everyone else. Unfortunately, Elsa has the entitlement of Queen now to live up to.   

This reminds me of my daughter.  My husband and I have held positions within the church of authority.  Being a pastor's kid, you're held to these higher standards yet always thought of as "the worst kids of the bunch".  Although, they're not worse than others, all children make challenging choices. A pastor's kid just makes them and their public knowledge because we usually add them into our sermons or the children are looked upon with a microscope.  I wondered while watching this movie, how do our children feel?  While we're not royalty, at times, we're held to these similar higher standards.  Do our children wish that they were able to attend church without these "titles" held over them?

What I love about this Disney movie the most, is that it shows that different parties involved did wrong.  And they all apologized.  Something our world is missing.  Apologies!  It also shows that you can make something good from a "badly dealt hand."  In Elsa's position, she can make her life meaningful for the good with her "snow powers" and still take on her privilege of "Snow Queen."

Really a true must watch if you haven't seen the movie.  My daughter can't stop running around the house singing their songs.

Check out Frozen's Oscar Nominated song in 25languages.  It's beautiful!

Microaggression Awareness

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

Chinese New Year was celebrated this week.  We have one family, that happens to celebrate it.  We have a family that is originally from Thailand in our classroom.  As the mom was talking to me during pick up time about their preparations another parent was listening to the conversation.  After the Thai family left, another parent asked me why they celebrated The Chinese New Year if they are from Thailand, making a comment "Aren't they Thai, only Chinese celebrate that."  While at first I looked at this as an opportunity to educate this parent on the celebration, now I can understand how this could have been construed as a microaggression.

While upholding our confidentiality for our other family involved, I solely said that "a large population of Chinese live in neighboring countries of China like Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and others.  I'm not sure exactly their origin, but any reason to celebrate is a good reason to me." 

I wasn't upset towards this parent that spoke the words, and as a professional you don't judge where or why this person made a comment as they did.  Each day we are blessed with the opportunity to interact with others.  Our tone of voice, choice of words, and context of conversation could be the cause of microagression without even knowing it.  

A constant struggle, and I can't be the only one on this, is understanding the person's tone, facial expressions/body language, and purpose behind a statement.  Sometimes a microaggression is blatantly obvious as racial slurs or derogatory language is used.  In this circumstance, understanding the facial language, body language, and facial expressions made it clear they were critical on the purpose of this family celebrating a holiday.  I thought this week, would it have been an offensive comment if this parent's body language and tone of voice were different?

As an educator, we're in the position to also assist a parent in some education.  This though, educating a parent on positive social interactions is not something I'm ready to tackle.  I'll keep to doing that with 4 year olds!

Photo Credit:

Nigatu, Heben (2013) 21 Racial Microaggressions You Hear On A Daily Basis. Retrieved 29        January 2014.  Website:  http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/racial-microagressions-you-hear-on-a-daily-basis