week 8 blog assignment

I have several hopes that I have when I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds. One hope is that I want every child and their family to be treated equally and respected no matter what their background is. To make sure everyone is treated equally, we need to first get to know the family and their background. By knowing more about the background and the culture, we can slowly establish a positive and trust relationship with our families. My goal for the early childhood field that is related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice is to involve more parents and families into the program so that children have more opportunities to learn each other’s background and cultures in the classroom.

I would like to thank all my classmates for giving me supports and sharing valuable thoughts and ideas through discussion boards and comments. By reading through the responses I have got, I have gained important and new knowledge in the field, and I have also learned different ways to support families in the classroom. I wish you all the best in the future course and look forward to working with everyone once again.

week 7 blog assignment

A family from Laos will come to the program later and I know very limited knowledge about this country. First I will check on the internet to find out useful information about this country, for example, geographical region, language, food, politics and living standards. Then I will chat with colleagues to see if they can provide me with any useful information. I will try to learn educational system of the country so that I know the different standards/expectations the family may have. I can learn simple greeting from their language to make them feel welcoming and respectful. I also need to be aware of any particular customs about this country to avoid being offensive to them. 

By preparing myself with enough information about this country and the differences we may have, I may be able to create a welcoming environment for this family. I hope this preparations will benefit me in knowing more about the country, the family, the value of education and possible expectations for their child. I hope it will also be beneficial to the family because they can feel that I am respectful to their culture and their country, and they will feel relaxing and open when sharing their thoughts with me. I hope by preparing myself, both the family and I can be open to each other, so that when the child joins the program, I can better assist him/her in adjusting to the class.

Personal experience regarding bias and prejudice

There are many other incidents about bias and prejudice happening in China. I experience and witness bias and prejudice quite often. In China, early childhood educators are still considered to be babysitters. When Chinese people find out that I’m an early childhood educator, they are puzzled and question why I want to be a “babysitter”. When they hear that there is a male early childhood educator at my school, they become even more unbelievable because they think “babysitting” is for ladies. These are two different examples regarding to work bias and gender bias. Everyone should have the same right and equal chance of working at different jobs. Chinese people have bias on early childhood education and I feel disrespectful and angry when this happen to me. 

I believe that people in China don’t have enough knowledge and information about what early childhood professionals do at school and they believe that young children don’t know anything until they reach certain age. To change this and turn the bias down for greater equity, we need to show the public what we do in the classroom so that they have more concrete understanding about our job. At the same time, to encourage more male teachers in the field will help reduce the gender bias a bit more. 

microaggression

I experiences microaggression myself as an immigrant to a western country. Even though I have lived in Canada for about half of my life, I still experience microaggression quite often. I remember when I was in the university during lab tutorial, we needed to find people to group together and do projects. The “white” students often show unwillingness to be paired with Asian students, and they would suggest that we could pair up with students with our own language and background. It was uncomfortable hearing something like this even though they didn’t show any impolite words but I still felt discriminating here.

After learning more about microaggression this week, I become more aware of these issues and learn to avoid any discrimination to people, especially about classism. Classifying people with their economic status is discrimination, prejudice, and stereotype. Being able to view people equally regardless of their gender, background, socioeconomic status, education and religions is very important as an early childhood educator because we need to be good models for children to eliminate these discriminations.