Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have when I think about the work that I do with children and families in the early childhood field is that each child and family that enters into any ECE program is treated fairly, given an opportunity to share their culture, learn from others cultures and to never experience any biases. 

One goal that I have is to work with my program and centers and ensure that all cultures of the children enrolled into each of our classrooms are represented in the daily lessons, the learning centers and activities.  It is my goal that there will not be a dominate culture represented and that all cultures are created equal. 

Thank you to all of you that were able to share your struggles and personal stories.  By doing that you were able to enrich my life and ensure that we all benefited from this class.  Happy Holidays!

Welcoming Families From Around the World

The country that I have chosen is Nigeria. 

I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive by doing the following.

1. Research the country - looking at the country's different newspapers and what I ever else I could find on line.  I would also keep in mind that not everything we read on the internet is true. 
2. I would like to meet with the family to learn more about that.  What their expectations are of our program. 
3. I would look at the child's enrollment paperwork to see if there is a local city listed that the family is from or anyother information that may be helpful. 
4. I would also try and learn a few simple phrases in the local language. 
5. Prepare some classroom materials for different lab areas - music from Nigeria, books that are culturally appropriate from Nigeria and dramatic play toys as well. 

By doing these things I would like to hope we can make the transition a little smoother for the family and child.I want to be able to keep an open line of communication with the family.  I also hope that we can be more culturally sensitive. 

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice and Oppression

In the public school system that I grew up in I learned about the civil rights movement through history classes.  I remember thinking I am glad there are no longer people that think that way.  When I was in high school I had a friend that was African American that was sneaking around dating his girlfriend that was Caucasian and Asian.  The girl's mother would not allow her daughter to date him because of the color of his skin.   This girl felt torn between abiding by her mother (becuase that is what you are suppose to do) but on the same hand knew her mother was wrong for not getting to know this guy and not just judging him by the color of his skin.  They eventually broke up becuase the guy no longer wanted to be the reason the relationship between mother and daughter was strained.  For me as an outsider being friends with both of them it effected me.  I did not realize that people still had hatered for people because of the color of their skin.  I have many feelings about this - at first I was mad, angry, embarassed and even sad.  The mother needs to start looking at what is on the inside and not what is on the outside.  Why do we still live in a world where people are judged by the color of their skin?  At times I wish that eveyone was blind and we would never have to know what people looked like and we could only judge them based on the words they spoke and what is truly inside of a person. 

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This week I was having a conversation with my dad and brother about a childhood friend.  The friend is a lesbian and she had put on her facebook page that was going to be on the local news station for a news clip on National Pickle Day.  In the conversation all I said was so and so is going to be on the news make sure we watch at 6pm.  My dads first comment to my brother and I were is it a piece on lesbians?   After my dad left the room my brother and I just looked at each other and shook our heads.  I was flabbergasted.  Even though our friend is a lesbian that does not define who she is. She has so many other qualities that makes her who she is.

I feel when my generation was growing up homosexual relationships were not discussed in families.  By not having these discussions in the home children were not influenced by their parents biases.  I grew up with being more accepting of different relationships and as an adult the biases my parents have have not been passed on down to me. 

In today's society homosexuality is more discussed topic.  We are also exposed to it more in television shows and the media.  I feel that the current generation of children in homes are actually having their parents biases passed on down to them thus allowing children not to  form their own beliefs. 

Perspectives on Culture and Diversity

I spoke to three different people on what they thought culture and diversity is.  Their responses are below. 

Culture is:

·         my background, how I was raised to believe and traditions that I was taught as a young child. Most come from my Norwegian/English relatives which are integrated with my Christian family values. These cultural values dictate how we celebrate holidays and birthdays, how we live day to day and what we do when someone dies.

·         is all the unique ways of living within a group such as the food you eat, the way you communicate, verbally and non-verbally, the way you raise children, the way you dress, the entertainment that is accepted, etc.

·         not only the environment in which you are born and raised in but the environment that you partake in everyday. 

Diversity is:

·         how accepting we are of other’s beliefs and traditions. How do I immerse myself with another culture that I live in and around and how much do I follow what other people believe.

·         the opposite of same and monotone. Diversity is plural. It’s the many ways of doing things, seeing things, speaking things, etc.

·         unknown.  There is culture, ethnic and sexual things to consider. 

After getting their responses I thought about how the two words can sometimes be thought as one in the same but they are different.  We have not discussed in class the issue of homosexuality.  I think that this is a topic that needs to be discussed more even though people are very passionate about the topic.  We need to be able to put aside our differences because in today’s world we are seeing how diverse families are.

Their responses touched all many things that we have talked about in the class – traditions, values, beliefs and holidays. 

 The responses also help me to understand why people are the way they are.  Two of the responses came from co workers.  After talking with them I can see now how their definitions reflect in the work that they do. 

My Family Culture

If I was told that I would not be able to return to my house and I needed to grab three items before I left I would grab my iphone, a flash drive of pictures and a small bird carving that my now husband carved for us on our first date thirteen years ago.  

• iPhone - It holds everything that I need.  I have my music that I love! Different songs remind me of different times in my life - some happy some sad but memories that have helped me be who I am today.  It also has pictures that I have been able to put on my phone.  The pictures range from when I was a baby to my childhood to when my husband and I first started dating and when our daughter was born.  The phone also has contacts for my family and friends - email addresses, phonenumbers and mailing addresses.  The phone is also a way to communicate to people.  The phone does much more but all of these things are important.  If I wasn't able to see some of my family or friends again I would at least have pictures to remember them by.  If they were being sent somewhere else I would be able to stay in contact with them.  The music would help me to remember the memories I have. 
• Flash Drive of Pictures - Pictures are another form of a way to remrember my memories. 
• Small Bird Carving - This carving is a symbol of the beginning of the path I chose when I first started dating my husband.   The carving hung in my car for a long time and whenever I look at it always brought a smile to me because it made me think of happy memories. 

If i was told I could only keep one items I would be ok with choosing any of these three.  They are all material things but I will always have the memories in my mind.  The three items that I chose would only help me to remember. 

From this reflection I know what is important me.  Each of the three items that I picked have some sort of family reflected in it.   This just reaffirms for me that family plays an important part in my life. 

My Supports

My main support in my life is my husband.  He is someone that I can go to.  He listens to me, I  can bounce ideas off of him and when I am having a bad day he can lift me up or make me see the upside to things.  The past two months have been difficult for me because his job has taken him out of state.  The support he now provides is by telephone and skype.  It has been a struggle for me as I have to rely on telephone and work around his schedule in order to talk to him.  We also have a 2 year old daughter that I am now raising as a "single" mom until we can be in the same household again.   I know that in a few months are family will be back to normal again but if I couldn't see the end of the road I don't know what I would do without my husband.  My life would be completely different with a different outlook without his support and guidance. 

Eight years ago I moved out of state from the only home I ever knew and away from my family for the first time.  They had been my support for the first 23 years of my life.  It was hard not to see my family on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.  I grew up surrounded with family always around.  When I moved my support went from 30 people on a daily basis to just my husband on a daily basis. 

In my daily work life I have the support of an organization.  Within the organization there are many different supports.  If one of the supports were to disappear or not having someone in the position for a long vacancy things begin to fall apart.  We rely on supports to help us at our job and in life.  When something happens to one of our supports - we can struggle, due dates get missed and our tasks can become longer. 

In my personal life if I lost my husband I know that I would struggle with raising my daughter as a single mom.  My husband and I take parenting head on as a team.  We rely on each other.   I don't even want to imagine what life would be if my husband was no longer around.  I know that life would change drastically. 

In my professional life I think about our organization and our accounting office and the work that they do.  Our program operates off of grants.  I currently oversee the day to day operations but our accounting office takes care of the administrative side - the grant reporting, paying bills and staff and processing all the fiscal issues.  If this support were to disappear I would have to take on these new job duties.  My job would take on new job descriptions and staff job descriptions would also change to ensure that everything was taken care of that our accounting office typically do. 

My Connections to Play

“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” Plato

 

When I think back to my childhood the sand box is one of the my first memories of playing outside.  I remember going with my dad and younger brother to pick out the wood to build the box and then helping my dad hammer it together.  My brother and I spent hours playing in the sand box making mud pies and building sand castles. 

 

Behind the house that I grew up was a "forest" or what we considered a foster.  There were a lot of trees and alley ways so you could connect to another neighborhood.  We saw wild life back there - deer, racoons and skunks, built forts, had scecret meetings, dug for treasures, and carved into the trees. 

 

A lot of my play experiences involoved the out doors.  I remember always being outside, going for walks, riding bikes, playing in the back or front yard.  Our neighbor hood had a lot of kids that were around the same age as my brother and we were always playing with them.  My mom and dad always encouraged us to go outside.   As we grew older playing outside started to include building a garden box and planting flowers and vegetables.

 

Now that I have a 2 year old see parents being more cautious with their children (even my own parents with their granddaughter).  I don't see a lot of children playing outside anymore.  The children I work with when you ask them what they did over the weekend I hear a lot of I played video games or went to the movies.  I don't hear a lot about them doing things outside.  I am not sure if this has to do with people feeling unsafe by not sending their children out side but it is very different from how I was raised. 

 

I would like to think that as an adult my love for playing outdoors has helped me to raise my daughter in the way that I was raised.  My husband and I enjoy doing things outdoors with her.  I still remember one of the first times by dad babysat my daughter when she was about 1 years old and I came home and asked my dad what they did today.  He said we watched TV, read books, colored, played with toys...I said you didn't go outside it was beautiful out today (which meant there was no rain).  He looked at me and said not it was cold.  I told him that is why she has a jacket and hat.  If you are going to watch her she needs to go outside for at least 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes in the afternoon  - even if it is you pushing her in her stroller. 

 

My hope is for my daughter to grow up loving to be out doors and not wanting to sit at home in front of the TV or playing video games.  I hope that children are given the opportunity to being able to play outside and the busy lives their parents lead do not lead to children not being able to play. 

 

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

 -George Bernard Shaw

 

 

 

 

 

Relationship Reflections

"Human relationships, and the effects of relationships on relationships, are the building blcoks of healthy development" (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000, p. 4)

I have many relationships in my life - I have the relationships within my family both immediate and extended, my working group, my close circle of friends that I have known all my life and friends that I have only know a few years.  Relationships are important to me because the relationships I have in my life have helped create who I am in this world.  Some of the relationships I have had - had made small impacts in my life to help guide me with decisions and other relationships have made huge impacts in my life. 

My husband is someone that I have both a positive partnership and relationship with.  We have known each other a very long time and I met him when I had just graduated high school.  At that time in my life I was young and carefree and a lot of dreams floating around in my head.  As we have gotten older together we have both learned that a key to our relationship and parternship was communication.  Communication didn't have to be verbal but being able to express ourselves.  Email became our best friend (this was before the days of cell phones and texting) and I waited by the mail box for a letter by snail mail.  As our relationship blossmed into something more we formed a partnership to last a life time.  In order to have this partnership a key to keeping this partnership was the trust that we had for each other and in each other.  One of the reasons I value this relationship is because I am able to share my dreams with my husband and he is able to help me achieve my dreams - whether it is just with him being there to support me, help out financially or even pushing me to take the first step he is there for me.  He has helped me to be a better person both personally and professionally. 

Another relationship that I have a positive relationship with is sickness/illness. This may be an unsusual relationship but even though this relationship can be mean to people the relationship has helped me to live a better life.  I have learned through illness that there is more to life than work, I need to tell the people I love - that I love them more and I when I want a day to play hooky I don't have to feel bad about it.  We never know if we will awake to see tomorrow so we need to live today as if it is our last day on earth. 

My two year old daughter is also someone who I have a positive relationship with.  She has taught me that I don't have to feel guilty about going to work every day instead of being with her during the day.  She helped my husband and I communicate even more as we learned to become first time parents.  She has helped me to learn that I can ask for help and I won't be considered a failure.  She has learned to trust me that I will be there for her.  As I have grown as a mother over the past 2 years I have learned to value the time when she wants to hold my hand and walk on the beach or when even when she is adamant she doesn't need my help putting on her clothes.   I have learned to understand that in relationships that both parties need to be able to grow and trust each other. 

One of the keys that I see in all relationships is trust both professionally and personnally.  If I don't have trust with my co workers this will not create a good work environment and if I don't trust my family or friends we will not be able to communicate with each other.