Diversity Looking Ahead

 

My one hope in working with children and families from diverse backgrounds is that I would be more sensitive to their culture.  That I can recognize my own biases and respond to the family in the ways that is acceptable to their culture.  

The goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is that the field would work to accept all children by recognizing the dominant culture as well as the many cultures of the world.  

Thank you all for the comments and the great blog posts.  It is always refreshing to see how passionate you all are about early childhood.   

Welcoming Families from Around the World

The country of origin I chose is South Africa.  The  steps I would take to be culturally responsive is first to talk with any professional connections I have that have experience with familys from this country.  I would then contact the early childhood collaborative from that country that we learned about in a previous class.  I would then do some basic internet research, and collect some books both for young children and adults from the native culture.  From there I would try to prepare myself with the information I collected, and use the family to collect more culture information.  With all of this information I would hope that the family would realize that I wanted to welcome them in and work with them to help thier family acclimate to their new home.  This would hopefully help to make a bridge between school and home and allow me to be more effective in preparing their child for school.

Predjudice

A time when I experienced prejudice was when I was in high school working in the summertime.  I worked at a canoe rental business, and looked forward to the chance to work outside in the summer heat.  However I was quite dismayed when I was told that only males were allowed to work outside.  They told me women were to clean, cook, amd provide support in the store.  Men were to work outside because a that wasn't a woman's place.  This provided no equity between the sexes.  The men and boys working there would expect the girls and women to wait on them with cold drinks and snacks.  The attitude of the staff and customers reflected a superiority of men over women.  Now as a teacher and mother I try to ensure the boys and girls I work with realize that although men and women have different strengths , one is not superior to the other.