Communicating Excellence

I would have to say that my worst critic would also be my greatest mentor.  The division branch manager for our program.  This is a true professional who has worked many years perfecting her communication behaviors.  I believes that she demonstrated wonderful communication skills in relaxed casual setting as well as a professional audience.  Her demeanor, her presences and her calming affect that she has on every person she comes into contact with wants to hold a conversation.  Her best quality is her ability to listen and respond to people appropriately. When she finds herself in confrontational or uncomfortable scenarios she responds instead of reacting to the situation.  This is something that I work for every time I find myself in a highly volatile or emotional situations.  This division branch manager is very quick to critic how that I handle stressful types of situations and conversations.  I have grown tremendously as a professional communicator because of her leadership.

A Note of Thanks

My hope in working with any family is to make them feel respected, valued, and welcome.  I believe that through all of the educational resources that we have any family can be a part of any community.  It’s my hope that in time our profession will empower the children of our future to accept everyone as equals.  I would like to pursue the social justice aspect of diversity and learn what types of proactive measures that I can take for the children of tomorrow.  As with each of my graduate classes, I have enjoyed my colleague’s comments, suggestions, and ideas.  Each of the people I have come to know is so unique and passionate about children and it makes me feel very honored to be included in this program.  Thank you all for a great class!

Welcoming a Family from Nigeria

As I prepare to travel to Colorado to see my baby brother deploy to Nigeria on a Special Forces mission, I would love to learn to about Nigeria. 

The family is from Hausa native culture.  The children have only spoken Hausa and the oldest child can speak very little English.

In preparation for this family’s arrival I am going prepare the classroom with PIC cards that describe the activities in their native language.

I will have a list of Islamic resources and religious affiliated organizations

I will recruit our military interpreter that speaks Arabic to be available upon arrival to help with translation.

Ensure to explain about the meals and snacks that our program provides and the reassure the children they will not experience hunger in our program.

Week Six My Journey

Since starting with my organization I have been vaguely aware that certain personal is afraid to hold the African American staff to the same expectations of all the other staff.  I am fairly new and still learning the history of our growth and lessons learned.  I have never truly witnessed personal bias in this capacity.   It has almost become a prejudice not of African Americans but a prejudice that African American staff will use their race to get what they want, or to get out what they do not want to do.    I have never felt differently about supervising anyone from any race, gender, age or background.  I have personally witnessed such fear of prejudice that they were actually being prejudice themselves.   The affect of prejudice among our leadership has diminished equity significantly.  It creates an environment in which all employees are not treated equally nor are they held accountable to the same standard.  Being able to lead, guide, mentor, and supervise employees equally is imperative. I want staff to always know that as their supervisor I will always treat them as individualize, and uphold them to the same standard as their collogues.  As I continue to grow and learn to lead my staff I hope that all my staff regardless of their ethnical background will appreciate that they are treated fair, and held to the same standards.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

The child development program aboard our military installation has a variety of resources available to us to help with all types of classroom challenges.  One in particular is our behavior specialist.  This person assesses classrooms and the children within those classrooms that need additional support.  This is a fairly new position within our organization and we have received little to no guidance on the person’s role and or her jurisdiction when it comes to performance expectations among staff members.  This team member is of equal seniority/ rank as I am the director.  The behavior specialist has a completely separate supervisor, and I have no say in what the behavior specialist implements inside my classroom.  Ideally this is supposed to be a partnership, however micro aggression is slowly tearing this, potentially amazing team, apart.  It’s my experience since accepting a role as an administrator that the most common form of micro aggression I experience is through mass distribution email.  Through these emails statements are made to insinuate that administration does not “have correct staff in classrooms”, “that directors need to learn get rooms under control before progress with children can be made,” and “they do not have a clue what is going on with these classrooms.” All of the emails are copied to all of upper management and never discussed privately with individual director.  It is so hurtful to be lumped together, and I feel like I had no sense of individual center identity.  I have been able to get more clarity on the different forms and the varying degrees of discrimination.  Micro aggression may sound small and insignificant in descriptive term, but its implications are tremendous

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture WK3

Janice Headrick

Culture is where I live and who I am.  Diversity is mixing all of the different cultures in a pot.

 

Crissy  McDonald

I believe that culture is everything around you.  You are your culture.  Culture is more than food, music and language.  It is the way in which we arrive at belonging.  Diversity is merely accepting anything that is different from what we know every day.

 

Christina Dieffenbach

Culture is everything in our world that means something to us.  Our culture defines our everyday lives and sustains our futures.  Diversity is the integrations of multiple cultures and respecting those cultures.

 

I believe both of my answers that I received collectively express what I have learned thus far about culture.  I think that culture is very detailed and specific yet the definitions we have discussed are very similar.  I think that if you really want to define a culture you have to look at its heritage.  Looking at where and why the people are who they are explains and defines their culture.  Defining a small farm boy from Iowa’s culture and the same age child who lives in Brooklyn, New York is very different.  The main components you are looking for are the same.  I believe that by listening to others explanation of culture helps explains people’s ability to accept different levels of diversity.  I understand that if a person can truly understand what and how a culture evolves and the importance of the culture, then the process of accepting and integration diversity will be a natural process not an achievable character

Only Three Things Wk2

I believe that if I lost everything in a disaster that having my three children alive and able to evacuate with me would be the only thing of importance to me.  There are no materialistic items that would be valued more than my babies.  If our family dog had survived and was allowed to come with us, I would choose her because she has been the entity that showed my children how to love and trust again after a horrific divorce and custody battle.  If she was not able to come with us then, I would give each of my three children one of my allotted items.  Understandably some of you are thinking that why would she not bring her bible, her, photos, her recipe book of passed down traditions?  I am thinking all of those memories, beliefs, and tradition are kept deep within my heart always available, and always there to share with my family.  To a child the smallest tokens of childhood, acceptance, and love a treasured in most insignificant items to adults, but to a child means everything.  That ragdoll, special baseball gloves, the weird hair band, or the ragged picture of mom with Easter bunny ears on?  Who knows what these items mean to a child but in a situation where everything that we know is now gone, still may exists in their tiny treasures they take with them.

I really feel like that before this class I had a strong family culture that was lead by our dominant culture.  However, after this week’s discussions and reflection I can feel even a great sense and a need to instill that more of our family culture with my children.  Helping them to learn about our culture, accept it, and help other understand and accept has a greater sense of importance.  I am so proud of my children and my entire extended family. Though we are far from functional or typical we are true to the values and belief that we hold dear.  I am a proud Sothern American but more importantly I hope to have let my mark on this world by mothering the three most beautifully compassionate loving, and human spirited people that I was capable of and they too were able to pass on my true love of family, American pride, and old fashion southern qualities (only the good ones of course!)