Supporting Families From Different Backgrounds in an Early Education (ECED) Class (2022)
Brandi Renis
In my class, students will create a list of resources in the areas of Health, Safety, Nutrition, and Dental services. Students gain experience in trying to find resources that support families in their home languages and in this way begin to understand the difficulties some families face in navigating systems. In class, we discuss how to access/lack of access and the experiences of families in navigating systems to maintain power, privilege, and inequity.
We also cover topics in a class discussion such as the various levels of quality of child care and non-child care experiences that affect the long-term growth and development of children. As I’ve mentioned in the past, we know that a lack of quality interactions, quality experiences, and so on affects many areas of a child’s life. We discuss how families who come from other countries may or may not assimilate “American culture,” while their children (1st generation) may or may not have difficulty as they grow up in American culture in school and reconcile it with the rules/expectations/use of language and so on at home.
Additionally, in almost every ECED class, we discuss how the children’s and families’ cultures must be represented within the childcare in more than just stereotypical and token ways.
Here is an article about how we help children to learn about diversity.