Professional Hopes and Goals

When I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds, I hope that it turns out to be an "easy challenge". Somewhat of an oximoron, I know. But on the surface, I work very well with people. That is easy for me. However, for the most part, I have been around people who have a similiar background as I do. But the "challenge" comes in when I start dealing with people with different backgrounds who have different points-of-views. Although I have quite a bit of experience with working/learning/interacting in diverse settings, there is still that "slight feeling of being uncomfortable" that causes me to doubt that I am able to do it in my own business. My facility will be available to "everyone". My concern is when they walk into the facility and see that it is ran mostly by my family and friends (not because I'm being prejudice or anything, they are just very supportive). Or when they hear that it is "black owned", I hope that I am not judged for that. I understand that I cannot control anyone else's actions or thoughts. But I want a fair chance just as the children do. Let me prove to you that me "having brown skin" has nothing to do how I run my business and how I care for these children. I was born with this passion. Therefore, the passion was in me before I even developed a "color".

"Mandatory Diverse Outreach", would be one goal I would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity and social justice. What that would consist of is reaching out to different people from different backgrounds in different ways.For example, with a child care facility, we could have a "street team" who goes out to different communities, especially diverse communities and tell them about the facility and what services we offer. But the "underlying main purpose" would be to search for people from different backgrounds who we don't service in the center, or who haven't had a chance to get into my facility for whatever reason (didn't know about it, no transportation, not confident in English, etc.). We should make it our business to try to service every ethnic background possible, ON A CONSISTENT BASIS. Not just when we feel like it or when we're feeling all "diverse" and everything. It should be an on-going basis.

With that being said, I would like to thank my colleagues for embracing me as a classmate. I believe we displayed a wonderful example of diversity, We all had similarities and differences and that made the course very interesting. We got along just fine and that shows that people from different backgrounds can get interact with each other and learn together. I wish you all the best as we continue our EC journey. It keeps getting better and better!

Special thanks to Dr. Darragh for instructing the class and participating in our discussions. Best wishes to you as well. :-)




God bless you all!