Indian family

The family in my scenario are from India, and the setting is a child care center.

The first thing I will do is to make their culture to be seen or felt in the classroom. As a new child in a new environment, if he/she can find something that is related to his/her culture, he/she will feel safe and comfortable in the new school setting. The culture of India in the classroom can be some posters of their culture’s celebrations, dolls of their skin color, the language display, the story books of India or Indian folk tales. In this way, the child will feel that he/she is related or bound with the new environment to help the child settle in school. Meanwhile, it is a good sign for parents to know that their culture is respected in school, and their family is welcomed by school.

The second thing I would do is to get to know some knowledge of India and Indian culture about children. I want to find out if there is something special in Indian culture about children. In China, children will wear jade and a red string when it is their zodiac year, so I would like to know if there is something similar to that in India too. It helps me answer the questions from other kids about India and their culture as well.

The third thing that I would do is that I would like to reflect on myself to see if I have any bias or prejudice about people from India. I have to make sure that I treat this child equally.  Meanwhile, I am the model for other children to copy and follow as well. It is important for me to show my equity and justice to everyone.

The fourth thing will be cultural related activities. I hope my children in the class can be open minded and caring to people around them regardless of their skin colors, cultural backgrounds, or languages. As a teacher I will organize and plan some cultural related activities for children to engage in to get to know other cultures better, and to offer a chance for others to get to know the new comer.

The fifth thing that I would do is to get to know the family. Only knowing of the Indian culture is not good enough to help me understand the family better, as each family has their unique home culture. I would start and take the initiative to talk to parents to have some specific knowledge of this family to figure out the best way to support their home culture at school.

Doing the above five things I think is a win-win strategy. Family and the child can settle down in the new environment with my help, and they will feel comfortable to talk to me anything that they want to share with me. They will feel respected and valued at school. They also will know that their home culture is supported by school as well.Meanwhile, I build up a good relationship with the family, so I have their support to help the child to integrate into the new school setting. For me, I have a chance to practice and respect diversity in my classroom, and it helps me rich my teaching activities. I hope the five strategies work out, so I can have a general idea of what do to with new students from a different cultural background, and I can help the family out when they need my help. 

My own experience of bias and prejudices

I was interested in dancing when I was in 6 grade, so I volunteered to be a member of dancing club. When I was signed up, nobody said no to me or was upset about my presence. By the time, it was my school’s 60 years anniversary, so we were supposed to have 3 dances to be performed in that celebration. I was practicing and learning with all other children all the time for six weeks, and I knew the three dances by heart, and I was one of the best ones. Until one day, a teacher came, looked at us, and told the coach that I might not be able to perform at the celebration, as I am not tall enough! I admitted that I was the shortest one among the girls, but I was the best one among them as well. The teacher even did not have a look at my dance to make the decision to kick me out. I was working so hard on practicing for the whole 6 weeks. I was really sad and disappointed. 

The teacher had the bias to say all the dancers must be slim and tall, and if I was not as tall as others or I was the shortest one, I should not be even in the club at all. She even would not give me a chance to see how I danced to decide if I was qualified or not. She did not give me any chance to prove myself. I could not have my voice heard either, as she was the authority back then.

The incident made me feel really sad, upset, and angry. I felt I was treated differently and I was not even able to say anything for myself. Meanwhile, I felt like in the future I should be a person of sympathy, and I should respect and value others and give them the chance to prove who they are, and avoid having prejudgement and prejudice on people.

I think there were many things could be done to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity. For example, all the dances that we practiced were a group dance. Dancers should be of different height to make sure everyone could be seen by the audience. I could be easily arranged to be in the front row or somewhere that I would not block anyone behind me. Meanwhile, the layers of the dance makes the dance more beautiful. In this way, I think equity was shown, and I could tell people were trying to involve everyone to be in the community. 

That is to say, as long as people try to respect others and to be flexible, there will be more opportunities for them to turn prejudices, biases, or oppressions into equity.

Microaggression

This week, at school, one of the Chinese movie star’s son was enrolled. She came to have a pre-visit before the first day of his son’s enrollment. Expats did not know who she was, and just bet she was one of the new moms to walk around the school. However, Chinese working and teaching staff, they all recognized her, and went up to her to talk to her. You could tell the excitement that they would have. While people walking by, especially expats, you can tell from their facial expression and eyes that they were actually saying: You Chinese just block the corridor, yelling and making nonsense. Some expats even asked about what happened and why Chinese were also getting together, talking in such an excitement. I feel the disrespect and misunderstanding among two different cultures when I was observing it. In Chinese culture, people believe that it is important to show your happiness by smiling and talking to people with excitement, and socialization is significant in our lives too. We are close to all of our family members, as well as to our friends, and colleagues. However, expats are more willing to keep the distance with others, and talk and smile in a quiet and gentle way to show the politeness and manners. I do believe this micoraggression happens due to the misunderstanding of how people express their happiness in different cultures.

This is the microaggression that happened in our school. Chinese staff, as local staff, are not paid or respected well enough in our school environment. Sometimes, expats just do not know that why Chinese people always stick together and talk in an excitement. 

From the observation, I feel that discrimination, prejudice, and stereotype on people will hurt people’s feelings, especially will make people of subculture feel they are inferior. I believe I would be more careful about the word choice when I am talking to a person who is different from me, and I would like to get to know more different cultures and traditions. At the same time, I feel like if people do not communicate about their confusion or what upsets them and really get to know each other, the misunderstanding will just continue, and microaggression will not be able to eliminated in our community. 

Microaggression

This week, at school, one of the Chinese movie star’s son was enrolled. She came to have a pre-visit before the first day of his son’s enrollment. Expats did not know who she was, and just bet she was one of the new moms to walk around the school. However, Chinese working and teaching staff, they all recognized her, and went up to her to talk to her. You could tell the excitement that they would have. While people walking by, especially expats, you can tell from their facial expression and eyes that they were actually saying: You Chinese just block the corridor, yelling and making nonsense. Some expats even asked about what happened and why Chinese were also getting together, talking in such an excitement. I feel the disrespect and misunderstanding among two different cultures when I was observing it. In Chinese culture, people believe that it is important to show your happiness by smiling and talking to people with excitement, and socialization is significant in our lives too. We are close to all of our family members, as well as to our friends, and colleagues. However, expats are more willing to keep the distance with others, and talk and smile in a quiet and gentle way to show the politeness and manners. I do believe this micoraggression happens due to the misunderstanding of how people express their happiness in different cultures.

This is the microaggression that happened in our school. Chinese staff, as local staff, are not paid or respected well enough in our school environment. Sometimes, expats just do not know that why Chinese people always stick together and talk in an excitement. 

From the observation, I feel that discrimination, prejudice, and stereotype on people will hurt people’s feelings, especially will make people of subculture feel they are inferior. I believe I would be more careful about the word choice when I am talking to a person who is different from me, and I would like to get to know more different cultures and traditions. At the same time, I feel like if people do not communicate about their confusion or what upsets them and really get to know each other, the misunderstanding will just continue, and microaggression will not be able to eliminated in our community. 

What I know from the people I know

Amanda, my Chinese colleague and friend, she believed that culture is where a person comes from and what religious belief that person holds. She thought diversity means the mix of different cultures, and as a teacher, diversity means to use various strategies to meet children’s various interests and needs.

Chris, my husband, he told me that culture means the daily practice of people, and what has happened in a country’s history. His point of view about diversity is that diversity is happening everywhere around us. Race and language are the only two basic diversity that we can tell, but diversity means that anything makes a person different from others.

Grace, my childhood friend. She thought about it for a while and said that culture is about the festivals, food, and dress-up. It is also about the ways that how people feel comfortable to live. The answer of diversity was that diversity is why people are different from each other, and the different social identities that each person carries with them.

Reading through the answers, I found out that the talked about the surface culture differences like festivals, history, language, and races, social identities like where they come from, religious beliefs, and daily practices, and early childhood educators responsibilities for diversity at school, such as how to meet various interests and needs of children from different cultures. 

The aspects that I have learned from the course, but not included in the answers are deep cultures about culture diversity, culture discontinuity and continuity about culture diversity. They did not include the equity in their definitions either. When they were giving me the answers, they did not think any further than surface culture diversity that we can see. At the same time, they were talking about diversity, but they did not think of the consequences of culture discontinuity, and actually culture discontinuity happens quite often in nowadays.

The answers that they gave makes me realize how I thought about culture and diversity before I learned this course. I probably only saw surface culture as well, and I did not realize the culture discontinuity happening around me either. The definitions influenced me on having a deeper thinking and better recognition of diversity. I also realize that I should avoid some bias and assumptions that I would have before, when I am facing or working with children from various culture differences. Children are all different and we should treat them as the experts in their own world. What’s more, no matter where children come from, they should be treated equally.

What I will take with me

I will take those three items with me. The first one is a Chinese doll, the second one is a puzzle that I made for our first year anniversary, and the third item is the computer. 

I chose the Chinese doll, as it was my favorite toy when I was a little girl. I talked to it, played with it, and slept with it for a long time. I made her clothes and did make-up for her. It is not only a doll to me, she is my friend that I can tell her all my secrets, happiness, and sadness. She will always smile back to me, which makes me feel relived after talking to her. I cherish her accompany, so I will take it with me.

The puzzle was made by me, and it recored all the places that my husband and I went together in the past year. We visited some places in China and in America, and we blend in two cultures well in our lives and in this puzzle. It witnessed our happiness in the first year of our marriage, so I will take it with me too.

The third item is the computer, as I would like to know about people who have the same experiences like us, and how they are doing in another country. I would like to know what is going on in the world as well. Computer will keep me in touch with the world, so I will take this item too.

If I could only keep one personal item with me, I would feel I am not a whole. My Chinese doll is the memories from my childhood,my puzzle is the witness of my current family, and the computer is the tool that I can keep in touch with others in the world. I would be very upset and sad, if I only could keep one item.

I feel like I am going through a transition from a pure culture to an international culture. I should be open-minded to accept the differences happening in my life. Things and people are different in the world, and we all share various diversity of family and social cultures. What we can do about diversity is to accept it, face it, and adjust ourselves to it. One more insight that I have gained is that diversity is changing by time and place, we should realize and respect the different forms of diversity around us. Sometimes, we are among the dominant culture, but sometimes, we can be out of it. No matter if we are or not, we need to remember who we are and blend in our unique family culture into the dominant one.

When I think of research

Before this course, I did not believe that I can conduct any research. I did not know any skills or knowledge of planning, designing or conducting a research project. However, after this 8-week-course, I have the knowledge and skills about the research, and I am able to have my own research simulation going on. I am very proud of myself, and I really appreciate the guidance for the professor, and the support from my colleagues. 

I used to think research is so hard that I have to be a full time researcher to be able to do it. Now I realize that as long as we know the rules and guidelines of the research, I will be able to conduct a research project or simulation on my own.

One of the lessons that I learned is about the topic choosing. I used to think the research topic must be something big, but now I know it should be very precise and delicate. In this way, researchers can focus on the aspect that they are choosing to work on. At the beginning of the course, my topic was very general and the topic was different from my explanation of my research. With the help from the professor, I started to narrow down my topic, and finally I came up with a good one. This process taught me much of how to plan and design my research. The other lesson that I have gained is about designing. Every week, we need to finish a chart, and with the help of those charts, we started to have a clear picture of our simulation design in front of me.

The challenge that I met was the definition of technical terms. I tried to read through more carefully in that paragraph to get the idea of the term, I read through other colleagues’ discussion posts to correct my understanding or prove mine, I looked up the resources on line to help me have a better understanding too. I grew a lot in this course. I also consistently had the problems about my APA format in the course. I had the support from the writing center and the professor, which I hope I am getting better at it now.

The perceptions of an early childhood professional is more profound for me now. Professionals in this field is not a stand alone group. Professionals and researchers should work closely with the participants by being involved in their worlds, using their languages, getting familiar with them, and asking the consent from those children as well. All above is not that easy to do. I have the respect for the professionals in this field, as children and power relationship can be the biggest challenge in the process of research.

Thank you for Dr. Dartt and my colleagues for sharing and supporting me through this course. I do appreciate the comments and suggestions from Dr, Dartt, which helped me modify and polish my research simulation to be a better one. I also appreciate the comments and posts that my colleagues were sharing during the whole course. I hope we can work closely again to help and support each other to finish our Master Degree.