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.

Awareness of Microaggressions

I can recall a situation from High School where I was a target of microaggression. I was a target of verbal unintentional microaggression. My field hockey team and I were working on posters for our team. We were each to make our own and I was hesitant about mine. I had made people aware of this verbally. Another team member came over and told me mine should be great because I was left-handed and left-handed people are artists. At this moment I felt unsure of my poster and that I had more to prove because I was left handed.

Reflecting back on this scenario I feel as if the person who made that comment to me had a stereotype about left-handed people and how they are good artists. Thinking about this makes me realize the number of stereotypes that people have and how it seems one can have a stereotype for anything.

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

 I asked four different people what their definitions of diversity and culture were. These are the responses I received.

Jeremy- There are many things that make up a culture; food, language, traditions, beliefs, surroundings, morality, personality, attitudes, etc. The people one is surrounded by, their heritage, language, food etc. Diversity is the separation between different cultures due to every aspect that makes up a culture as well as political, geographical, and mental boundaries.

Sean-Culture is the sum of all behavior; learned or innate. Diversity means that there are cultures that are just different from each other.

Heidi- Culture is a way of life. Diversity is different ways of doing things.

Ricky- Culture is all aspects of a given society that defines society. Diversity is the differences in the physical, financial, and mental qualities of a population.

I found many aspects of what I have learned in this course have been included in these definitions provided above. For example Jeremy's definition of culture includes all aspects of what makes up a culture. When it comes to the definition of diversity Ricky pointed out that diversity includes differences in physical, financial, and mental qualities of a population. I do not feel at this point much has been left out in these answers other than going into specifics about what the physical aspects are or the different religions that can be included in culture.

Thinking and reflecting on these definitions has truly impacted my way of looking at culture and diversity. Diversity is shown in the answers given as they are all different. I also never looked at mental qualities and boundaries as being an aspect of diversity before completing this assignment.

My Family Culture

If my family were to be evacuated to another country and I could only bring three small items that represented my family culture I would bring my bible, my phone, and a family scrapbook. I would bring my bible, because it shows the beliefs of my family for many generations. I would explain to others the meaning of my bible but talking to them about my religion and beliefs. I would bring my phone as it represents how my family has adopted what the dominant culture had brought to my family of using technology for daily occurrences. I would explain to others about how I used this in my day to day life to contact people, as a calendar, for social media, and to take pictures and videos. Finally, I would bring a scrapbook as it would show the closeness of my family. As part of our culture we spend a lot of time with family. I would explain this to others by showing them the pictures of family gatherings. When they looked at the pictures they would also see the physical piece of our culture; Caucasian Americans.

If upon arrival I was told I could only keep one of these items I would be okay, because I could still keep my bible. My bible is what has given me a solid foundation of values, attitudes, and beliefs to live by.

This assignment was difficult for me to complete as I had a hard time coming up with three items to represent my family culture. The more I thought about it the more I understood about my family culture. I found myself asking family members the same questions. The common answer was “this is difficult”, but the first item anyone said would be the bible or a cross.

Week 8

     On my first day of this course I was very apprehensive as I knew the bare minimum about research. Over the past eight weeks I have learned about ethics and equity in research, different types of research, and how to read a research paper.

      I have always looked at conducting research as a daunting task as it needs to be very precise. I have found this to be true as I have taken this course, but the task is no longer as daunting to me. The knowledge I have gained from this course has eased my anxieties and shown broken down the pieces of research for me in a way that I understand.

      Throughout this course we have conducted three research simulations. As I created these designs based upon my research topic I have learned about the ways in which one needs to plan, design, and conduct research. Research needs to begin with a general idea in mind and from there one needs to plan out the variables, possibly write out a hypothesis, define who or what will be studied etc.

      The biggest challenge I faced during this course was understanding the difference between qualitative and quantitative research. I was able to understand what the textbook said, but when I applied it to my research I had a difficult time figuring out how it applied. Once I broke it down step by step I was able to complete my research simulations.

      As a result of this course I have grown as an early childhood professional. As I receive research articles at work I am able to read them without getting confused with the “big words” and understanding what the research means to my work in the early childhood field.