Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

      An example of a mircoagression that I have experienced this week is one that I experience almost every time I go out for a cruise in my classic car. I get comments from people like, "Wow, is that car yours?" or "You must sell illegal drugs to be able to afford a car like that." I take these comments as complements towards my car. The microaggression that I can pull from these comments is of the racial kind. Most of the people that tell me these comments are from white upper class white men. I drive my car up the California West coast line known as the Pacific Coast Highway and a lot of upper middle class white people reside here. A stereotype for a Mexican who drives a fancy car is that he must sell illegal drugs to be able to afford it. I sometimes feel a sarcastic tone when they tell me so It then does not feel like a complement. It makes me feel like I am not worthy of such a car. I have worked three jobs to help pay for it. As far as classicism goes, I consider myself to be in the working class and when someone who looks to be in a high class and makes comments like that, I would think that if would make them feel powerful over me.   These racial microaggrssions reflect a view of superiority. I do not pay attention to these details because I do not have time to wonder what and if people are using subliminal messages with their comments. I try to take comments for what they are, word per word.

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

For this assignment I decided to talk to my 72 year old neighbor. Greg, an African American 40 year old custodian male. I choose someone who I felt is really difernet from me in regards to gender, religion, race, and class. It was my fairly new 23 year old friend Amy, who is studying abroad from India.

My neighbors definition of culture is defined with one word which is tradition. He defines diversity as a mixture of people of different nationalities  all in one geographical area. Greg defines culture as what ties people together. Greg defines diversity as people having different cultures.  He talked about how to better keep unity amongst friends and family was by focusing on the similarities and building on the differences. My friend Amy, she described culture as the ethnic foods she prepares, the music from her country and her identity associated with that of Hinduism.  She defines diversity as someone who is does not practice what she believes in or does.

Aspects of culture and diversity that I have studied in this course include all the answers my friends gave as their personal definition. Some responses can be defined as surface culture like the ethnic food, religion and music defined by Amy. The other responses that include how we interact  are deeper yet also valid responses. I feel nothing has been omitted as everyone is entitled to their own definition of culture. I feel that am, being so far from her friends and family, needs to duplicate ethic rituals to help her not feel home sick. How they each expressed their definitions makes them who they are.

Representing My Family Culture

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

If I had to decide on what three items to bring along with me that represents my family culture they would be a family photo album, my Spanish guitar, and vegetarian cookbook. My family takes pride in collecting family photographs and showing them to visitors who come to our home. Usually for any type of family gathering, either my father or I play the guitar and we all sing songs in Spanish. My mother , sister, and myself are vegetarians. Since my aunts and father eat meat, we always have to cook two meals, one meat and one non meat. We have done this more than 25 years. I would hope that the new country does not look down on vegetarians or vegans.

How would I feel if upon arrival to our new country and had to discard two of the three items? I would not feel too bad as I would have had felt bad already for having to have left behind some many other things that represents my family culture. In essence, I feel that everything in our home is a representation of our culture. This would lead me to an insight I gained about myself and my family culture. Every object that we interact with throughout the day on a frequent occasion, is a representation of our family culture.

When I Think of Research...

I have learned different types of research designs. I have also gained insight on ethics that revolve around research that involves children. One must take into consideration the guardians as well as any other people who might be relating to the child participant(s) during the study. The insight on including qualified personal to carry out the research whom are either trained in child development or even better, who work with the children already to be able to collect real information from children when they  are acting normal around people they are accustom to.

From comments from the teacher I have learned that I must choose a specific age and not a range. I started to do my simulation research on children 0-5yrs then from 3 - 5yrs. I have narrowed my participants to 3 yr olds. This gives a more precise outcome as I can relate it to just one age and not have to account for extraneous variables like developmental milestones of an older or younger population.

 A challenge I came across was finding a research topic that had not been already researched. I wanted to be really creative and choose a new topic. I was able to overcome this by choosing an always new topic (technology) and work off of current researchers limitations. I used their extraneous variables as part of my independent variable.

My perception of an early childhood has made me be more sure that we should feel and be viewed as professionals in our field. The fact that I have learned about research and that I have read many article an research done by people from our field, well it raises the bar since we can have an open dialog with scientists, doctors and neuroscientist. Being able to understand their terminology makes use that more versatile and we are needed to in adding our expertise on child development wear these professionals would lack experience.

Research Around the World

The organization I chose to look into this week is Early Childhood Australia. The link to their site is http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/. A current international research topic that is being studied in Australia is social issues that include children's social and emotional development and wellbeing. The study that I read on is called Growing Up in Australia and it is a longitudinal study of 10, 000 Australian children and their families. The study began in 2003 and is still being tracked. It is funded by the Australian government, Community Services and the Australian Bureau of Statistics. I find this an international issues as no matter where people are, social acceptance has a lot to do with the healthy development of a child's self esteem. If the child is socially and emotional stable, they suffer in other areas of development. A surprising fact about this early childhood website is that it is compared to  the National Association for the Education of Young Children by Walden University. This is what caught my attention in the first place as why I chose it over the other links. This organization has their code of ethics that professionals in Australia can follow. I am not sure how different our main social beliefs and practices are from that of the main culture of Australia but as any group of people living in different parts of the world, I am glad that they did not decide to completely pick up ethics from another Nation and force them upon their workforce. It is go that they created their own. A noteworthy fact about the site is that they have pictures of diverse families and children. They show an acceptance of different nationalities and cultures.

Research that Benefits Children and Families

I choose to talk about Option 2. If I could imagine myself conducting research on any topic in the early childhood field without any restrictions, I would choose to address the issue of children being misdiagnosed with a hyperactive disorder. I have not done any research on this topic and my wish is not to offend anyone. I state this because in my experience in working with some three to five year olds, I am saddened when I find out that they have been diagnosed with something that with my day to day interactions with those children, I'd say that they were misdiagnosed. Children are suppose to run around and not sit still all day. Children at this age are finding out about their bodies and find out hw for the first time to run without falling, hopping, hopping on one foot, skipping, to name a few things. It's like if one discovered that adults could fly, but it was forbidden to do so. I bet people would still want to fly even though it was not to be done. For those who would fly  would they then be diagnosed with a hyper active flying disorder. Okay, maybe I chose a silly example but I hope it does justice to my reason of why Id research this topic. I would use children and give them a placebo. I lie to the parents of these children and the children and state that this would relax the child. It is un ethical to keep the truth from the participants but I feel  that some parents justify that their child actions are due to the fact that he/she is ill and not due to their bad parenting skills. These diagnosed children overhear and create mayhem because they now feel they can get away with things since its okay since mommy says that I have a hyper activity disorder. Some parents just need guidance on how to be better role models for their children.  A positive contribution to this would be that children and parents would no longer be lied to and forced to buy medications by medical reps and would know that they just need to work it out as a family with the help of early childhood professionals. As in all, not to feed crap medications to children at such an early age.

My Personal Research Journey

As I reflect on a general topic in early childhood that interest me, I am going to focus on the importance of integrating electronic devices within the classroom. I know that this is already being done but I feel not as much.  My experience in working in several preschools is that the only means of introducing children to technology is by having two or three computers in the classroom. I see young children outside of school using tablets, smart phones, and ipads. I have also worked with families that still do not have the resources to obtain those devices and children should be able to work with touch screens. When they are old enough to go into the workforce, technology will be a must in mostly every field.  An example is when children play with blocks, teachers state that the child is developing skills that one day will prepare him or her to become an architect or builder. That child should also be introduce to a touch screen device where they can create three dimensional vies of what they build. If that child does indeed become that architect or builder, they would be already experienced in working with devices that the field would require to get the job done. In selecting a topic that has not yet been researched is hard for me to do and I hope I can further narrow down this topic. Does anyone know of any research articles that discuss this already? I would appreciate any feedback as well.