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).

Practicing Awareness of Microagressions

Wow!  What a week to practice my personal awareness of microagression.  There was a staff member at my work that accused another co-worker of calling her a skinny bitch.  The person that was accused of saying "skinny bitch" is an obese woman and the "skinny bitch" is an employee that is struggle to gain weight.  If in fact the obese woman called her "skinny bitch" then this would be a classic case of microassult.  Microassault, which is an overt, deliberate, hostile act intended to hurt the person on a conscious level, calling someone a nigger or a Jap, purposely discriminating against the individual (Laureate, 2011). 

Additionally, this week we received a complaint that one of our trainers sent home all the people that showed up for class based on skin color.  If the people were black they were allowed to stay for the training and if they were white they had to leave.  At this time we are still doing some phone calls to determine if this act did in fact happen or not.  This plus the skinny bitch in one week were almost to much for me to deal with at work this week.  However, they did give me some content for this weeks blog assignment.

Discrimination comes in many forms and effects people in many different ways.  This particular situation developed when the co-workers were discussing choosing the best meals.  Both people in this situation need to choose a nutritional meal, but need to focus on different aspects of the meal.  The obese person jokingly said, "yeah, right like you have to be careful of the meals your choose look at yourself."  The skinny person in this situations perception was you are a skinny bitch and why do you have to worry about nutritious meals.  She struggles daily to consume proper nutrition and get her weight to a healthy level just the same as the obese person struggles daily to get her weight to a healthy level.  They both have similar struggles, but the microassult was the "skinny bitch" remark.  At this point in time it is a she said, she said situation because there were not any other people around. I am interested to know what others think about this microassult.

My observation experiences this week were just to heighten my awareness of the effects of discrimination, prejudice and or stereotypes of people.  The forms of discrimination that I come in contact the most is the discrimination of either socioeconomic status or education status.  I work at the University and we collect workforce data on child care center and family child care home providers across the state of Oklahoma.  The people that we speak to on the phone day in and day out often have less education and make less money so this type of discrimination I have to work on with my staff on a daily basis. 

Reference

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011).  Microagressions in Everyday Life. [DVD]. Perspectives on Diversity and Equity.  Baltimore, MD: Author.

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

I sent a message to several friends, family and colleagues asking them to send their definition of culture and diversity.  I was curious how quickly people would respond to me and how similar or different their definitions would be from each other and myself.

The definitions from a female colleague were as follows:

Culture:  refers to the environment in which children and families come from.  It is the different beliefs and lifestyles that families instill in their children through their modeling.  The language the family speaks primarily in the home.  Different types of foods that the family cooks.  It is important to teach diversity and culture in classrooms, to help children understand the world in which they live in.

Diversity: refers to many things, children with special needs, a-typical children, children from different origins, children from different backgrounds, children from different types of families-single parents, grandparents, and same sex parents.  Just about anything that makes you different from someone else.

The definitions from a culturally different male family member were as follows:

Culture: is what defines a group of people living in or about a place.

Diversity: is defined as the difference between people be it religion, gender, national origin, race coexisting in a particular place.

The definitions from a culturally different female college student were as follows:

Culture:  is the norms, practices, and behaviors of a particular group of people.

Diversity: is the differences in culture of different groups.

The aspects of culture that have been included in the answers here are similar to surface culture.  All too often, when early childhood educators think about culture, they think about the surface things that are easy to see, taste, and define (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).  Examples of surface culture include the different type of food cooked is a perfect example of surface culture.  The other two people’s definitions were to general to categorize them either surface or deep culture. 

The aspects of culture missing from the definitions were the deep culture items about language, values, ideas of education and roles within the group.  My colleague touched a little bit on the deep culture aspects with references to the home language and home environment.  Looking back on these definitions makes me think that they are very similar to my definition of culture and diversity from just a few short weeks ago.   

I think beginning to look at culture through the perspective of deep culture the metaphor of the iceberg seems more and more accurate.  Additionally, reading the definitions of other also adds the idea of culture and diversity are often looked from a very surface level view and not considering what really makes the person who they are and what they believe.  Culture is like an iceberg the tip shows and the beneath the surface is the unconscious part where the tensions come into play (Laureate, 2011).  The young college student and the male from another culture provided very generic definitions without any detail; therefore, not providing the deep culture definition that we have learned about this week. 

 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).

Laureate Education, Inc. (Producer). (2011). Culture and Diversity. [DVD]. Perspectives on Diversity and Equity. Baltimore, MD:

My Family Culture

On my journey to another country I am leaving everything I own behind except for the these three small items that mean the most to me and represents my family culture.  I would bring the three baby books of my children because that represents my life.  My husband and I have put everything about ourselves into these three children and having their "baby" books with me forever would make me feel connected.  I use the word "baby" book loosely because it is more like a life book.  I just started it when they were born, but to this day I still add a few words of endearment and mementos of their life.  These books represent our family culture.  Since I am only able to take three things I would just bring the baby books because I have three children. 

My feelings if, upon arrival, I were told that I could only keep one would be devastating because as a mother how do you choose between children.  I would likely choose to stay behind because I would never choose among them because they are my joy, my life and my family culture.  I guess if I were alerted that there was a possibility that I could only take one item then it would be a family picture so that I would have them close to me always.  If I was not alerted prior to arrival I know within the baby books are picture of us as a family doing things we love together so I would simply pull out one of those pictures that show us living our lives together as a family.

When I really had to stop and think about what represents our family culture it is closeness and their baby books represent that closeness.  They like to tease me that I still put stuff in their baby book, but they often will pull them out and we reminisce about their life.  The baby book has become a part of the story of their life through the eyes of their parents.  Our perspective of the highlights that have made them the young adults they are today.  What I learned about myself is that when you have to pair down to just 3 items many things that initially seem really important are just things that really mean nothing in the bigger picture of life.  My family is what means the most to me and my family culture is we still together through good and bad times. Nothing is more important within a culture than how its children are raised (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).

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).