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).