Family Origin and Welcoming Different Family origins

Looking as a childcare provider/school worker a new family has arrived in the office. They came over from Pakistan.

The first thing I would do when learning of the new immigrant family would be to research their home country and city. Learning about the language and traditions of their country. I would also spend time learning about the climate, agriculture, and sports/music. The second thing I would do would be to learn a few simple phrases in their primary language to show them respect to their culture. I would try to line up a translator to ensure communication between myself and the family to ensure proper care for their child. I would try to prepare a welcome packet for the family of all important information so they have it in writing as well as take the time to explain the policies of the center. The last thing I would do would be to set up a meeting with the child's teacher and all over staff to ensure a cultural responsive atmosphere upon the child's arrival.

I would hope that this preparation would allow for the teachers to learn more about the family they will be working with and for the family to feel welcome and invited into the early learning community. Coming to a new country must be a bit scary and having a welcome environment for their children would put them at ease to immerse themselves into the community.

Microagressions

In my time as an educator I have been faced with many different cultures and situations. This week being a short week, I had less students and less things were happening. However, one major microagression that I saw was with two students. After the beginning of our program they spent some time arguing over some toy but as the fight continued name calling began. At this time one of the students was sent in to see me regarding what they said. I was a little confused, as an administrator I don't normally deal with name calling situations. This is when I found out the student called another student "White Girl." Now this other student is lighter skin but not white. The little boy didn't understand what he said wrong, he is 7. 

I was a little hurt by the comment, as he used the term as a form of negative name calling. He obviously heard someone say it but he didn't understand what he said wrong. 

My observations within programs is that parents perceive the program and staff in a certain way. Stereotyping their behaviors and actions. Most parents will walk into a situation in attack mode to counter any prejudice they perceive. 

My Family Culture

The challenge of uprooting your life and being evacuated to another country with a completely different culture is a difficult task to swallow. What's even harder is choosing just three items to take with your family? Just three small items to describe your culture.

For my family there is an important point to make, besides the human members we have three pets. These are included in my family, not the items we would take. I think this is an important point to make because these animals are not just pets but family. Lucky (dog), Thomas (cat), and Izzy (cat) are all additional members with my fiance and daughter.

For our family, one of our photo books would need to come with us. This would be needed because it holds precious family moments and photos of our departed dog, Cinnamon. The second small item we would take would be one of our laptops. We hold most of our photos on the laptop and even in third world countries you can find locations that would allow for the use of computers. Our laptop/tablet would also allow for the communication between other family member through video (when accessible). The third item is more difficult to come up with, there is just so much that we use on a regular basis that describes our culture as a family. But it would probably be a kindle/some books for our daughter. We are both avid readers and love to read to our daughter. Without that, I think our lives would be disrupted.

Our photos are important because they show our families history. This is important to me because each family holds different experiences in a different light. Our adventures and big moments are the most important to us, this is shown through our photo books. COmmunication between our extended families is very important to our small family. I come from a loud Italian American family that is connected through many generations, where my fiance has a very large extended family of first cousins and aunts/uncles. Keeping in touch is important. Literature is important to us because it shows how important learning is to us as a family.

If someone told me I could not keep all the items upon arrival I would be very upset and frustrated. Unable to live where I wanted with my family and being kept from our extended family in a culture unlike our current one would probably break my spirit if I was told I was unable to keep what little I had left.

This exercise taught me that there is a lot that we could live without but the few items that mean the most I would not part with, but the most of all is keeping us all together.

building research competencies throughout my career

This course has opened my eyes to another level of early childhood education/studies. The methods of conducting research have expanded in my eyes and opened new career paths for the future, as well. I enjoyed learning about triangulation and the methods used during qualitative research. As a student, I am familiar with research but until this course we never discuss multiple methods data collection.

 After this course, I realized how in-depth the planning and designing of research studies can be to complete a competent study. Each step is important to the overall completion of the study, itself, and the contribution to the early childhood field of study.

The one challenge that I met well learning about research methods, was the amount of time needed to conduct these studies. I believe that for a study to be valid, the research must be given the time to complete all aspects without any time constraint to pressure their results.

The final question to answer would be how my perception of the field changed throughout this course. I would not say my perception changed about the early childhood field. However, my eyes are open to the research that still needs to be completed and the advancements that need to be made within the field to better serve the children we educate and their families.

It has been a great eight weeks working with my fellow colleagues and learning about their work experiences.

Early Childhood Australia

I chose to look into the Early Childhood Australia webpage. Below I have listed to link and basic information provide by Dr. Myers. 

Early Childhood Australia: This is the Australian equivalent to the U.S. based NAEYC. You can access several links to early childhood research from the menu on the left side of the home page.
http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/

Some of the current research topics being explore "down under" are school readiness, baby sleeping, child health and childhood obesity, and the Early Learning Years Framework. These resource themes are available on the sidebar on their homepage. 

I was wondering around the webpage when I noticed their code of ethics portion after exploring I was excited to see a literature review within this section. Ethics is very important for me as an educator and student.  

I enjoyed reading a bit about the Every Child magazine and the guidelines for authors. 

What is Equity?

For my research project simulation I will be researching how equity effects early childhood education and the educators who work in the field. From a professional stand point this research effects me as I review staff requirements and pay rates. Personally, I feel early childhood educators need to be given more respect and offered more training within  the field. Although my overall focus is equity in the field of early childhood education the subtropics will be focused around educator requirements and standards of learning for children. This is a very broad beginning but I think with a little refining and suggestions for directions from colleagues this topic can be researched in depth.

Consequences of International Early Childhood Programs

After speaking with colleagues, i believe there are several consequences to learning about the international early childhood field. One is the idea that we are virtually unable to help those impoverished countries reach their goals in the classroom. This can lead to a positive consequence of changing goals to serve overseas in those countries that need help within the early childhood field. Another consequence can be a personal drive to join organizations to help those in need of help.

My personal goal is to contribute to missions that go to impoverished countries to help children. Working with my program to create care packages from the children here to children there.