My hope and goal is....

One hope I have when I think about working with children and families from diverse backgrounds is becoming a strong resource and support system for them.  I think about immigrants who are new the country and/or families who move away from their families and the communities they grew up in to new communities. I can understand the fear and anxiety of being different and just wanted to have someone to trust and rely on.  I want to be that for them.

One goal I would like to set for the early children field when it comes to diversity, equity, ad social justice is more professionals being bilingual or even multilingual.  It will open up so many more opportunities and make families, especially immigrants, more comfortable.  I also think it will help the students feel more accepted and embrace their differences instead of trying to assimilate into two different worlds, their family culture and the dominant culture.

Thanks to everyone who read and left comments.  I appreciated it and learned a lot from you all.   

The Burmanese family

My family is from Burma which is also known as Myanmar.   Burma is located between India and Thailand.  Also some of the other neighbors are Bangladesh, Lao PDR, and China.  In order to be culturally responsive towards this family I will make sure I know particular facts about their culture.  I will learn about the primary language. I will learn about the role of the children and gender roles.  I wouldn't want to come across disrespectful if the family role is hierarchy and this the culture and parents mandate particular roles from their children.  Lastly I would learn about holidays and religion because I would want to make sure I was being inclusive when celebrating holidays and make sure I wasn't offensive when celebrating other holidays. 

I hope these preparations will help me show the family I respect them and their culture.  I want to build a relationship of trust and I hope their my efforts of better understanding their culture this will know the family I good intentions.  This way the family will be more open to communicating with me and we will be more efficient in working together to give their child a great education.         

Bias and Prejudices

There has been several times when I have both seen and experienced prejudices.  There was an incident in the seventh grade where my science teacher was failing me.  My mom went in to meet with him and he told her, with me right there, that I should get used to failing grades because Blacks aren't as intelligent as Whites and he won't "dumb down" the class to suit my intelligence.  My mom reported him and he admitted to say those things and he lost his job.  This incident made me sad, angry, and confused.  I was sad that someone would feel this way about me.  I was angry because I saw my mother upset.  I was confused because I was receiving failing marks so I wonder if what he said was true.  In order for this incident to change.  The attitude and views of the science teacher would have to change in order to achieve a greater equity.