Week 7: Diversity as Opportunity

The following is our blog assignment for this week:

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.

In order to complete this assignment, first choose a country you know nothing about as this family’s country of origin.
Post the following:

• The name of “your” family’s country of origin
• At least five ways in which you will prepare yourself to be culturally responsive towards this family
• A brief statement describing in what ways you hope that these preparations will benefit both you and the family.
This hypothetical family is from Cuba. Even though I live in Florida and geographically, this country is close, I know very little about it, much less about what a family would experience emigrating to the US from there. In order to prepare myself to welcome them to my services in a culturally sensitive and responsive way I would:
1. Learn about the history and current situation of the nation. This will be beneficial in working with the child and family, as I will have some initial insight on their perspectives.
2. I would find out and seek resources in my community that could be of professional assistance to me in my education about the cultural issues that are relevant. I would also invest in a Spanish/English dictionary and become familiar with useful words/phrases for the initial conversations with the family.
3.  Setting up a time to meet with the child and family when we are able to discuss their expectations of me as a service provider as well as to establish rapport. Working with the child and family will be more effective if they know my own cultural background, and may help them feel more comfortable educating me on their unique family structure.
4. Because music is very important to me, and a part of most cultures, I would start listening to Cuban music. Though I would not be able to understand the lyrics, one can get a sense of the cultural perspectives of a people this way. Looking up translated lyrics would be a good way of assimilating to working with the family as well as a possible discussion starter when beginning services.
5. One other activity I would engage in to prepare working with a Cuban family would be to obtain the knowledge and experience from colleagues. I would be interested in knowing what some of the common issues are for them in emigrating to the US so that I may be prepared if these are present in my case.
With the availability of the internet and so much information about the world available to us, as professionals in the early childhood field, I believe that we can agree that preparation is half the battle often times in working with children and their families. In my experience in child welfare, clients know when you are not prepared or do not have adequate knowledge about something. I find that I am a much more confident professional if I have a well-rounded knowledge about certain aspects of my job. Of course, working with children and families can also be unpredictable, and therefore, gaining unexpected knowledge about the cultural needs and perspectives of those we serve makes work exciting and rewarding.