Professional Hopes and Goals

I hope that when I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds is that they reach for their dreams and know that whatever they want to accomplish in life is possible. I want them to feel loved and never experienced the pain of  rejection or exclusion, but the reality is that we do live in a world in which racism and other forms of bias continue to affect us.

A goal that I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is that professional knowledge and experience are important, but we must never forget how much we can learn from the families we work with.

I want to thank my colleagues for their personal beliefs, ideas, opinions, and stories that you all shared. I will take all of this new information and knowledge and use it for future purposes. I want to wish you all the best on your educational and personal journey in life.

Welcoming Families From Around the World

The name of my family's country of origin is India.

One way in which I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family would be to do research on the country first in order to understand and access information. Next, I would explore personal and family histories. This process can lead to interviews of family members like the parents and grandparents about their beliefs and experiences regarding different groups in society. A third preparation will be to focus on building skills that enhance communication such as listening and observational skills which is essential. The fourth preparation would consist of me building relationships by communicating with the family about what I am teaching and how they can be involved, I will help them to meet and get to know other people in the community, and I will use multiple avenues to include families in what is done in school. Finally, I would invite family and community members to speak to the class or share a special skill.

I hope that these preparations will benefit both the family and I by gaining each others trust and participation while learning to comprehend new information easily.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

My memory comes from when my mother was at Kroger's and witnessed these white people put their money in the soda machine and they lost their money. The white people went inside to tell the cashier  that they lost their money in the machine and they went right on and gave them their money back. When it was my mother's turn to get her money back, the cashier halted and hesitated as if my mother was lying about loosing her money like she was trying to still some money back from them that did not belong to her. She finally got her money back and stated to them that when white people steal it's called embezzlement and when black people steal it's called stealing in which it means the same thing, but embezzlement is a prettier name.

The specific bias, prejudice and/or oppression in that incident diminish equity because the cashier gave my mother a problem with giving her money back, but it was not a problem with giving the white people their money back. My mother diminish equity because she did not have to make that statement towards the cashier even though she did her wrong first. I like the old saying that says two wrongs do not make it right. The feelings that this incident brought up to me was that the cashier treated the white people as though they were more important than my mother. Also, I felt as though the cashier believed the white people, but did not believe my mother because she was black and people always assuming that black people are known to lie and white people are truthful. My mother should have ignored them, prayed for them, turned the other cheek, and walked away in order to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity or the cashier could have just told my mother that I am going to give your money back and now I will go put a sign on the machine that said out of order so that this would not be a problem anymore.