Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have when I think about working with children and their families who come from diverse backgrounds:

The hope that I have for working with children and their families is that they will one day be treated equally and receive the same rights and opportunities that they deserve. I also hope that one day that racism will end and all children and their families will be recognized and accepted and this acceptance will not be based on the color of their skin, their gender, their sexual orientation, and the class they belong to.

One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is:

That all early childhood educators, researchers, and all who work to ensure that children receive the best quality of education possible continue to work together to help in eliminating poverty, so that children and their families will receive equal opportunities, so that they will also be worthy of the necessities of life.  Reflecting back to the media segment of "In their Own voices" the most touching event was when Julie Benavides had to endure being compared  because of the color of her skin to the dog in the story, has made me take a look and to be aware of encounters such as this with my children and families. My goal in teaching is for them to not have to  experience this type of stereotyped or discrimination.

To all of my colleagues, this class  has really been a learning experience and a heart felt journey for me. I would like to thank each and every one of you for helping me to travel this journey because without your sharing of insights thoughts, and ideas I would not have learned as much as I did about diversity, equity, and social justice. I hope to continue to learn with each of you in other classes, I am sure it will be a good and exciting adventure. Just remember Equity is very much a part of social justice.  I want to share this one and last thought with you.

     "The degree to which social justice is achieved in a given time and
       place should be measured by two..... notions: 1) the greatest of good
       for the greatest number. and 2). how the least powerful and the smallest minorities in a society are faring."
                                                   Ched Myers

References

In her own voice: Julie Benavides ( Laureate Education, Inc. 2011). Retrieved from http://waldenu.edu

Justice and Equity: A fairer world. The Tasmartian Center for Global learning . (2013) Retrieved from http://www.googleonline.com
  
   

Welcoming Families From Around the World

For this weeks blog assignment, I am to imagine the following scenario: You are working in an early childhood setting of your choice...a hospital, a child care center, a social service agency. I receive word that the child of a family who has recently emigrated from a country you nothing about will join your group soon. You want to prepare yourself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, you are enrolled in a course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated you need to know more than surface facts about their country of origins. 

I will assume that my new family will be coming from Japan.

At least five ways in which I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family:

1. I will conduct a Google search of the family country of origin. This is for me to get a better  understanding of the background of their culture, their foods, music, traditions, and family orientation. This will help me to become familiar with some of the expectations of this culture. 
2. Upon meeting this family for the first time, I will be very welcoming by making them feel accepting, and comfortable in coming to a new environment. I will have information available for them concerning our school, which will include the staff, and the curriculum.
3. I will have a family available that is from the  same country as they are. This will help in making the family not feel not as uncomfortable as they would if their was no one else that could relate to. After work we would all meet up to tour the town, and get familiar with some of the shopping centers, and other attractions.
4. I will try hard to learn some of the language in order to communicate effectively with the family. I will let them know that I am glad and happy to have them as part of our country for a little while.
5. I will plan a event for other parents and their families to meet and greet this family. Welcoming families is a big part of being diversity. This event will be a big and huge event in order to prepare for other families who may enter our country; making them feel that they are a part of our society will have a big impact. They will feel very welcome.

A brief statement of describing in what ways you hope that these preparations will benefit both you and the family.

I hope these preparations will benefit both me and the family by me preparing and gathering information and showing them in many ways that I am glad to meet them, and that they are very welcome in our country and our school setting. I hope that they will feel that any time they enter my classroom they will not experience any biases, prejudice, and will not be discriminated against. They will know they are valued, and accepted. My gesture of having another family from their culture will show them that I care about their well-beings and their child's well-being. All of these things will be helpful to me as well as the family from Japan.

 

 

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

A memory of an incident that I experienced bias, prejudice, and oppression happen about 4 years ago when I worked in pre-kindergarten. During this time president Obama was running for election. This made a lot of people mad, sad, and just racist's. This is what happen: We had to always sign in on the sign-in sheet on a counter in the office. There was sheet that had all of the republican candidates listed, and the message written on it was these are the people you need to vote for. It did not just stop there, one kindergarten teacher was so upset about president Obama running that her daily functioning was off target. She stopped speaking, she treated all blacks with disrespect, including the children in her class. This was really a bad time for her, and she did not try to hide how she felt.

The specific bias, prejudice and/or oppression diminish equity by: one letting the incident of the paper of who to vote for be put on the sign-in-counter. This was the responsibility of the secretary to remove it once it happen, but she just brushed it off. Two, the teacher that showed her racism should have been spoken to by the supervisor, since everyone knew how she felt. She was very verbal, saying things like we have to do something, we can't let this happen, just right out disrespectful. This incident brought up for me that racism is still here, maybe not in a greater form, but some people will never change, it is not because they don not know how, some just refuse to like or get to know other's of different races. I feel that we both should have to make  changes: the kindergarten  teacher in her negative feelings about black's ,and myself for maybe not understanding her feelings and what she may have experienced to bring out these negative feelings. I can recall at the beginning of this class when viewing the web video, Playing for Change: "War/no more trouble, the ending said we just need peace, and this is what we all need in order to live together in society.

Reference
Playing for change: "War/No More Trouble" ( Laureate Education Inc,2011). Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgWFxFg7-GU&feature=BF&list=ML4oVf-d DwKA-bV3PQwJ5xcpVdi7B-TPk&index=3