Professional Hopes and Goals & Word of Thanks

This course has helped me learn a lot about diversity, equity and social justice.  I have gained an understanding of how a person’s family culture, values and beliefs to include world views make up who they are as a person.  This is very important for EC educators because it will give the a foundation to establish relationships and better understand children and families.

The hope that I have when thinking about people working with children and families that come from diverse backgrounds is that they ensure they are well educated on the subject of diversity and that they strive to ensure all families are treated with equity, equality and respect.

The goal that I would like to set for the early childhood field as it relates to issue with diversity, equity, and social justices is for professionals to continue to strive to ensure all children regardless of the backgrounds are treated equally and given the same opportunities to learn and develop.

I would like to thank all my colleagues for the feedback and insights you have shared during this course.  My wish for you is to continue to keep the statement  "the passion comes from the vision" in mind as it relates to your work in the EC field.  

Welcoming Families From Around the World

The country I choose was:  Bangladesh

5 Ways I would prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family:

1. I would try to gain as much information about the family as possible thing such as their home language, family size and structure, socil economic status and wheter anyone has any type of special needs or disabilities.
2. I would learn as much about their native language as possible and learn some of their words that are used common and ways to greet them in their native language.
3. I would also try to establish some commonalities of experiences such as a hobby, or comman food choices.
4. I would become educated on their cultural beliefs as it relates to education and medical practices.
5. I would collaborate with the staff and other members of my team that they will come in contact with so that we all will have a basic understanding of how to make them feel welcome.

The ways in which I hope that this will benefit both me and the family is simply to help me better understand the cultural backgrounds of others and to eliminate all bias, prejudices and discrimination that may be present within me. I would strive to ensure that the child and his or her family felt respected and included in the environment.  

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

The memory that I have of experiencing bias, prejudice, and/or oppression is something that happened recently at my children's high school.  There was an English teacher who would use all types of racial slurs in the classroom in front of the children.  My son would come home telling me horror stories several times a week of how she referred to blacks as the “N” word and that how white people will always be superior to blacks.  When I called the school to complain I was told that I was the first parent to ever complain on this teacher and that they had no knowledge of her speaking to children in this manner.  Surprisingly about two weeks after I made this complaint the teacher was fired for showing a movie that was rated “R” in the classroom.  The complaint came from a white mother who had adopted two asian children.  It was ironic to me that my complaint as a black mother got pushed aside and when the white mother complained the teacher was fired and the story made national news.  The feelings that the incident brought up for me was anger.  I can’t understand why a person would treat children in this manner regardless of their race. 

We have learned through our studies that  prejudices are learned behaviors

and as children this behavior is not passed on to us or inherited.  In today’s society although we live our lives and profess to not be bias and display prejudice tendencies I believe that everyone has these traits within them.  I think that the only way to change this is for the people involved from the teacher to the administrators to change their world views.