Professional Hopes and Goals

My hope is to speak about our differences with children and families and show a desire to learn them and appreciate them as a good role model. This might not sound big but I believe that it will have a big impact on children. I have been learning that children are creatures which are naturally disposed to learn and think about what they see in daily life. For example, my daughter made a mouse cage with a running-wheel by arranging her toys creatively:  She used a kitchen pan and a box of blocks.  She did this on the same day my family visited a garage sale where she saw a real mouse cage on sale. I would like to stimulate children’s curiosities for differences and potentials to see them equally in the daily setting.

I would like to contribute to the working environment and classrooms where people talk about differences of us and things people feel are inequity. Since I learned a lot of insights and became aware of issues of diversity, equity, and social justice, I would like to pass them to other people and create opportunities for people to think about these issues.

To my colleagues,

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I am always motivated and supported by your diligence and common desire to make the early childhood field a better place for children and families. I hope we will see one another again in future courses and I also wish you good luck in all you do.

Welcoming Families From Around the World

The country of origin of my imaginary family is Tonga.

Things I will do to prepare myself to be responsive to the family in the childcare setting are following.  

1.       Visit the website of their national tourism guide such as http://www.thekingdomoftonga.com/.

2.       Visit a community of people who are from the country the family us from.

3.       Study about attitudes to education and discipline in Tonga.

4.       Study about religion in Tonga.

5.       Study the language(s) of Tonga and find a person who can work as interpreter if they only speak Tongan, or as a cultural interpreter if they speak Tongan English.

I hope visiting their national tourism website can teach me about their history, political situation and cultures such as food, clothes and festivals. I think I can learn what type of people they are and discover differences and similarities beforehand and hopefully I can get advice from community members who have already experienced a daycare in the US by visiting a community of their people.

I hope these preparations will benefit both of us by lowering the barriers of language difference in both ways, reducing the possibilities of my pushing my values on to them, and helping them to maintain who they are. I think their feeling supported and happy will be the biggest benefit for me.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I have heard from some of my friends at play-dates saying we should avoid schools that many Latinos go to. When I heard that first, I didn’t know why so I asked the person the reason. She explained her belief that Latino people have low interests and motivations in education and have dubious morals. This bias diminishes the equity by implying that Latino students are not desirable and influence negatively on other students even though there is no such evidence and it may encourage Latino children to act like that only because other people expect them to do so. When I heard the explanation, I felt that it is not fair for Latino students because I believe there are going to be bad students in any ethnic and cultural group but they are not attributed to their ethnic or cultural groups except in this case.   And it is also weird that non-Latino people who do not really know much about Latino culture decided to label Latino students in this way.

I think the best way to turn this incident into an opportunity is for many Latino students to show their excellence in school. I think this is much easier than before because there are successful bilingual Latino youths and adults who can help younger Latino students. I also think teachers must not have these biases and prejudices against them because biases limit students’ performance levels and other students pick up the microaggressions from their teachers. Another thing we can do is that non-Latino parents can try to get to know Latino parents. I believe that they will find that parents in any culture usually think their children and their children’s education is very important.