Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have when thinking about working with families and children of diverse backgrounds is that I make them comfortable.  I want to be able to comfort them in different ways than I knew before.  I want to learn about their culture and have some of that in my classroom.  I hope that these families can open up to me and allow me to help their child and themselves feel successful in their new world.

 

One goal that I would like to set for the early childhood field related to the issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is a requirement that teachers and other staff are educated and trained on these subjects.  I would hope that this would be a requirement to learn about diversity and teach that in the classroom.

 

Thank you so much to every one of my colleagues.  I have learned so much with all of you on this journey.  Your insights and comments have made me a more educated teacher with a greater passion for diversity and culture in the classroom.  Good luck in your careers and future courses for you Masters degree.

Welcoming Families from around the World-Week 7

Country:  Chile

 

To prepare myself to be culturally responsive to this family I would:

• Do extensive online research on the country
• Research the countries education system
• Learn the basic of their language so that I was able to communicate better
• Ask my professional colleagues for advice and help and any support they may have about this area
• Find some symbol of their country to incorporate into the setting to welcome them and make them feel safe and secure in this new world.

 

I would hope that these preparations would benefit me by allowing my to get to know their culture and home country before meeting them. This would give me the background knowledge I needed to begin the transition with them while also showing them the effort I put into it.  This would hopefully make them feel more comfortable with me.  I think it would benefit them by making them feel more welcome and not so out of place.  I would want the transition to be as easy as possible and with a knowledge of their country, they will feel more likely to work closely with me and allow me to help them.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression-Week 6

A time in my life that I remember where I feel that I was in a situation where prejudice was evident was directly after my mother died.  My grandma had died with her and she was the one that was going to get custody of me if my mother did die.  So since they both died, I went to live with my uncle (my mother’s brother) and aunt.  My aunt did not like my mom before any of this occurred and that was well known.  I walked into a home where I was judged based on her not liking my mother.  She treated me awful while treating her real children greatly.  Never allowed me to do anything outside of the house but allowed her other children too.  Didn’t let me do drivers training but let her same aged daughter do it.  Many more things to list but completely an awful person to me.

 

This diminished equity because I had no rights and no equality compared to the other children in the home. She did not allow me to do anything and never treated me fairly.  She treated me like garbage and it was evident everywhere.  Just thinking about this issue makes me sick and angry.  I can not believe that someone could treat a child like that, especially one who is family and lost their everything in a split second.  The only person that would need to change to make equity even possible is my aunt, who by no means even cared how she treated me.

 

My life goes on and I am a much happier person now.  I was able to get out of that house after my uncle died of cancer and I turned 16.  That was a life changing day and I do not regret any of it.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions-Week 4

A microaggression that happened this week that I observed was between two adults.  One adult was making some copies on the copy machine at my work and it jammed.  She went through the tutorial on what to check for the jam.  After doing so, it was still jammed.  So she attempted to do it again.  Another adult quickly came into the room and said “move, I will take care of it.”  As I observed this, I immediately thought back to the discussions we had this week and the examples of microaggressions.  Though it was not a direct hit, it had to hit that person inside.  She probably felt like the other lady didn’t think she could handle doing the job.

 

My other observations this week affected the way I view the effects of discrimination.  I felt like the lady was trying to get the copier unjammed, which at times is a bit difficult.  I feel that she was following all the steps she could and chose to try again before giving up.  The lady that walked in definitely discriminated her ability to complete a task that she felt superior at.  It makes me re think the ways I may say something to someone to give them suggestions are feedback to assure that I myself am not giving that person a microaggression.

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

Person #1

 

Culture is the makeup of a persons surroundings.

 

Diversity is the differing cultures of people in the world.

 

Person #2

 

Culture is what customs or beliefs different societies have in how they live their lives.

 

Diversity is the difference in something.

 

Person #3

 

Culture is the behavior and beliefs of a social group.

 

Diversity is what makes each person or group people different or unique.

 

 

I think that all the answers I got are aspects of culture and diversity as studied in thus far in this course. An example of this would be the way the second person answered what is culture.  I feel this is exactly what we have been studying about culture in the class so far.  I think specific examples of each have been omitted.  For culture, I think mentioning that all cultures are different and are sometimes not accepted is something worth mentioning.  Culture is the way people form their lives but it was not said the importance that these aspects hold in each person lives. For Diversity, I would say that saying it is something seen everyday that makes us who we are was omitted in the description of it.  I am glad to see that everyone I asked had similar answers about culture and diversity and has an understanding of these in today’s world. I would have liked to see more emphasis on the importance of each as it applies to each person but did not see that.

My Family Culture

1. Family photo:  I would bring a family photo to represent and remember my other family that I had to leave behind.  This would be the symbol of my culture and where I came from.

 

2. American flag:  I would bring an American Flag to represent the country I came from and the freedom that I had in that country.

 

3. Dollar bill:  I would bring a dollar bill to represent the industry from the United States and the ways in which I lived many years to achieve to make money.

 

I would explain to others what these items meant to me by signifying the important of each to me and my family.  The family photo is a given and represents me and my culture and is my life story.  The American flag is the country in which I lived and grew up in and learned about freedom.  I would show the dollar bill to others who may not understand the concept of dollar and explain the importance that a dollar has in the world that I came from.

 

If upon arrival, I was told that I could only keep one item and had to get rid of the rest I would be heart broken.  I would feel like I had to part with the only things left of my culture and my family.  It would be a hard decision to make on which item to keep.

When I Think of Research...

I have gained a great deal from this course, from learning the ethics of research to the actual design research takes on, this course has opened my eyes in a different way to the concept of research.  I feel it has proved to be a crucial part of making early childhood education both successful and meaningful as well.

 

Before entering this course, I cringed at the idea of research.  I was so worried and nervous about taking this course and all that would come with it.  I have to admit, the course has changed my view of research.  While this was not an easy course by any means, the work I put into it made me feel more successful and confident in my ability to conduct research in meaningful ways.

 

When planning research, I learned it is important to narrow your ideas into one simple subtopic that will lead to many different outcomes with the same result.  Designing a research simulation takes a lot of time and planning to make sure it will be implemented correctly.  And conducting research has it limitations in reference to ethics, but as long as consents are there, conducting the research can be done in a variety of ways including observations and interviews.

 

One challenge that I encountered was gaining an understanding of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of design in research.  I found this challenging because understanding and applying the differences between the two was sometimes tricky since they are quite similar.  I found that last week, we really dug deep into these concepts and I gained better insight into what the meaning of each was and learned that they actually are very different and play an important role in research.  I also found that putting my thoughts about my own personal research simulation were sometimes challenging because I had so many ideas but many of them were not in the terms of what we were learning about.  Rereading course material really helped me overcome this challenge.

 

I learned that research is more than simply applying knowledge on a topic to a research paper or article.  It takes massive planning and implementing of the plan to make the research work.  From developing a topic (or hypothesis) to conducting the interviewing or observations, research is not an easy and quick task.  It takes passion of the topic and motivation of the researcher to make it successful and useful in the real world.

 

THANK YOU everyone for the input and insights you have given me throughout this course.  We have completed a task many fear and have learned a great deal from one another about research!