class 7 week 3

I work with child care providers and legally exempt child care providers.  I have and am currently working with refugee families.  One family is from Somalia.  Her oldest son translates for us.  When I work with someone who translates for me I never know if I should look at the translator or the person. 

Another family I worked with was from Bosnia.  I created and got paperwork translated for this family.  I also bought an English/Bosnian dictionary.

Three strategies I will use:

1.  Learn about the culture and traditions of the family
2.  Active listening
3.  Pay attention to non verbal cues

Communication - Class 7 - week 1

I have a friend and former co-worker who I feel has excellent communication skills.  She is able to get her point across effectively and without upsetting anyone.  I have seen her talk with parents and she has a wonderful way of putting "bad news".  She makes people feel comfortable.  She is a good listener. 
This person is also excellent at written communication.  She has a way with words that I wish I was able to do.  I wish I could write as well as she can.

Class 6 - week 8

My area has a large refugee population so there are times that I work with a number of families from a very diverse background.  This class has taught me that I need to look beyond surface culture and look deeper into who people are.    I hope to be able to learn from the people I work with and I hope to find ways to include the families and the children. 

My goal is to teach child care providers the importance of diversity.  Also I want to develop training on the anti-bias curriculum.  I believe that child care providers tend to ignore where children's backgrounds.  They do not integrate it their program.

I want to thank everyone who has visited my page and left me great comments!!  It has been a wonderful class and I have learned so much.

Week 6 - class 6

I have a friend, who is also a co-worker, who last year came out as a lesbian.  She started out tell a few people because she was worried how people would react.  As more people found out, there were some who treated her differently.  She is out stationed in another office and works around people who are not part of our office.  She had a very hard time because she was treated horribly.  People made insulting and very discriminating remarks.  It made her very uncomfortable.

She went to her supervisor had was told to “deal with it”.  She was needed in the other office and to ignore them.  She hates going to that other office because she feels so uncomfortable.  They made her feel like she wasn’t normal and they treated her like she was not an equal.

I felt so bad for her because she was so hurt.  I was also upset because everyone deserves to work in a safe environment and she was in an unsafe place.  She was trying to deal with these new feelings she had plus dealing with the hateful remarks.

I believe that the Human Resources departments in both buildings should have been involved in order to make this a safe work environment.  I also believe that all people involved she have been made to participate in a class on diversity.

week 4- microaggressions

After watching the video segment by Dr. Sue, I remembered an incident that happened a few months ago at work.  One of my co-workers is stationed within another agency.  She had become friends with a woman who is a lesbian.  Other people working there started making comments about them and being very unprofessional.  My co-worker was very upset and it made it very hard for her to work in that office.  She went to our director to explain how uncomfortable she was and really didn’t want to be in that office anymore.  My director told her to not be so sensitive. My co-worker is still in that office but she still feels uncomfortable.

I now know that my co-worker was a victim of microinvalidation.  I don’t believe my director meant to invalid her feelings.  I felt bad for my co-worker because she was very upset.  I could listen to her but I couldn’t identify with how she was feeling. 

The video segment has made me more aware of comments being said around me.  It is amazing how many things are said and people don’t realize how they make others feel.    I would love to take this video segment to work and show it at a staff meeting.  I believe a lot of people would learn a lot from it. 

Reference

Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). “Microaggressions in Everyday Life” with Dr. Sue

Class 6 - week 3

I asked 3 co-workers their definitions of culture and diversity.  The following are their definitions:

1.        Culture – it means a person’s religion or their way of life.  The way that they were raised by their family and their values and beliefs.

Diversity – it means a variety of people or things.  It also could mean a various amount of opinions or genders/social/economic backgrounds.

2.        Culture – traditions, beliefs and expectations of a people.  People could be defined as a race, a nation, a family, or even a business.

Diversity - the comingling of different cultures, race, nationalities, traditions, beliefs.

3.        Culture-learned ways of acting, thinking.

Diversity – it is made up of non-stereotypical roles (non gender roles), a variety of socio-economical backgrounds, many types of employment, and many types of family composition and cultures

      
I think a lot of what I have been learning so far in this course is in the definitions I received from my co-workers.  For example, that culture is about their families as well as their values and beliefs.   I think anything has been omitted from what we are currently studying in this class. After seeing my co-workers definitions and thinking about mine, I realized our definitions are very similar.  I find it very interesting because we are from different backgrounds but we are all in the early childhood field.

Week 2 class 6 -My Family Culture

My family and I are being sent to another country and I can only bring 3 small items.  The items I would bring are a small picture album of my family, my mother’s wedding ring, and a letter my mom wrote to me when I was about 14 years old.

The album has pictures of my mom, dad, baby pictures of my children, and pictures from my wedding day.  My mom has passed away so those pictures are very important to me.  Also, baby pictures of my children because I would not be able to replace them.

I would bring my mom’s wedding ring.  It is the ring I wear because I lost my wedding ring in the Atlantic Ocean a few years ago.  The ring is very special to me because it had belonged to my mother and she wore it till the day she died.

The third thing I would bring is a letter that my mom wrote while she was in the hospital.  I was about 14 years old and my mom had been in the hospital for about 2 years.  I would go see her several times a week when possible but  there were times because of my dad’s work schedule and other factors that I might not have seen her for a week or so.  She sent this letter home with my dad.  It was about a upcoming concert that I had and how she was sorry she couldn’t be there.

I would explain to others that all of these things are important to me because they represent my family.  Family is the most important thing in my life and they represent very special moments in my life.  Two of the items represent my mom who passed away in 1999.  It would be important for me to have these if I was not ever going to be able to come back to my home country again.

If when I arrived to my new country as a refugee, I was told I had to give up 2 items I would be devastated.  I would do everything possible to keep them.  I would probably try to sneak them into something or hid them so I could come back someday to get them.

This assignment gave me a better understanding of how refugees feel when they are sent to another country.  Sometimes they are not given an option to bring anything with them and that makes me feel very sad for them.  I had a very hard time deciding on what I would bring!