Friday, February 22, 2013

Welcoming Families From Around the World


I chose Paraguay as my family’s country of origin. I have never heard of this particular country before. Our nation is made up of many cultures and diversities.  Ways in which I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards the Paraguay family is to first recognize my own culture so I will be able to understand my family’s culture.  Then I would take steps to examine my attitudes toward people different than me. Next, I would gather information about Paraguay family’s culture, values, beliefs and traditions to be able to communicate with the family to find out more. I would implement strategies to bring rich cultural content into my classroom and teachings to expand their knowledge also incorporate their interest.  Finally, I would help children and families develop their own culturally sensitive skills to be successful in our diverse and global world.

I hope that the family from Paraguay and I would benefit by gaining a better understanding of cultures, values beliefs and traditions. This knowledge would provide an opportunity to further develop my internal biases and inform my relationship with others while helping the family to develop their own skills to be success in our nation.

 

References

Sparks, L. & Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. NAEYC: Washington, DC

Miranda, E. (2010). Going global in Arlington, Virginia. Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 4(2), 219--226

4 comments:

  1. Ebony, I think that it is extremely important for us to get to know our own culture to better understand where other's come from. Also, I like how you talk about getting to know our attitudes because how we feel about other's definitely determines how we treat other's and think about them in society and based on their differences.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I also posted in my response that I would gather information about the country and conduct my own research. I think that this provides an imporatant background for interacting with the child and family as well as provides some information about how to prepare the classroom and students.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ebony,
    Very Good Post! I would also want to know about their culture to be able to understand how they do certain things. The way we look at people gives them a certain kind of attitude, we need to be careful of how we use our body language with others.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ebony it's a great idea to share our culture with the new family, I will use this. We not only need to know all we can about their culture, but by incorporating lessons about our own culture will help the child to learn our ways too. This will create a welcoming feeling for the kids from other countries.

    ReplyDelete