Professional Hopes and Goals

My vision is to open a high quality child care where children and families from all abilities, socio-economic group, race, religion, and any background can come and know that their child is being well taken care of by a quality staff who will not only work on academic with their child but all aspects of development. This is greatly lacking in my small community. As a mother of a child with ADHD and one with autism my kids have been kicked out of varies center all because the staff does not know what to do with them nor are they willing to learn.
I hope that with the center that I will open that parents and staff from diverse background will work together to provide the best possible care for all the children in our community. I want to show our community what can be accomplished when we all work together and do not settle for mediocre.
I would like to see the entire early childhood community come together and work on how train and support staff and families related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice.  I would also like to see a curriculum made to help staff with how to teach these issue to young children. 
Thank you to all my colleagues for continue to challenge, and grow my worldview. I wish you all the best of luck and hope to work with you all again. I know that we will help to shape and change the field one child/family at a time.


                 

Welcoming families from around the world

I just found out that in two weeks I will be getting a new child in my class from Andorra.  Where in the world is Andorra?  I start doing research so that I can make this child and his family feel welcome. First I look up Andorra on the Department of State website. I find out that it is a tiny country between France and Spain in the Pyrenees Mountains. I find out it is a popular tourist destination due to duty-free shopping and variety of winter sports.  I then do a google search to learn about the culture and costumes of the land.
From the world factbook, I learn that Catalan is the official language though many speak French, Portuguese, and Castillian. The dominant religion is Roman Catholic. This is still just superficial facts, I need more info on what the culture is like. I do an image search to see what the culture is like. The scenery is breathtaking. I print off some of the pictures to make a book to talk to the class about before our new friend arrives. We look up how to say hello in Catalan and practice saying it.  I looked up youtube videos about the culture and life and showed appropriate ones to the class. We also researched the food of the area and talked with the cook about adding some to our menu.
I hope that this preparation will help me make the family feel welcomed and that we are here to partner with them in their child's education. 

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

My friend Kelly is white and she has six wonderful biracial children.  One day about seven years ago we meet up for lunch. She had two of her children with her who look more like their father than her. We were eating and laughing as one of her children was doing different impressions of famous people. An older man came over and I guess thought that Kelly and I were a couple. He said, "it's a shame that you two are living in sin, but to bring kids into this is a shame, besides they should be with their own kind."  We sat there in shock and then I busted out laughing, at no point did we act like a couple or anything. However, the kids sat there with their heads down, no longer smiling or laughing like earlier. Kelly sent them to the car, and she told me that being told they should be with their own kind is something that they deal with often. I did not know what to do or say.

I felt so sorry for the kids to have to deal with ignorance from adults, I feel angry for adults treating any child this way and heartbroken for Kelly as she does not know what to do or say to help her children cope.