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 all adults (parents, childcare givers, aunts, uncles, early childhood educators and administrators) understand that the bigger picture is doing what is best for the child.  I also hope that they will learn to be patient as everyone has some level of change to undergo when it comes to dealing with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds.

One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is for educators and early childhood administrators to foster and conduct a program targeted on the issues, concerns, and impacts that children and families encounter relating to diversity, equity, social justice, and social injustices. By Fostering and conducting such a program, it will help educators to learn from individual families and children directly impacted by such issues.  Such a program will also offer aid to others via communication and support as we all work to overcome the vastly growing concerns and issues of diversity, equity, and social justices and/or injustices.

I would like to give a big thanks to my colleagues for sharing the events and memories of their lives that have made them the people they are today. By sharing these events and memories, we have been able to learn a lot form one another and understand how others feel and are impacted by various situations of diversity, equity, and social justices/social injustices. Lastly, I would like to thank each and every one of my colleagues and our professor for all of the words of encouragement throughout this course. Best Wishes to everyone for all of their future endeavors.

Welcoming Families From Around the World

 

 

I have recently been promoted to the Dean of Elementary education at my school.  Two days into my new title, I have received word that the child of a family from Guatemala has recently immigrated to our country.  I am not familiar with Guatemala. So, to prepare myself for welcome the child and her family, I have thought of five things to do to give me a jump start to prepare myself for this task/

Thus, five ways in which I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family from Guatemala is: 1) obtain information relating to school life for children so that I will be knowledgeable of the possible educational strengths and weaknesses that the children and their families may encounter. 2) I will try to learn about the food. 3) I will focus on their possible religious believes so that I may not disrespect any holidays or religious beliefs as it relates the educational structure/school calendar and events. 4) I will focus on some of the interests that my family might have to assist with making them comfortable in their new city and country. 5) Lastly, I would purchase a Spanish/English dictionary to assist me with communicating with the children and family as Spanish is the prominent language in Guatemala.

I hope that these preparations will allow me to understand the generally culture, language, and food preferences of my family from Guatemala thus making it a little easier to communicate with the family and understand any barriers I might have while trying to educate the children.

 

 

 

 



The personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

 

In the previous few weeks, I learned about and observed some examples of microaggressions. After that, I was able to explore personal biases as well as institutional prejudices as sources of inequities and oppression, and that bias and prejudice themselves are learned. Thus, the memories that I have of an incident when I experienced bias, prejudice, and/or oppression, or witnessed someone else as the target of bias, prejudice, and or oppression was, three years ago, at my old job that I had been working at for seven years at the time, denied me a promotion because I was too young and had a small child that my boss felt would occupy my time.  Thus, my boss assumed, I would not be able to stay focused or would be needing to take time off from work because of child illnesses or etc…  It was at this very moment that I understood how people felt when they thought they had been discriminated against, annihilated, stereotyped, taken advantage of, and stabbed in the back…

This incident and actions expressed by my boss diminished equity by expressing that because I was young and a new mom, although very qualified for the job and having been employed with the company for seven years prior to applying for the position, that when it comes to a company’s bottom line(economic status) equity is only a notion because, although, I would never do my job any less that I had done prior to having a child, I was still discriminated against as a women and mother by my boss (who happened to me a mother and women) who often indicated that she regretted at times that she spent more time at work than with her two sons as they were growing up.

In order to turn the incident around that I experienced, there would have to be a push for better equal rights for women; men have children and get promoted all the time and are never questioned about their ability to complete the guidelines of the job because they are a parent yet, women are Oster sized if they are a woman that wants to provide for her family, have a career, and a family. The world must truly understand that women are structured to multi takes and strong enough to withstand the necessary stress and guidelines to have a family and run a company at the same time.