Professionals Hopes and Goals

One hope that I would like to share with all in regards to the work done with children and families coming from diverse backgrounds, is that one day we are all able to see each other as equal, that we have the capacity to except differences and learn from them instead of marginalizing, criticizing or excluding those that think, look or act differently to what is considered a norm. One goal that I have set for myself is, to share with other professionals in the field of Early Childhood all the resources and knowledge I have been able to learn in this course as well as many other courses and complemented with my own personal experience  in order to better understand and value differences among us, as well as to reflect on our own bias as it relates to the quality of work we do with the children and families we serve.

I would like to take the time to thank all my colleagues as well as instructor for your hard work and dedication. I have learned so much in regards to your experience and knowledge in regards to providing quality care for all children as well as different ways to better the service we provide to the children and families particularly those from diverse backgrounds.

Welcoming Families From Around the World

Working in an Early Childhood Setting I'm informed that I will have a new member in our class, a little girls that just arrived to the United States coming from "Morocco", a country that I know nothing about. Luckily I have the opportunity to research as much as possible about their culture before the child come to my classroom, the first thing I would do is to meet with the staff of my center that did that first contact with the family. They can share as much information as possible with me in order for me to understand the situation of the family. Since I ignore all aspects of the Morocco culture I will start by researching the superficial aspect of the culture such as food, traditions, clothing and language, language would be one the most important aspects that I need to consider. communication is the key element and I would need to know the basic language spoken, in order to create a list of words that I could use to communicate with the child and their parents.

Once I have a more clear understanding thanks to the support of these resources I would arrange a home visit just as any other child coming to my classroom, in order to establish our initial contact, during this visit I will share with the parents a little about myself and  then ask them to share a little about themselves. With this I would get a better picture of their experiences in their country as well as their needs, goals and fears.

Then with the information I obtained from my research as well as the information the parents shared  I can actually put all these pieces together to get a better understanding of their culture and find ways to engage, support and welcome the child and the family to our program just as I do with all the children and families I serve. By creating an atmosphere where they can feel represented and valued just as any other, by having materials such as books or pictures is another way of making them feel welcomed ad represented in our classroom. I hope with this to be able to engage not only with the child, but with the parent as well, to make them feel welcomed and appreciated. To learn and share from our differences as a way of growing in knowledge with the main purpose or goal as to help their child grow and develop to their fullest potential.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

Sadly, I have witness several experiences related to bias towards children professionally and personally. Just recently in the Head Start that I work in we had an open house, in this open house we screened the families to see if they qualified for our program. It is common thing to have all the family come that day, so we need to be prepared with crayons, some paper and toys.  That day a mom came with 3 of her children and one of them in particular, was running everywhere and it was precisely the child that would possible enter our program. The first think that my co-worker told the mom is that it seemed that she didn’t have any control with her child, and that he was to hyperactive. That if he was not yet evaluated by the district, she should look into it. You could notice in mom’s face how bad and worried she was feeling by the comments that my co-worker brought up, without first inquiring with the parent about his behavior. Then she tried to model to mom how to work with her child, which didn’t work at all, and what it did was make things worse as the child got frustrated and got him crying to the point that the parent had to reschedule the appointment for another day. Then she shared with other colleagues that it is common on Latino parents to not take their children to be screenings, or if they are too active they don’t know how to set limits and children know that.

First of all the way my co-worker handled the situation was very impropriate in my opinion, by making the assumption that mom didn’t have any control over the child without first actual assessing the situation with moms feedback. Also by trying to model to the parent techniques to work with the child in a time and place that was not appropriate made things worse for the child and the parent since we had several other parents and children present observing and hearing her comments. I can see how she might have mean well, and unconsciously behaved in a bias way by her actions and comments to the parent, but as a parent I can imagine what the parent was feeling and probably would have looked for another place to enroll my child were they actually could speak to me in a way I could understand and help my child not it a way the makes us feel less, discriminated and devaluated. By being participate of this incident,  made me realize how important it is to know a families culture before make the mistake of trying to share our expertise with the parents without given them  opportunity to share their experiences , challenges as well as what has worked or not worked with their child.  Then  work together to create a plan that might help the child succeed as well as including the help of other professionals that can contribute their knowledge in this plan. I consider that in order to avoid incidents such as this one, is that all staff and professionals working