Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have when I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds is that they will still value and keep their culture while blending the dominate culture with their own as an attempt to coexist in our ever changing society. 

One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is create learning environments that provide opportunities for all cultures to be represented in learning materials as well as encourage families to come and share their culture with the classroom. 

I would like to send a social thanks to my colleagues as we take this journey together!! Thank you for all your comments…your thoughts…your suggestions.

Welcoming Families From Around the World

I choose a family from the country origin of Africa.  

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

·         Research their country’s views about child development

·         Research the roles of each family member

·         Print real life images of items in their country that coincide with similar used items in the learning environment

·         Printed vocabulary words that can be translated to have shared meanings

·         Provide similar clothing from their country in dramatic play area

I hope my preparation I describe above provides me with the needed information to building a relationship with the child and his/her family.  I also hope that the family will feel welcome and respected in my learning environment.  Finally, I hope the learning materials will provide the child with opportunities to share his/her knowledge about materials. 

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

Throughout my 29 years of life in this ever changing society I witnessed various groups of people be discriminated against.  My most empowering incident of prejudice was with my co-worker who was homosexual.  Her and her partner had been trying to adopt a child for years before adopting their bundle of joy.  Through their process they were denied many times because of her sexual orientation.  My co-worker shared some of the interview questions that agencies asked them about that appeared to be bias in nature due to fact that the questions were about how they would be able to provide a ‘’balance’’ household without having a male in the picture.  This question made my wheels turn because I doubt that heterosexual couples were asked about their roles as mothers and fathers.  But needless to say they were able to finally work with an agency that focused on placing children in nurturing families instead of families that focus on sexual orientation.  The incident with my co-worker diminished equity because one’s sexual orientation does not determine whether they are responsible and nurturing parents.

            This incident brought sadness to my heart because my co-worker was being denied the privilege of being a mother due to her sexual orientation.  It made me think about how high the divorce rate is for heterosexual couples and the effect it would have on adopted children.  I wonder if the bias agencies that denied my co-worker only cared about heterosexual couples adopting children regardless of their happiness together.  

            There is nothing I would do to change the incident with my co-worker because she pushed through the prejudice she experienced by continuing her search to adopt a child through a respectable agency that did not care about sexual orientation.  

 

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

 ‘’Microaggressions are brief everyday indignities that are verbal, behavioral or environmental, that they may be intentional or unintentionally communicated to women, to people of color, to gay/lesbians that have an insulting message behind them that often time causes severe psychological distress and harm’’ (‘’Microaggression in Everyday Life’’).  An example of microaggression which I have detected this week would be when I was in the grocery store with my seven year old daughter.  We were standing in line to checkout and my daughter said, ‘’mommy can I have this?’’.  The elderly woman behind me said, ‘’honey your parents must be very disappointed in you, but she sure is pretty’’ while looking at me daughter and then me.  This woman in the store assumed I was a teenage age pregnancy due to my physical appearance looking younger than 29.  This example of microaggression is unintentional and invisible nature of microaggressions due to the fact that the elderly woman probably considers herself a good, moral, decent individual.  The elderly woman did not think she was being offensive in her comments, but rather making an incident in nature comment.  I understood that the elderly woman did not mean any harm, but I was offended that she group with teenage girls.  I also felt disrespected because my husband and I planned our daughter like responsible adults at the age of 21. 

Concluding this assignment, I feel I have more empathy for those who experience discrimination, prejudice, and stereotypes in their lifetime due to the fact that some people do not mean to offend others, but lack to social skills to express their thoughts/feeling appropriately. 

 

Reference

‘’Microaggression in Everyday Life’’