Professional Hopes and Goals

When thinking about working with diverse families and children, I want to be able to provide the best services possible to give them the best experiences possible for them. 

I would like for all early childhood educators, directors, advocates and policy makers to understand the importance diversity plays on child development and understand how to provide services to diverse populations with these understandings in mind.

I want to thank all my colleagues for your input and comments and also encourage everyone to strive for their goals and continue to grow in your profession.  Happy Holidays!!!

Namibia

Namibia is a country located in Southwest Africa that borders the Atlantic Ocean.  I will research the background of the country to learn more about their culture, language and their view on child development. I will get some personal background of the family to learn about their family.  Meeting with the family to learn from them what they expect from our center.  Learn the best ways of communicating with them, explain how our center operates, the mission of our agency, and their goals and expectations for their child while attending our center.  Also encourage the family to share their culture and language with other children and families so that they can understand how to be a support for this family as well. 

By following these preparations it will give me some insight as to what this family might expect, how to meet their needs and what challenges we may encounter in providing services for them.  By letting the family know that we respect them and their culture, have open communication with them and want them to feel encouraged to participate in their child's education this will build a strong connection with the family and other families in the center.   

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

The issues that I have faced with biases, have unfortunately come from people with similar social identities as mine.  I thought that people would actually be happy to see me promoted to a better position, but it became clear that for many, it became a way to place blame and put things off on.  It made me feel very uncomfortable and angry that a person would try to underhandedly go about putting things on me instead of just coming to me and explain how things were supposed to be done or how they needed things done to be effective.  I could have respected that more than going behind my back to make themselves look better.  My focus was on providing better quality services for the children and families that we serve, and reaching the population we were set up to serve.  The other person's focus seemed to be on passing her work  on to others and blaming others for issues she should have addressed. 

These factors led to my current supervisor asking me to come over permanently to join her team at another site and the woman was later let go from that position.  By her trying to justify the unfair ways in which she addressed issues, she was the one who ended up losing her job instead of making me look bad.  I think that the way I handled myself and the fact that I had a supervisor who saw and heard what was going on in the background helped make the opportunity better for me.