Perspective on Diversity and Culture

When I talked to the Director of my center regarding her culture she defined it as foundation her living. It reflects the way she lives and how she is greatly influenced by it. She explained to me why she is the way she is. She said that she is 100% Japanese but she grew up here in Hawaii. She explained to me that her family still practices the traditional Japanese culture but there are some things that her generation have lost or has discontinued. An example of this is the way Japanese women should serve and be submissive to their husband. She told me, if I know the way she is, that is not going happen. The reason for this is her belief that we are equally as important as men and for this reason after nine years of living together, it caused her marriage to end.

As she grew older she said that she is also greatly influenced by the American culture, she started questioning some of her belief and traditions. In spite of her skepticism, she obeyed her parents desire to marry the same race as hers but after a time, she can no longer accept having collision with culture of her husband. They both grew up in the same culture but their beliefs as an individual person were different from each other. Though she told me that she lost some of her culture but do not regret it because that is what makes her who she is today. She also said that the most important thing is not forgetting were you come from and always go back to your roots because her decisions still lies on the foundation of her culture.  She believed that losing some of her culture was lost but also gained some benefit of acquiring other cultures especially the culture of America.  She continues to carry on her culture to her children, and let the environment and time takes course in the future. She believes that they will still keep the identity of being Japanese and at the same time embraced the culture that they are living in.

Based on my interview with friends, family members or relatives, most of them defined culture as the way we were raised based on our religion, ethnic groups our family traditions and behavior and beliefs. One of them mentioned that even if we were raised in one family or one ethnic group, she said that even if we were raised or brought up in the same group or family it does not necessarily means that we have the same perception of culture. She mentioned that outside factors outside of our homes influenced us also in the way we live our lives. Our culture defines who we are and how we live. Our lifetime unique experiences make us differ from each other.  Most of us tried to carry on the traditions and beliefs we have learned from our grandparents and our parents but factors outside of our family but some change such as;  in the economy and our environment affects the way we live, the way we were educated in school, and the way we perceived things changes our culture.

 Diversity is about difference but acceptance and embracing each other’s differences is what makes our lives interesting.

This week lessons have given a better understanding of how people live the way they live. It also gave me a better perspective and better relationship with the people I worked with. Interviewing my Director made me understand how she is and in return I was able expressed how I am and how both cultures influences us in the things we do. I am really glad that I have the opportunity to do it because I did not only have better relationship with her but both of us have learned to understand the our culture palys an important role in our lives and we get to see the deeper side of us.

 Our way of life was greatly influenced by our family but as we grow older and the more we were exposed to different environment and different people, our culture changes. Some are preserved and some we lose.  

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My Family Culture

In the event that there is a catastrophic event that has devastated my country and I need to evacuate and take refuge to a country that has different culture than mine I would take  these three items that represents my family culture: my birth certificate, family picture, and the Tagalog version of the Holy Bible. My birth certificate has all the information describing who I am and what race and country I belong. It is my identification. Another item I would bring with me is a family picture which was taken during my wedding day. It was taken in the house where I grew up. This item is very important to me because this the only picture I have that has all my family members on it. Lastly, I would bring the Tagalog version of a Holy Bible. The reason for choosing Tagalog version is to make it easier for me to understand because that is my primary language.  The Holy Bible represents my religion which is a very important part of our lives. I was raised as Catholic. I went to a Catholic school from Pre-K to College.  My religion is one of the foundations of my family; it bonds us together and kept our faith stronger especially in times of hardship and troubles.  My parents taught us the importance of believing in God and the power of prayer.

I would feel sad to let go of these items because these are the only thing that represents who I am as a person. Though it will break my heart to see it go, I will console myself in the fact that there are more important things in our lives than these items. Given the opportunity to keep one item with me, I would choose my family picture. My mother died battling breast cancer and my father is now battling Alzheimer’s disease. It is nice to go back and remember them when they were still well and living. All my siblings left my country for a greener pasture and all of us were now separated.  This photo is all I have left of my family. It has all my family members on it which are a reminder of the fond memories we have together and the closeness of my family ties.

Although in reality, I should have chosen my birth certificate because it has my whole identity on it. It is the proof that I exists. It has my name, my place of birth, my parents name, my race, nationality and religion. These are the superficial part of knowing who I am as a person.

Doing this exercise made me think on what is important in life. No matter how I weigh the importance of these items to me, I still end up deciding what is dear to my heart.  Again my culture of giving importance to family first has influenced how I decided which item to keep and what to let go. Most of the time, we make our decisions base on our emotions or feelings but in reality, we have to be practical and reasonable to what is important in the real world. On the other hand, we cannot be all superficial in looking at things because we have to consider some factors that influence a person to do things and understand why they do these things.    

When I Think of Research…

When I think of research, I think of scholarly and well-educated people who have expertise in their field of studies. I thought of Rousseau, Piaget, Erickson, Pestalozzi, Froebel and other influential people in the field of early childhood education.

Building research competencies course has changed the way I look at research. Taking the advice of our instructor about’ taking one step at a time’ and seeing how everyone work so hard for these course has helped me a lot in building my research simulation. The process of research, determining the design and methods to use, ethical issues, and methods of gathering data or information were just some of the lessons that I learned from this course.

 Now that I have the tools I needed in conducting a research, I have changed the way I looked at research. I am more confident to know that I can make a research in the future that will help benefit the families and children in our military communities.

 Reflecting way back the first week of this course, I was scared to death on how am I going to survive and finish this course. Being a Second English Language learner myself, makes it more difficult for me to imagine how people like me able to formulate or even write a research. I even thought that this course would be one of the major hindrances that will prevent me from finishing my graduate studies but with all of your support and our instructor’s guidance and patience gave me the courage to move on and face the challenges of this course. Knowing that we are all in these journey together makes a lot of difference. Your postings in our discussion board and comments on our blogs reminded me that I am not alone. Everyone’s contribution made me more confident and competent on the subject matter.

 It has been an incredible journey knowing that everyone had overcome our fear and faced the challenges of doing research. I am really thankful to all of you who had made this course interesting and worthwhile. I believe that anyone can learn and accomplish things, if we take time and put our hearts in it.

Thank you everyone and good luck to all of us. See you on our next journey!

Research that Benefits Children and Families – Option 1

The NICHD Study of Early Child Care (SECC) is an ambitious longitudinal study initiated by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD). A team of 32 researchers has provided different perspectives on the topic of child care. They studied about the relationship between child care and children’s development. They follow a diverse group of more than one thousand children and families, in ten cities across the country, from children’s birth in 1991 through their adolescence.

Children’s development and their experiences in home and in child care settings have been measured through a wide range of tests at frequent intervals throughout the study. Factors such as child’s age at entry into care, quantity of care, stability of care, such as provider’s education and training, adult-to-child ratio, group size, safety and health issues, have also been included.

The large number of children and the sophisticated method use in the study has confirmed the importance of quality in child care. In particular, it has validated the findings of many other studies that quality of child care is important, both in that high quality can enhance development and poor quality can be harmful to young children. Higher quality of care, especially positive care giving, is related to higher developmental scores (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000b). Quality of child care continues to exert influence. The quality of care is related to children’s functioning later in school (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network & Duncan, 2003b). Positive care giving was more likely to occur when child-to-adult ratios and group sizes were smaller, caregivers were more educated , held more child-centered beliefs about child rearing, and had more experience in child care, and environments were safer and more stimulating (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2000a). Such findings reaffirm many other studies.

On the other hand, they also found that the more time children spend in child care, the more problem behaviors, for instance, aggression, disobedience and conflict with adults, occur (NICHD Early Child Care Research Network, 2003a). NICHD continues to collect and analyze information about the relationship of young children’s development and their experiences today. With this study, we gain greater understanding the importance of our role as caregivers and teachers and the importance of those early experiences (http://www.nichd.nih.gov).

Reference:

NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2000a). Characteristics and quality of child care for toddlers and preschoolers. Applied Developmental Science, 4, 116-135.   

NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2000b). The relation of child care to cognitive and language development. Child Development, 71, 960-980.

NICHD Early Child Care Research Network. (2003a). Does amount of time spent in child care predict socioemotional adjustment during the transition to kindergarten? Child Development, 74, 976-1005.

My Personal Research Journey - Building Research Competencies- 6163-6

Economic necessity forces many families to rely on two pay checks because one simply does not for all their financial needs. In other families, both parents work because of the desire for personal and professional development rather than from economic need. Whatever their reasons maybe, many families are facing innumerable struggles and stress leaving their children in the care of relatives, friends and caregivers.

The increasing demand for U.S. Military presence in our country and abroad, many military families and children have to face the challenges of being separated-some temporarily and the others permanently. The numbers of children having challenging behaviors after their parent or parents were deployed have increased.  I chose this topic because I would like to know the effects of deployment on children’s social and emotional development. By understanding their situation hopefully, I will be able to help our families and children in creating programs which will support their child’s growth and development while they were deployed.

This week, we were able to build on our research simulation and learn about identifying websites that adhere to guidelines and or standard of quality research. Although I am fearful for the next weeks to come, I am also hopeful to finish my journey with all of you.

“Doing anything for the first time is a challenge, and starting off in research can be a daunting prospect. But along the uncertainty and some trepidation, there are often feelings of curiosity     and exciting and excitement about the journey of discoveries that lies ahead. Once underway, experience, knowledge and confidence build” (Rolfe & Macnaughton, 2010).

Reference:

Mac Naughton, G., Rolfe, S.A., & Siraj-Blatchford, I. (2010). Doing early childhood research: International perspectives on theory and practice (2nd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

My Final Blog Post for Current Issues and Trends in Early Childhood Course

First of all I would like to say SALAMAT PO! (Thank you), to all of you who have made this past few weeks very educational and interesting. It has been difficult for me to keep on this course because of lot stressors in my life. Being a Second Language English learner myself, has been difficult and challenging because I have to spend countless hours just to put my thoughts together. I almost gave up but (believe it or not) your first response to my first week’s blog and comments from our instructor has made it possible for me to finish this course. Your positive response had made a lot of difference. 

 I learned a lot from all of you and I hope I was able to give back what you have given me. I hope we will continue to support each other until we finish our journey towards earning our masters degree in early childhood education.

During the past weeks, I have learned that countries all over the world have the same issues and concerns about the field of early childhood. Concerns about the quality, compensation, and affordability of child care programs.  The lack of sufficient funding to support early childhood programs have put the provision of high-quality programs in jeopardy. Due to this issue also that only a small percentage of early childhood programs meet standards of excellence and that majority are mediocre or in less quality. Poor quality program has place children at risk in all areas of development. The issue of poor compensation to early childhood educators has led to high turn-over rate of teachers. This factor compromises the well-being of children who needs consistency and stability in their lives. The issue of affordability of child care, particularly for low income families, has kept many low-income mothers from workforce or from educational pursuits, making it more difficult for families to survive this current economy.  

Continuing awareness on the issue and current trend in early childhood education, not just in America but all over the world, will be my main goal in working towards finding solutions to the current concerns of early childhood field. Being equipped with knowledge and understanding of the issues affecting families and children, I will be able to support and continue to advocate for the increase funding on research programs -on the benefit of early childhood program and accessibility and affordability of early childhoo

My International Contact Part 3

The current issue that my contact talked about is the same issue that we have here in America. Teachers are getting paid less for the work that they are doing. Aside from this issue, the lack of funding for schools to provide basic things for the classroom. Children share seats and tables, books and textbooks due to high-adult child ratio.  Basic things such as papers and pencils, and other art materials are also lacking.

For teachers who are dedicated and committed to giving their children the best education and understand the importance of encouraging children to express themselves and their creativity, they take the expenses out of their own pockets. Some teachers can afford to do it but others have their own family to take care too and this situation frustrates them because they know that they can do more to improve the quality of education for these children but there is nothing they can do about it. Professional wise, they do not see bigger opportunities for their career, but given the opportunity to build their own center is one of their ultimate dreams.

She also mentions to me that those teachers tend to shift their profession to housekeeper or nanny in another country because they get paid more than being a professional teacher. It is disheartening to hear to hear this story but this is reality. We have lots of good teachers in the Philippines but were not given the opportunity to practice their profession. Some of them tried to apply for a visitor or tourist visa in America and use this as a stepping stone to look for employment but very few gets the opportunity. She was fortunate ones to get the visa but not fortunate enough to be hired right away. There were private school here in America who wants to hire her but the law requires employer to give priority to our citizens first before importing teachers or employees abroad. They said they will process her papers (visa) and wait for them to contact her again.

I totally support America’s effort to take care of its citizens first, then seek professionals abroad, but only a number of people want to take our work as teachers. Our current situation tends to make our profession the last resort for those people who cannot or do not qualify for another kind of job. The idea of being a teacher or caregiver, because it will definitely land you into employment and the qualification is very minimal is really sad.

My friend told me , if they will be given a chance to fill in the lack of teachers in other parts of the world such as America, she believes that they can expect “ the high-quality of care and education for their children, because we are passionate, hardworking and committed to giving our children a better future.”   

It is unfortunate that they have to seek opportunities abroad but if there are no opportunities in their own country, what choice do they have? It is also saddening to hear that they give up their profession to become a housekeeper or nanny abroad but what can they do to support their families? If there are anything that we can do to advocate for them, get them employment as teachers, let us help them.