Welcoming Families From Around the World

Guinea

        As working as a head start teacher, I was recently acknowledged that I would be receiving a diverse student and family from the Country of Guinea. I had never heard of this country, which means I am illiterate of anything, regarding its history, practices, social living, beliefs, education, religion or anything else connected with this country. I slightly worried about how I could help this new child and family of the country of Guinea adapt to my classroom and new environment without having much knowledge on their homeland, then I came to the conclusion that practicing these particular steps of being culturally responsive in the classroom could be a major staring point to success.

 The five ways I chose prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family were to:

1. Collecting resources and reading up to advance my knowledge on this particular country to gain possible insights that could relate to my family I will be working with. Also going outside my classroom and asking for guidance and advice from my other fellow teachers.

2. Prepare myself to carefully avoid and watch for cultural conflicts in the classroom, forms of biases or prejudices of any way and to be able to meet all needs of this new student coming into my class just as I do for my other students.

3. Decorate my classroom with pictures, textbooks, toys and other material that gives a welcoming atmosphere for the child and family and helps to show that this particular culture is accepted and matters as well

4. Think of and create activities that are helpful in promoting one's self-esteem, and activities that also gives the new child a sense of expressing themselves to their classmates along with the other classmates to be able to express themselves to one another, which may lead to more interaction with one another.

5. Plan a conference with the new family, allowing them to ask any questions they may having, to give them the opportunity to speak of any suggestions they may have, in hopes to form a relationships with the family to be able to learn more about any boundaries they may have to avoid overstepping them.

 I believe that these preparations would benefit both the family and I by me being able to better assist this family by catering to their necessities respectfully, teaching their child to my fullest potential and learning how to prepare and teach those students of diverse culture in my classroom and for future references as well.

Ultimately, I believe that these steps of preparation will help this family feel more safe and secure away from their homeland.