Saturday, December 20, 2014

Professional Hopes and Goals

I hope early childhood educators could:



                  When working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds, we should always have a open-minded and respectful mind to "discover" other cultures. The more people practice equity in school, the better chance to advocate for equity and social justice world in a long run!


Goal:

 

If everyone who work in the early childhood field could put them their judgment glasses, I believe they will see tons of positive and wonderful side of children and families. Passion is related to love, if we have bias inside us, it is hard to love/ support the child and provide them an equity environment. It is important to be aware of our mindset. We do not have to love all children, yet we should NEVER judge them despite their social identities.


I would like to thank you all my colleagues for sharing their stories and suggestions ! All your experiences and suggestions are very valuable to my professional growth. I really enjoy reading all the strategies or methods that you have been working with children and families from diverse background. I believe with all dedicated group here, we will expand our dedication and passionate to advocate equity, social justice and diversity in our work and expand to the society.

Good Luck Everyone in your journey of promoting equity and social justice! It is not easy and would not be a quick fix. But with everyone's effort, I believe even little effort would make a social change to someone. 

Happy Holidays!





Saturday, December 13, 2014

Welcoming Families From Around the World


Afghanistan

 
I chose Afghanistan because I have not serve any families from this country and would like to learn more about them. As early childhood educator, we need to do some “homework” to learn about a culture in order to show the family that we are delight to have diverse cultures in our program and all cultures are being valued and all cultures are treated the same and equally. I would try to find out about their cultural music, clothing, food/ prohibited food, culture folk stories, and communication style. To prepare all these in the classroom will help the child and family feel welcomed to the school and respected. Learning their communication style is also important because we want to ensure our communication style is appropriate and respectful to them. For example, in Afghanistan, there is hierarchy between men and women that eye contact should be avoided between men and women, “it is best to only occasionally look someone in the eyes” (Kwintessential, 2014).

Ways to be culturally responsive toward Afghan's family:

  1. If I could meet the family before the child starts school, I would like to schedule a time to meet with this particular family to learn about their cultures. If they do not speak English or limited English, I would find a translator to help in the meeting. If we could be meeting the family, I would do some research on the culture of Afghanistan- learn about their communication styles and educate all staffs to be culturally responsive this family according to the culture norm- in this case, try not to look at the family in the eyes in a long period of time as it is considered as disrespectful. But meeting the family to learn about their family culture is very important as every family has their unique culture or child rearing style.

  2. To have pictures of Afghanistan’s family and flag in the classroom 




  3. Have books about Afghanistan’s culture in realistic picture, and introduce this culture to children through books and tell children that we will have a child coming to our school who may dress differently than us. We are excited to see him/her and he/she is very excited to see us.Also prepare Afghan's children's song  and books in Afghan's language.
  

4. We need to teach children to be respectful to the child and the family. 

5.Learn some greeting phrase like “hello, good morning, good afternoon” in their language or how parents like to be called

 
6. Yogurt, and other dairy products are important to this culture, so I will prepare these in the meals. And the child may still use hand to eat, so teacher need to educate other children about respecting different ways of eating gesture in other cultures. 






Reference:

Saturday, December 6, 2014

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression



         I am not sure if anyone watched this popular racist video a tourist captured a tour guide was giving a racist speech during her bus tour in San Francisco Chinatown. Her rant was about Chinese and the Chinatown neighborhood she was living in. Please watch before you read further: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxRUsPnzhPk
               
Apparently, the tour guide was holding a bottle, cursing Chinese and rant about how the Chinatown neighborhood disturbed her life, giving negative comments on the food or market in the Chinatown and commented how Chinese should “assimilate” American style.  As you can see from the youtube comments, her rant made everyone very mad even people from other race. When the news interviewed this tour guide, she said it was her last day of work and trying to make the last tour entertaining like a "comedy"!

Personally, I do not think this is funny at all, if you look at the video around 1:43, she even asked the tourist to curse with her and they did! I also do not agree with her comments such as how building a Bart station affect the traffic was related to a race, or how preschoolers made noise early in the morning only happen in the Chinatown or Chinese neighborhood only.  What is also ironic is the tourist applaud her speech, which sent a strong message to the tour guide that they agreed with her. 
This tour guide may have bad and negative experience with Chinese people; however, it is not the right place to rant the non-sense and untruth statements about any races or cultures in a tour. It is not professional as a guide. 

I am not sure how to stop rant like this, but if there is myth about this community, I think what could be change in this incident is maybe Chinatown could host events to show the bright sides of Chinatown to break all these myths and answer questions about Chinese and Chinatown. There was one point that she was right that Chinatown has too many people sometimes, personally I do not go to Chinatown often too as it is too crowded. I hope the Chinatown community could also educate their residents about cleanliness and be a responsible citizen, as San Francisco was being so generous to Chinese people by allowing them to have a town that represents their cultures. On the other hand, people should be respectful to others cultures. No one force you to like any cultures, yet as an adult, we need to be responsible to our acts and respect others. 
             Something to think about is why there was no one stand up to against this rant video, no one make protest about her rant tour or ask for apology. What if this tour guide was rant about other races or what if she is from other races? Is this another example of institutionalized prejudice/racism?