Professional Hopes and Goals

Working in an early childhood setting on a daily basis exposes me to all kinds of diversity. Each day I see children and families enter our program from all different backgrounds. It can be challenging for a classroom teacher and staff to reflect and respect the many different cultural backgrounds while still providing an enriching environment for the children to thrive in. My hope working as an assistant education coordinator is to find ways to support staff in learning about the different cultural backgrounds and ways in which they can include all children and families in their classroom environment.

My goal for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is to ensure that all families are included in the classroom environment. This will need to be accomplished by reflecting upon biases and prejudices of teachers, classroom staff, and the dominant culture. One will then need to take this information and expand upon their environments to create a richer-well-rounded diverse learning environment.

I would like to take a moment to say thank you to all of my fellow classmates in this class “Perspectives on Diversity and Equity”. Each and every one of you have taught me more about diversity and equity as it relates to the early childhood field and ways in which we can create a more diverse environment for our children to learn and grow in. By reading your posts it has made me think deeper about the perspectives we have studied each week and for that I thank you. Best of luck with your future endeavors.

Welcoming Families from Around the World

For this week’s assignment I am choosing the country Switzerland for a family that were to enter into my program from a country I know nothing about to enter my early childhood program. The following are five steps I would take to prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family.

1.       I would research the country and learn about their ways of living, school settings, and common cultural practices.

2.       As I did my research about the country I would reflect upon any biases I may have as I learned more about the country.

3.       I would make sure to research their language and do my best to provide them with a greeting that they are most familiar with.

4.       I would make basic changes to my early childhood environment based on my research that would make the family feel more comfortable in my early childhood setting. I may do this by providing translations in the classroom from English to Swiss if they are not proficient in the English language. If possible I would attempt to provide a translator.

5.       I would prepare a list with any further questions I may have that would be more specific to the family to be able to learn specific cultural practices of the family. I would ask these questions over a period of time.

My hopes by taking the above five steps will benefit both myself and the family. It would hopefully open the doorway for communication. I hope to make the family would feel as comfortable as possible and welcomed as they entered my program. It will take time to build the relationship, but these steps will hopefully be the first step in building my relationship with this family.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

As this is being posted on the internet I do not feel comfortable going into specific details about the situation, but there was a time where I experienced sexism. During this instance I felt I was not being treated fairly and because I am a woman I was told I was not capable of following through with the responsibilities. I felt defeated and that I was being treated poorly. I felt I should have the same respect as a man and I knew I could follow through with the responsibilities. From talking to others I am not the first person who was made to feel this way. In order to change the situation I would need to speak up to this person, therefore I would need to change and feel more comfortable with voicing my feelings about the situation.