Welcoming Families From Around the World

As an early childhood professional, we encounter children from diverse backgrounds all the time whose families come from many different countries. For this week's assignment, I were asked in what ways can I prepare myself for working in an early childhood setting when a child of a family who has emigrated from a country that I know nothing about will be joining my classroom soon. I was told to choose a country I know nothing about as this family's country of origin.

I currently live in the United States, and the country of origin I chose for the family to be from was China. First of all, for me to be culturally responsive, I need to have the ability to relate and to communicate with others who I don't share the same backgrounds, cultures, languages, and ethnicity. In order to be an effective culturally responsive teacher, I will teach the "whole child". I will have to do research and learn about the Chinese culture and find out from the family as to what they expect concerning the child's education, and how I can support them. My classroom will need to reflect the Chinese culture of the family and child. I will want to build positive bridges between the home and school experiences, and use a variety of instructional strategies that are connected to the different learning styles of both the American culture and Chinese culture.

As I done research on the early childhood education in China, I found out that much of the curriculum content there is similar to an American program, but the teaching methods are different from the "developmentally-appropriate practices' advocated by early childhood educators in the United States (NAEYC, 1986). The emphasis is upon the teacher directed, total group instruction. All children are expected to do the same thing at the same time. They are expected to proceed at the same pace. The child is responsible for keeping up and poor performance is usually attributed to "not working hard enough." Unlike the early childhood curriculum in the United States, the teaching methods and available materials limit opportunities for creative expression or pursuit of individual interests. Most importantly, in China as well as in the United States, the educators and families greatly love and value their children. They make major investments in their children and the education system.

By keeping this in mind, as an early childhood educator, I hope the child, as well as myself, will be able to learn from each other's cultures and let this learning experience be beneficial to the child, family, and other children on how to liverespectfully together in a diverse classroom setting.

References:
National Association for the Education of Young Children. (1986). Position statement on developmentally appropriate practive in early childhood programs serving children from birth to age eight. Young Children, 41(6), 3-19.

Vaughan, JoAn. (1993). Early childhood education in China. Association for childhood educational international. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/kcts/preciouschildren/earlyed/read_vaughan.html.