Professional Hopes and Goals

 

   When I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds, I hope to have received the knowledge on how to successfully cater to the needs of the child and family as of assisting in proper educational support in the classroom and developing a strong relationship with the family create a sense of comfort for them and being able to join together to better help meet the needs of the child.

         One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is to learn how to reduce negative attitudes and responses that create unintentional forms if bias and create a more colorful classroom that in no displays any exceptional of children and families of diverse backgrounds, better-yet, making them more of a priority.

      

        I would like to say thank you to all of my colleagues that I have gotten the chance to work with in this course. From having the chance to take in the many insights you have shared in your discussions and having the chance to give tips and ideas to one another… Thank you!! It has been a pleasure to work with all of you, and I hope to see you all in our next glass. Good luck on your educational journey J

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.


The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

 

 

           I remember an incident once where I witnessed a form of bias and prejudice. I and a couple of my friends and relatives were out celebrating our friend's birthday, upon this celebration we decided to go to this particular restaurant to eat. After we were seated by the lady that greeted us in the front, a waiter came moments later and asked what kind of drinks would we like. everyone gave the waiter their desired drink of choice, except one of our male friends at the table. with a stale face, he replied, " I don't want this faggot serving me a drink". Everyone at the table was astonished. the waiter, surprisingly kept a smile on his face and stated that he would have our drinks out shortly and walked away.

 

           The biases and prejudice in this incident diminished equity, due to the fact that our male friend did not want to be served by our waiter, simply because he was a homosexual male, was judged by his physical appearance and feminine accent. Because our waiter happened to be in relations with those of the same sex as his own, he was not treated equally as others and publicly humiliated by the comment that our friend directed towards him.

 

This incident made me feel very embarrassed and sorry for the young man that waited on our table and for my friend, to find that he had such a bias perspective towards homosexual men, and last for myself for unknowingly being involved with a person as such. I never thought that I had been friends with anyone who was so judgmental.

 

My friend would have had to be the one to change in order to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity. because of the fact that we as humans are different, non are the same, meaning different sexual orientations as well. My friend's perspective and attitude towards homosexuals would have to be changed, and he must learn to accept people as they are and treat them as human beings.



Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

 

I remember detecting a microaggression a time in my life. This particular microggression happened to be a gender microaggression. One day, I was in a store and I noticed one of my old friends that I grew up in my neighborhood with that I hadn’t seen in over ten years. As we had a brief conversation, I noticed he had on a uniform shirt that read a logo, “Greenville fire dpt.” And blue khaki pants. I asked him of his occupation as a fire fighter and if his company were currently hiring for new trainees, and he bluntly stated, “You don’t want to do this type of work, this is a man’s job. You should be sitting behind a desk in an office instead.” After hearing this comment, I was instantly caught in a “catch 22” phase. I was so caught by surprise that I did not know how to respond to such a comment from my old friend. Therefore I quickly changed the subject and spoke no more of it. Although my old friend’s intentions may have been good with no intent to harm, I felt that he thinks women can’t complete any tasks that men can and that women are made for inside a more feminine jobs only.

After experiencing this kind of gender microaggression, my perception of discrimination, and stereotypes have been affected because the encounter that I had with my old friend was one of the many examples of how women are discriminated against in society. There are companies that will not hire a woman simply because she is a woman. Women tend to be stereotyped as feminine individuals who are unable to work as hard as a man. My opinion on this stereotype is that I feel that this stereotype is more of an ego and pride issue. Men do not want women to be seen as tough as them. We are usually expected to be dependent on man, when there are some things in society that we actually do better than a man and is done on a regular basis this day in age.



          For this assignment, I chose to contact three people that I have close relationships with, who I believe, in some ways, are culturally different from me. I chose my neighbor, Robert who is a wheelchair bound male, my old male co-worker, Abdul, who is Jewish and one of my undergrad college classmates, Cassie, who is Caucasian. I asked these three individual their definitions of culture and their definition of diversity. Their responses follow:

Definition of Culture:

Robert: “Culture, to me is our way of life and the way we do and view certain things.” (Robert 2016)

Abdul: “Culture is how we as a people acknowledge our traditions, customs and beliefs. And we must follow them” (Abdul 2016)

Cassie: “Culture is how we adapt to the world around us on a daily basis and take advantages of the resources we are provided with.” (Cassie 2016)

Definitions of Diversity:

Robert: “Diversity governs the difference in people, regarding race, gender, abilities and many more.” (Robert 2016)

Abdul: “The difference of all people” (Abdul 2016)

Cassie: “What separates the differences from the similarities in us” (Cassie 2016)

 

        The answers that I received displayed quite a few aspects of what I have learned in this course. For example, Abdul explained that culture has ties with traditions, customs and beliefs, in which he leaned toward defining culture as in what he shares with his family and others of the same ethnicity as him.

        Robert mentioned abilities as part of his definition of diversity. By Robert being a wheelchair-bound individual, his abilities are slightly shortened. This difference, which I would rather say uniqueness, is one of his characteristic that makes him diverse in his own way.

        I did not notice any aspects that I felt were omitted in the definitions, although it is possible that I may have missed some. If anything, it has broadened my thinking.

        Thinking about the definitions I were provided with by these individuals has influenced my thinking about culture and diversity by allowing me to realize that culture does not always have to be a particular method followed by a group of people to considered as a culture, nor is it a requirement. Individuals are allowed to follow their own culture freely. I now understand that culture and diversity go hand in hand. Some of the cultures that an individual chooses to possess and follow could possibly make them diverse in some form

My Family Culture

A major catastrophe has hit the U.S. and my immediate family and I are among the survivors. We are being relocated to a new country to take refuge, and I am not able to make any decisions about the evacuation plan or the final destination.  I have no details on the final destination in which I will be placed and I may be forced to stay there permanently. I can only bring one change of clothes and three small personal items.

          Along with my change of clothes, I would also take with me a copy of my Birth certificate, my college diploma and a copy of the photos of my relatives.
          
           I would explain to others the significance of these items by informing them how important it is to be able to prove my identity and my homeland from where I am originally from, regardless of where I am replaced, the proof of the education I received and the remembrance of family members that did not survive or were located in a different place from. All of these items are able to help symbolize my personal identity and family culture.
     
           I would be very devastated if told I could only keep one of the three items upon arrival. It would be a tough decision to make, because all three of those items help to define who I am, where I come from and one of the most important accomplishments that I completed. Being that I would be in a totally new environment, with new people and not having a single person who knows me personally, besides my own family would be very frightening for me and for my family. I would think about the possibilities of being separated from my family that I evacuated with, being given a new identity and losing my own culture and being forced to practice new beliefs. And most importantly, having lost all visual memories of my relatives, whom I may never see again.

This exercise has given me new insights on what it is like to lose everything and be forced to move from an area that you have lived practically all of your life and that is all you know. Throughout the course of completing this exercise, I could not help but to think of those refugees and immigrant that I have actually faced this exact kind of adversity and I became very emotional. It is one thing to see and hear about these kinds of situations on the news, but actually experiencing these are so much different. I pray that America is never put in this kind of situation and that we as a people are able keep our homeland, freedom and rights and to never have to be forced to give up who we are.   

When I Think of Research...

I have gained many new insights from taking this course in these eight weeks that we were given. In the beginning of this course, I was introduced to studying and analyzing scholarly research articles, searching for my own and developing a research topic of my interest and breaking that main topic down into three sub-topics and choosing only one specific subtopic of interest from there. Although this was just the forefront in conducting research, I feel that becoming aware of the potential risks and ethics to be aware of were very beneficial insights to me. My ideas about the nature of doing research have drastically changed after learning of proper protocol and procedures to follow before attempting to conduct a research study. From the choosing of participants, sampling and choices of collecting data are all vital and must be properly thought through before beginning. Permission must first be allowed from participants, along with mentioning all possible risks.

  I learned that the process of conducting a research design first begins with suggesting a topic of interest for research. This topic would generally be one that makes a point to a specific idea of interest and can be studied for further investigation to retrieve results that reflect the design. The second step in conducting a research design is figuring out exactly how the design will be conducted and what will be the focus of the design. “Research cannot be well designed unless what is to be researched is clear.” (Naughton et al 2010 p105). Next is refining the topic and breaking that one topic into a series of several sub-topics, placing them in the order that is similar to the order of processing and determining whether these topics are considered observational or experimental and whether they lend themselves to be formulated into a hypothesis (the ability to make an educated guess on the topic). Next is the careful review of the time the study and who is to participate, in means of the past, present and future and the ages of the participants. The selection of participants for the study and understanding whether random sampling is necessary or not is vital in the process of collecting data and analysis. Once the data is collected, which is often very little means of resources, pilot testing is performed to determine whether the implementation of the designed has the ability to be successful or not

Some of the challenges I encountered were Processing and analyzing data and selecting persons to participate. Although processing and analyzing data seemed as a tedious task, I was quite relieved to find that all research is not mandatory to be correct and can also be a defect cause from the design or hypothesis of the intended question of the research. Incorrect data can sometimes lead to the findings of new information that one had no knowledge of before. I have gained a better outlook on this process.

  I would believe that it takes choosing participants that fit the description of the intended purpose of a design, but had a difficult time understanding exactly how the concept of sampling for some designs could still conduct accurate researching and results. I did not agree with the process of stratified random sampling at first after understanding that these designs were performed using uneven amounts of participants. But after understanding that the use of sampling of uneven participants always used the greater number of participants for the groups of participants that were the primary focus of the design, and  ensuring that those groups were both still equally represented and considered as a random sample helped me to understand more.

My perceptions of an early childhood professional have been modified throughout this course due to the fact that I am now fully aware that studies are able to be conducted to enhance the betterment of classrooms and education in the early childhood field. With results and findings of these successfully conducted studies could have a major positive impact on students, families, teachers and administrators in the early childhood education field.