Welcoming Children From Around the World

My name is Tawanda Stewart and I work as a Child Life Specialist at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Children’s Hospital.  Today we will be welcoming the Lee Family from Singapore.   The father is fluent in English but his wife and their young son Jet speaks Chinese only.  Jet is having a surgical procedure and the family has had a very long flight from Singapore to the United States so I’m taking that into consideration on their first day in America.  This will be my first time working with a Chinese family so I’m excited and nervous at the same time.  What has really prepared me for welcoming this family is a course that I’m currently enrolled in that talk about diversity.  While preparing for the course I research the Chinese culture and learned that a lot.  I have narrowed down five ways that I will be culturally responsive towards this family.

1.       I will review the Jet Lee patient charts to see what surgical procedures he will be having.  I will then meet with the doctors and nurses to see how long the recovery will be and if he’s staying for recovery in the United States.

2.       I will then call the family prior to their arrival with an interpreter to translate a welcome form me.  Introducing myself, my role and leaving my contact information.  The contact information will be emailed and sent my mailed in the preferred language of the family.  I will then ask the interpreter to ask the parents what Jet likes to do in his spare time.  His favorite sports, T.V. shows, music etc.

3.       When the family arrives I will greet them with hi and a hand shakes.  I will have the interpreter present to better help the families understand what I’m saying as well as answer any question they might have.  Along with the nurses we will take a tour of the hospital and explain my role again to the family and Jet.  I will give them a tour of our play room and explain to them that I provide age appropriate/developmentally preparation for patients who will be getting a medical procedure done that might be scary or frightening. I make sure that the patients have an opportunity to have all their fears and questions addressed before their procedure.  I explain to the family I do this by providing pictures, medical equipment, and teaching dolls to prepare patients for their procedures, focusing on what the patient will feel, hear, see and smell. Sometime patients need extra support during their procedures. I let them know that am there to help them along the way and provide procedural support, having a familiar face and words of encourage.

4.       Prior to the family arriving I ask the interpreter to teach me words that I can learn and say to Jet.  I want to build a relationship with him and his parents by respecting their home language.  I will also make sure that there are a variety of children’s books, magazines and other materials about their culture and other culture as well. 

5.       I will try to get the family to understand that I’m here to for them. I love to encourage my patients to have some fun! One of the things I knows with helping children to forget about their surgical procedures is to get out of the bed when they can and join me and other children and families in the playroom.  I often use art activities to help me better understand what my patients are going through and how they feel about their hospitalization. Emotions and feelings can often be represented through art. This gives me a chance to make sure they are coping well with being in the hospital.   

I hope that the Lee family knows that I really want their culture to be respected.  So to help me prepare I’ve took it upon myself to research their culture greeting styles and some of the things Jet likes to do.  I also reached out to the family prior to their arrival to extend a welcome. I used the interpreter to help me and the family better communicate.  I know that this experience has helped me learn more about the Chinese culture and I pray that the family will receive the care that they need and that their experience in America was a pleasant experience.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

A memory I have of an incident that I experience prejudice was when I was younger working part-time as a cashier in a major department store.  I was born and partly raised in Chicago Illinois, and moved to Tennessee when I was a teenager.  Coming from Chicago I never remembering experiencing any type of prejudice or even hearing my family talks about experiencing any in or around 1980’s.  When we moved to Tennessee it was so racially divided to and everywhere I turned there was talk about race.  A memory I have of an incident that I experience prejudice was when I was younger working part-time as a cashier in a major department store.  A white older male wanted to purchase items, I spoke like I always did to all of my customers and didn’t get a response so I asked did he find everything ok and he didn’t reply.  I continue to smile all the time thinking to myself he’s not a friendly guy or he’s having a bad day.  I told him how much his purchase was and he laid the money on the counter.  I didn’t think anything of it so I got the money off the counter and went to give him his change and he asked me to lay it on the counter.  So out of respect I did, so I then reach to give him his receipt and he asked me to lay it on the counter as well.  So I continue to think to me…does he have a cold and don’t want to me to catch his germs!  But then a white female cashier came to relieve me for lunch and he smiled and asked her how her day was.  To make an even longer story short he left and the white cashier laughed and the explained to me that he is very prejudice and didn’t like black people.  I felt very hurt and somewhat dirty, it’s a feeling I can’t really explain.  This incident not only showed me that prejudice still was present but some people still thought that it was funny for someone to have feelings about another race/person  and show it in a negative way.  This experience has taught me to not question my identity or feel or thinking negatively about myself because of my race.  This experience has taught me to never let anyone make me feel ashamed about my race because of their ignorance. This experience has taught me to continue to be kind to others and to treat others with respect regardless of their race.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

My personal experience with micro-aggressions would have to be being “classism” as pregnant when I was not.  A few years ago I gave birth to a baby boy and had a really hard time losing weight after the birth of my son.  A few times after that when my son was around a year old and I return to work I was asked was I pregnant.  Of course this made me feel bad because I knew I wasn’t pregnant but everyone saw me as being fat!  This made my self esteem very low and made me wear larger sized clothes which I though would hide the weight but it only made me look larger.  Professionally I didn’t want to do anything that needed me to be center of attention.  This meant standing to speak in front of crowds, or even giving tours of our work space.  These alone made me realize that I needed to lose weight and get my health and self-esteem back on track.  I did lose the weight and now I often see myself thinking when I see a woman with a large stomach area “is she pregnant”.  But I dare to ask because I know how it made me feel and that’s not the feeling I want anyone to experience especially if their not pregnant.  This is also "sterotyping"

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

The people that I decided to talk with are a co-worker (Caucasian), my sister in law (Hispanic) and my youngest son’s preschool teacher (African-American) who just moved to Tennessee from California.  The person that I feel in some ways isdifferent culturally is my sister in law.  She is Hispanic and her religion is Catholic. When I asked each of them to define culture and diversity this is what they each stated:

Co-Worker (Caucasian) defined culture as a set of values within a family.  He defined diversity as people with different opinions, backgrounds religious beliefs, political beliefs, sexual orientations, heritage, and life experiences.

Sister in Law (Hispanic) defined culture as a belief system within a group of people or family.  She defined diversity as anything that sets one individual apart from another (gender, race, ethnicity, and more recently sexual orientation differences).

Pre-school teacher (African-American) defined culture as a way in which we live.  Our music, foods we eat, and family traditions.  She went on to explain that culture is something that can come from a variety of combined things like lifestyles, religion, class etc.  She defined diversity as a wide range of interests, backgrounds and experiences

When speaking with them all their views on culture and diversity was pretty much inline with what I have been learning the course so far.  An example would be we all believe that culture is the values and beliefs that we are accustom too or part of our family traditions.  

This assignment has gotten me to expand on my knowledge of different cultures within my family.  I thought that I knew my sister in law well but I never asked her about her culture.  She explains to me that her culture and religion is very important to her and she was so excited to share many things with me and the rest of my family.  I’m so excited that this assignment brought awareness to me on the importance of making everyone feel welcome and respected regardless of their culture.  An example that she gave was never making a decision with asking her husband because he is head of the house.  She explained that a wife shouldn’t work but staying at home to care for the children, home and the needs of her husband.  There were many family and culture experiences she shared with me and I’m grateful that I got to learn more about her personally because I want her to feel respected and valued in our family.

My Family Culture

       If I had to leave this country after a major catastrophe and I had to only take three small items with me that represent my culture I would take my Holy Bible, a family photo album and my smart phone.  The holy bible to me is my foundation in which I try to live by.  Its something  that my culture has strongly abided by for generations and having my personal bible with me which contain notes and highlighted scriptures could really help to get me through what I think would be a difficult adjustment.  My family photo album is has pictures of past and present family members.  My family is very big on pictures and when where together we take a lot of photos.  Having the album with me will help me to remember those that are not with me and even have picture to pass down to my children of family members.  I would take my smart phone because it contains a lot of information about my family.  Email address, contact information, pictures and if there is internet connection I can stay connected by social media, text and email.       

       Upon arrival to this country I were  told  that I could only keep one personal item and would have to give up the other two items I brought with me I would choose to keep my family photo album or my smart phone.  This one was hard for me to answer because if I was allowed to use my phone to take pictures of photos from the album I would keep the phone.  If I wasn’t allowed to take the pictures I might take the photo album. ( this was a hard one for me)

Doing this assignment really got me to thinking about my family culture and how much they mean to me.  I value my relationships with my family and culture and would hate to have it all taken away from me due to any devastation.  This also got me to thinking about the many families who had to leave their families and homes during hurricane Katrina.  Until I had to think and answer these questions it got me to thinking about how hard it was for them and my heart goes out to them all over again.  This has made me more aware of the things I value most (family and culture) can be taken away.  If I ever had to go anywhere in this world would others understand me and my culture? 

        

        

        

        

 

When I Think of Research......

When I think of research I think of how this course has really broadened my thinking process on research.  I now understand the importance of why research needs to be theory grounded, well planned, thoroughly analyzed, practicable, and morally fair and just.  All of this has taught me that if a research study included all of he following the researcher has provided all of the components to have a valid research study.  One of the things that I encounter at the beginning of this course was understanding all of the terminology.  After about week 6 and reviewing all of the resources from the course I have a better understanding of what I was reading. It now makes more sense and I can put together all that I have learned and apply it to my daily study of this field.  This course has also made my passion for the early childhood profession stronger.  Now when I read research studies I will have a better understanding of the research process and can read the study to see if the researcher has all of the components to make the study valid and beneficial for me and others to share in the field of early childhood education.  I have truly enjoyed this class and i wish everyone much success!

Research Around the World

This week’s assignment was very informative and interesting.  I say this because I have such a deep passion for early childhood education and to see that other countries value it as well was very pleasing to me.  I choose to view Early Childhood Australia website.  Some of the researches topics discuss on this site were:

· Engaging Families: Building Strong Communication

· Storytelling with young children

· Young children as active learners

The website contained a lot of information in regards to children and families.  The website was easy to navigate and understand.  It was interesting to read Australia’s code of ethics which is similar to NAEYC.  I think one of the things that we all have in common is the well being of children and the importance of promoting healthy starts in quality early childhood programs.