Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope I have for working with children and families is that I can make a difference for those I work with. That I can teach them and spread the knowledge I have. I want parents and their families to feel comfortable and that they are in an open environment that is interested in learning about how they are. I want those I work with to also make families feel this way.

One goal I have is that people gain awareness about diversity, equity and social justices, especially in the early childhood field. I do not think that everyone in the field are aware of how important being aware of diversity, equity, and social justices are in the field. We impact children so much and if we want to make a change we need to educate the young and be advocates for them. We need to educate our field so that we can guide children to the best of our abilities.

I would like to thank all my colleagues I have learned so much from all of you from sharing what you have learned and your personal stories. I learn from all of you. I wish you the best in your studies and hope to continuing having classes with you all and continuing to learn together!

Welcoming Families From Around the World

Brunei is the country that my new family has emigrated from.

In order to be culturally responsive towards my new family I will:

-Learn about signs of respect that children are taught.

-Learn about if their are any family traditions and roles that are different then my own.

-I will learn about the language of the child and their family if it is different then English so that I can use some of the language around the classroom to keep the child’s culture alive. 

-I will learn about food from the country and if any kind of food goes against religious beliefs and if it is possible to incorporate anything new into the menus.

-I will learn about any Holidays of that country and use them as a way to educate the rest of the class about the new child’s culture.

I hope that these preparations will help the family feel more comfortable and accepted. I want them to feel wanted so that we can creates bonds with them and help their child to learn and grow, especially during the transition.   

I also would look forward from learning from this experience not only about a new country and a new culture but helping me to be more culturally diverse so that I can better educate others. I will take my knowledge from the experience and share it with others to help them to learn more.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

This week I attended a star service training. At my training were different people in different departments of Fleet and Family Services for the Department of the Navy and Air-force. One gentleman was talking about how he receives good service from Filipino. He continued by saying they will hold clothes for him as he shops and go above and beyond that he fills he needs to tip them. He said that they still think they need to serve everyone. Well this was taken many different ways by many different people in my class. 

This incident diminished equity because he was not seeing people as equals he was pointing out differences and talking as if he was better then a different race. He was also stereotyping a whole race because of the biases he had.

This incident made me feel uncomfortable and all I could think of was this class. I also had one of my employees from my center with me who is Filipino and I could tell she was mad because of the comment and that made me feel sympathy for her and that, that man’s comment should have never been said.

The man who spoke could have given the example without generalizing and putting down an entire race.