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.