Professional Hopes and CGoals

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

One hope that I have when I work with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds is that I will always find a way to be understanding and supportive to their diverse needs.  Every child and family, regardless of their culture, religion, race, economical status; needs to be supported and understood for who they are and for where they have come from.  I want to have that courage and that knowledge to be able to give them that respect and that very important gift that they deserve from me as an advocate for early childhood education.

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

One goal that I would like to set for the early childhood field is that they continue to work on improving the education for new teachers when it comes to understanding diversity, equity, and social justice.  I know that the field has come a long way in making sure to better educate teachers in these areas; but I would like to make sure it continues to improve and that new teachers embrace this part of their education. It is so very important to their success.  Another goal that I have for the field is to improve on the amount and quality of professional development that is given to veteran teachers on the issues of diversity, equity, and social justice.  I have been in the field of early childhood education since 1998.  In my undergrad studies, I took one class on multicultural education.  I have been in the working field since 2000, I have never once taken a professional development course on any of these issues.  I truly believe that they need to be required as part of continuing education and re-certification classes for current educators.  

A Note of Thanks

Thank you to every one in this class for sharing all of your experiences, words of wisdom, and stories with me and everyone else.  This class was a lot about stepping out of our comfort zones, sharing our stories, and being honest with ourselves about who we are.  No one past judgement on anyone, yet just simply supported each other through all of our struggles and accomplishments.  I wish you all the best and hopefully our paths with cross again.  

Welcoming Families from Around the World

The country of origin that the family in my care would be coming from is India. The reason I chose India is because when I was a Center Director, we had a lot of families from India and a few from Pakistan.  While we did our best to meet the needs of these families, we definitely could have done a much better job!

Five ways in which I will prepare to be culturally responsive towards this family-

1. I will find out what language they speak.  While the primary language for most Indian families is Hindi and some English, there are a few different dialects that they may speak.  The parents usually speak both Hindi and English but often the young children have not learned English yet when they come to America.  It will be helpful to be prepared that the child will not speak English and this can be difficult.  We need to be patient and understand that they child may have some behavior outbursts because lack of communication can cause a child to become frustrated.
2. Religion- religion practices will be different and I need to understand that the child may not be able to participate in certain holiday celebrations
3. Food- children that come from India, eat differently. We need to be prepared that this child may not like our American, daycare food.  Being culturally responsive to the families will be important to the overall health of the child.  Finding out what kind of foods the child will eat will be helpful
4. Dress- finding out if the children have certain dress requirements is important. I know that we had children that would dress very warm when it was hot out but then in the winter, they would have clothes on that I would wear in summer.  I think the weather must be different over there so understanding this can help the children be better equipped for our weather patterns.
5. Educational history- finding out the past educational history. Has the child been in a setting like this before or only home with a loved on.

From experience, these preparations would benefit me because these are the areas that would have helped me in the past when enrolling Indian children at the center in which I was a director.  While we assumed most of the children would have spoken some English because their parents spoke fluent English, they do not.  They are so young so they are still learning.  Also, not all Indian immigrants speak Hindi so it is helpful to find out what language or dialect they do speak.  Understanding religious practices will help so that when we plan for holidays in our classroom, we can be sure to include any holidays that these children may celebrate.  This will allow the children to feel included and welcome in the classroom environment.  Food is a big one.  When we had Indian children come to our program, they were certainly not accustomed to American foods and what we thought were child friendly foods (chicken nuggets, pasta, mac n cheese) were not always very tasteful to these children.  Being prepared and culturally responsive in allowing parents to provide foods for their children would be very beneficial to the health of these children so that they are not skipping meals throughout the day.  Education is important because many of these children may have never been in a childcare or preschool environment.  Many of them are cared for by their moms or grandma’s and are used to a lot of one-one attention.  They are going to take much more time to adjust to their new environment because of so many new things that they are not use to.  We have to be prepared to be responsive to their needs, their nervousness, and to their sadness.  It will take time and patience is certainly in order.  It is helpful to ask the parents for some strategies to better help the child transition and how we can make them feel more comfortable.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

So I have been thinking about this blog all week because I didn’t want to write about things that I have already talked about in class discussions and in my application papers or reflective journal.  And then this happened…

I was having a conversation with a parent from my children’s school.  Keep in mind we attend a small, Catholic school that has a very diverse culture of children from the suburbs as well as the inner city.  The conversation was in regards to the NYS testing that will be going on over the next few weeks.  Many families at our school are choosing to opt out and she asked me my opinion on why I was opting my children out and so many others were. Long story short, in NYS there is a lot of political nonsense going on with the testing because the company, Pearson, a very large text book and test creating company is the largest financial backer of our current governor.  Our schools in NYS are very pressured to teach to the tests all year, they are used to evaluate our teacher’s performance, and are really not a good thing in NY.  Our governor has threatened to take funding away (including Title I) from schools who either do not do well or schools who do not have enough participation.  So, when I explained all of this to the mom, her comment to me was “Well, good then we all need to opt out at our school so maybe we will lose funding and get all these kids out of here that don’t belong here”  When I heard her say that I just could not believe my ears.  I asked her what she meant by that.  She clarified by saying that “Well our school is within city limits, so we probably getting funding from the state to allow all these city kids to come here”  Number one, I was offended because my kids are “city” kids.  We live in a nicer part of our city (Rochester, NY has the 5^th highest poverty rate in the country) but we still live in the city.  Number two, I was offended because we had a lot of choices when it came to choosing a Catholic school for our children and we chose the one we are at because it was diverse.  I don’t want my children growing up in an all-white school with no diversity! The world is a diverse place, they need to learn to embrace it and respect all cultures.

By her making these statements she absolutely diminished equality for these children that she was referring to.  Their parents clearly care enough about them to send them to a school where they can get a great education and not have to deal with the crime, the bullying, and the lack of support.  Our city school district in Rochester is very low performing, is full of poverty, high classroom numbers and there is not a lot of support from the administration.  There is also a very low graduation rate and crime rate in and around the schools.  So these parents, although many of them still living in bad neighborhoods and in poverty, are doing the one thing they can do to get their children out of the cycle of poverty and that is to provide them with a better education.  She clearly did not feel that they deserve that equality! I was sickened.

It is very clear that my feelings about this were anger, disappointment, and uncertainty.  I was wondering how many other parents feel this way and did she think that my kids didn’t belong at this school because we live in the city also? I felt sad for her child because what is she teaching him by her having these feelings? He clearly is not learning about the amazing world of diversity and culture.  He is going to grow up and have the same feelings and beliefs.

In order to turn this incident into an opportunity of greater equality, she would have to change the way she sees the school and see’s these families.  She would need to look at her own biases, personal beliefs, feelings and prejudices and then be willing to better educate herself on the importance of children being in a diverse situation.  Our school is not a dangerous school and far from being unsafe.  Yes, maybe the incidents of unacceptable behaviors may be performed by children other than white children.  However, those children still have some personal issues at home that they are dealing with such as poverty and single parent homes.  That does not mean their parents don’t care about them.  This parent expects all the children to be perfect and just because it is a Catholic school, that all is going to be perfect.  So far from the truth!  I wonder if she realizes that my white, 7 year old daughter has sever anxiety that she is treated for and one time she through a pair of scissors at a teacher? I bet she would have different thoughts about my “city” kids if she knew that.