Farewell All

One hope that you have when you think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds (any format and any length)

One goal you would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice (any format and any length)

A brief note of thanks to your colleagues

This has been a fun and exciting course!  One hope that I have for working with children and families from different background is being able to have a better understanding of each of my families diverse backgrounds.  I know that this will be hard but I would like to become familiar with different backgrounds so that I can be more aware of how to teach to a different group of kids!

One goal for the early childhood field, is to have a set of standards that should be incorporated in the schools!  I think that this way teachers who are not familiar with teaching a diverse group of students will have somewhat of an idea of what to teach, although they will have to learn how to teach it.

I would like to thank all my colleagues for all the thoughts, and sharing your stories throughout this course. I wish you all the best!

Happy Learning,

Kayla

Welcoming a Family from Egypt!

The family that just arrived to my child care center is from Egypt.  I have always wanted to visit Egypt, and I am really excited about getting to learn more about my student and her family as well as their culture.  Considering that I know nothing about life in Egypt, nor the way of the people.  I composed a list of five ways that will help me to get to know my student and her family better.

1. I would send a family questionnaire home with the family before the child's first day of school asking about the culture and expectations of the family.
2. I would research school systems in Egypt to become more familiar with the type of schooling this child has already been exposed to.
3. I would include books about several different countries in the classroom including Egypt.
4. I would ask the parents to come in and sit in during a class session so they can become more familiar with the structure of her new school.
5. I would also ask her parents if they have any concerns or questions for me, and how would they recommend I include their child's culture in the classroom.  

I believe by showing the parents that I care about their input about their child's learning, will show that I value them and I would like to include them in their child's learning.  By asking them how to include their culture in the classroom will hopefully show that I do no want them to conform to the "norm" but rather accept and appreciate their family and their differences.  By communicating with the parents and the child about what they like and things they may dislike,  will help promote a caring and trustworthy relationship among us.

Social Profiling

One incident that I remember is when my friend and I were shopping at a boutique (typically on white people shop at).  As soon as we walked through the door, we were greeted by the owner.  As we continued to look around the store, she trailed us as if she was checking the items on the shelf.  She then continued to follow us and asked us several times if we need help looking for anything.  My friend responded to her, that there were other people in the store that may need her help because we are just browsing.  She then left, and sent a sales associate to follow us around the store.  In other words or less, we were social profiled.  Which bothered me greatly, we asked why she was following us, and she said that she was just giving us customer service.  However, we left without causing any problems.

This made me feel like black people cannot afford to shop in boutiques and that because we were browsing she “assumed” that we were trying to steal.  It makes me sad that I cannot go into a store and shop without being socially profiled.

I would ask the other customers in the store how that would make them feel if they were followed around the store.  I would then pull the owner to the side and discuss how I feel like what she did was completely inappropriate in I would point out the fact that she social profiled my friend and I.  I would also tell her that we were nice about the

situation, but if it were someone else they might’ve not been.