I am fortunate to work on a college campus where diversity is everywhere. The families that send their children to our lab school represent many countries. I don't find, though, that I communicate any differently with them than I do with people from my culture. Most of them have been in the United States for a while and many of the children have been born here. With the exception of their accents, talking with them is very comfortable and the same as speaking with my own family. I have been able to form a friendship with a graduate assistant in our department who is from Malaysia. We have had many open conversations about her Muslim religion, my Christian religion, and our individual viewpoints on other topics. I have not yet had any difficulty communicating with people from other cultures.
If I were to share three strategies to use in communicating with diverse individuals, I would continue to take or make opportunities where I could have conversations with the people I interact with. I don't believe you can promote understanding and acceptance if an effort isn't made to know the people who are different than ourselves. The second thing I would do do as much reading and research on other cultures as possible so a foundation of knowledge can be built in my mind. During conversations with people from these cultures, questions can be asked to clarify cultural beliefs and/or practices and if the person you are speaking with adheres to them. The last thing I would do is continually evaluate my attitudes towards other cultures. If prejudice and discrimination come from fear, ignorance, or misunderstanding, then the only way to overcome those things is to gain more knowledge about different cultures. Being open to the potential to learn about other people will widen my views of the world and make the world a little smaller place.
Great post! I agree an effort must be made to establish communication with people of other cultures. I haven't had much experience with this and I think it's just because I'm afraid. Let me give you a situation I've encountered. I had a Spanish speaking parent of a child in my class. When he would call me on the phone, I could clearly understand what he said with no problem and I never had to ask him to repeat hisself. If i talked to him in person, I would ask him numerous times to repeat himself! Do you think it was because I was nervous and his presence gave me fear? It was very odd to me, but I do believe that knowing he was coming to talk made me a bit nervous and when he just called it was unexpected and just happened.
ReplyDeleteLaurie,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post about you and your co-worker and how you are learning from each other professionally and culturally!
Your suggestion about opening conversation and continuing conversation is a great one and often the hardest part about learning about someone else.
Thank you for your post!
Nicolette
What a great learning experience it is to get to have deep conversations with people from different countries. It seems like communicating with people from all nationalities is natural to you which is a wonderful thing. When we open up the lines of communication, what great things we can learn from each other. Thank you for your post.
ReplyDeleteHi Laurie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing your strategies with us. Let me first say how fortunate you are to work on a campus with such diversity. Secondly, I agree that we need to continue to work on our attitudes and biases about other cultures. If we stay open minded and thirsty for knowledge about other cultures, I know that we can all be better early childhood education professionals.
-Beau