Professional Hopes and Goals

The one hope that I have for working with children and families of diverse backgrounds is that they feel welcomed and a part of the classroom.  My hope is that children would not have to ever feel like they are being discriminated against in any way because of their culture, religious beliefs, gender, or sexual orientation.  This is a lofty hope, but it is my hope for children and families.

The goal that I am setting for myself to take the information I have learned in this class and share it with others.  I have the opportunity in my work to influence teachers across the state of Oklahoma so I want to be sure to share the importance of social justice.  We all have the responsibility of helping educate the teachers of young children through our conversations, working with a co-worker in the break, or by designing trainings that help educate.

I would like to thank my colleagues in this class for helping me and pushing me to learn more.  Starting this class I felt like I knew the content and man I was surprised and shocked at the changed that has occurred within myself during this class.  I appreciate the great discussion board posts and blogs assignments because they have helped me to grow and learn more about this topic and myself.  I look forward to our continued journey. 

Welcoming Families From Around the World (version 2)

For this assignment I will imagine that I am a teacher in a child care center in college town and it is the beginning of the year.  I know that I am going to have a child in my classroom from Spain and he only speaks Spanish.  The things that I will do in preparation for this new child include adding labels in the classroom in Spanish.  This will help the child feel welcome, but will also provide an opportunity for all children to learn.  I will work with the parents to find out some children's books that he enjoys from Spain and add those to my library center.  This will help him to feel more welcome and something familiar in the classroom and it will expand the diversity in the library for all children.  I will learn some key phrases in his home language so that I can provide comfortant and encouragement.  Since this is a college town I will work the English as a Second Language institute to get our parent book translated so that they will have access to it in thier home language.  This change for our center will help this family, but it increases our overall work with families.  Making a change like this will show families that we are committed to meeting their needs.  I will invite the family to join us for a storytime that they read the book in thier home language so that thier child will have a sense of pride that they are sharing a piece of thier life with the entire class.  This experience will help the child with thier own self-esteem, but it will strenghen the relationship with teachers and the family as well educating all the children in the classroom.

Throughout the Blog I included the five statements of how I would prepare myself and my classroom to be culturally responsive towards this family as well as how I hope these preparations will benefit both myself and the child.  Working to meet the needs of all children is critical work for teachers.  Positive and accurate learning expereinces about human differences and similiarities help to give children a foundation for resisting incorrect and harmful messages about themselves and others (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).

Reference
Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

Welcoming Families From Around the World

For this blog posting I am going to take the position of a teacher in a child care center in a college town.  I can relate to this because in the beginning of my career this is exactly the type of classroom that worked in and I had a room full of diversity.  The family moving that will be joining my classroom is a four-year-old boy from Spain.  He will be coming to the United States with his parents, while his father works on a graduate degree.  He speaks only Spanish.  As I prepare for his arrival I make some preparations in the classroom so that we are ready for him upon arrival.

The things that I begin to work on prior to his arrival is getting new labels added to all the toy shelves in the classroom so that they are labeled with both English and Spanish.  Since my husband's first language is Spanish he is also working with me on learning a few Spanish words so that I can welcome the child and family into the classroom as well as know a few critical words such as bathroom, hungry, and good work.  Since we are located in a college town we take our parent handbook to the college to get it translated into Spanish so that the parents will have a version of the handbook in their home language.  These are the primary things that I accomplish prior to the child's enrollment, but at enrollment I ask the family what their son's favorite books is so that we can add it to the library prior to his arrival so that we have something familiar in the classroom.  Additionally, during the enrollment visit I invite the family to join us on the first day to share a story during group time so that it can also help their son to begin to feel welcome here.

All of the strategies suggested for both prior to arrival and the day of arrival will assist the child in feeling welcomed into this new scary environment.  They also show the family our center is dedicated to meeting the needs of all children enrolled not just English speaking children and families.  The things that I have learned by doing this preparation is that taking a few extra steps in the beginning to be prepared for the child is worth it when they walk in on day one and connected with different areas of the classroom because they see stuff that is familiar.  Once you have established a classroom culture that honors the diversity within your group, then you can begin to add learning opportunities about cultural groups beyond your program (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).

References

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

The memory that I am going to share is when my daughter was in kindergarten almost 23 years ago.  It was a time when multicultural crayons were just being introduced.  My husband is from Venezuela so his skin tone is more olive, but he is still a very light skin toned Latin American.  Our daughter has dark hair, dark eyes and more olive toned skin like her father.  She was at the art table with her friend coloring and she picked up a crayon and started to color and her friend told her she could not use that one because her dad was not white.  She said, “I have seen your dad and he is not white so you can’t use that crayon”.  When I picked Jordan up that afternoon the first thing she asked me when she got in the car was what color is daddy.  I asked her why she was asking and proceeded to tell me her story. 

The feelings I had were anger, sadness, guilt, and frustration all rolled into one.  I was angry that anyone would hurt my child.  I was sad that someone hurt my child and guilty for putting her in the situation.  I was frustrated with the teacher for not stepping in to help her.

The way this situation could have been better is if the teacher would have been utilizing the teaching strategies suggested in our textbook on exploring skin color with young children.  Children are active observers of physical characteristics.  As they become familiar with some of their own features and those of their classmates, help them to have vocabulary and ideas to understand sameness and difference (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).

 

Reference

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).