- For this assignment, imagine the following scenario:You are working in an early childhood setting of your choice—a hospital, a child care center, a social service agency. You receive word that the child of a family who has recently emigrated from a country you know nothing about will join your group soon. You want to prepare yourself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, you are enrolled in a course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated you need to know more than surface facts about their country of origin.
My family's country of origin is India.
I will prepare myself to be culturally responsive towards this family by:
-Learning the dialect that my family speaks, and understanding the differences between their dialect and other dialects in their country
-Learning the meal time traditions of families in India
-Learning about the religious holidays and traditions of this country
-Learning the traditional views on school, and home-school relationships in this country
-Learning the traditional gender roles and expectations of this country
I hope that my understanding of these specific things will allow me to understand the expectations that the family has on me as their child's teacher. I hope that I will understand ways to interact with the parents and the child so that I can increase their comfort level, and assure the eventual trust between myself and the family. I hope that I will be able to respectfully invite the family to share aspects of their culture with the classroom, but to do so in a way that does not appear abrasive or out of line.
