Dblanco Hd412documentation Capstone2252016

Documentation:
HD 412: Working With Children and Families in A Diverse Society
Dewi Ochoa
HD497: Capstone
February 25, 2016
Documentaton: HD412
This class for me started on the wrong foot. I had been waiting to take this class with
Susan Bernheimer and get the Pacific Oaks experience. Then suspiciously a few days before
class started she retired and we were meant to have Sheree Bielecki as our professor. Im sure
Sheree is a very nice person, and she is very interested in the learning that happens in this class,
but she is not who I paid to take a class with. That said, Ms Bernheimer left a very detailed
syllabus for our class and we were able to experience at least part of what we were meant to gain
from this class. I have been working with children and families for over ten years, I dont think
my knowledge base was broadened as much as I wouldve hoped a university level course, but
the books we read were interesting enough.
This class opened my eyes to a lot of the intricacies of working with children of different
backgrounds. The book Other Peoples Children gave a lot of information about the impact that
language and dialects have for black students. Even though the book spoke specifically about
black children and educators, I think this will also help me with families of other cultures and
languages. It also pointed out to me my own patterns of speech, I noticed how I am very direct
in talking with children. This pushed me to notice this in the way I talk to children who come
from very different backgrounds than mine.
The book Children of Immigration gave me a lot of insights into what children of
immigrants go through. While I am a child of immigration, I was fortunate enough to live in a
community that spoke my language and I didnt feel like an outsider for the most part. I do
however appreciate the insight into what children might feel when they are placed in
environments where they dont understand the language and also learning about other ways to
help the entire family in the transition. This ultimately will help me adapt my teaching to reach
the child and teach in the way that they will best learn. I also learned a lot about what its like to
have a classroom community of learner from different backgrounds, and how to create a true
community, we learned a lot about this from several videos that we watched in which classroom
teachers talked about how they were able to accomplish this in their classroom. We even got to
hear from the children themselves which is always special.
I think my experience in a preschool classroom was a good starting point for conversations. I
was able to share experiences talking with parents about issues, interactions with different
families. I think that one of the most important contributions was having a different perspective
on what diversity and culture means. I think that beyond culture (nation of origin, which is what
we think about when we hear culture) we need to think about diversity, so we may think about
families for who they are without trying to check them into boxes. I also appreciated the points
of view of others who have different experiences than me. We had a very diverse group of
people in my class and I liked hearing from each other
I liked learning about classrooms that are truly diverse in nationality and language. I think
that even while I was raised in Los Angeles I still had an environment that consisted mostly of
Latinos and blacks, so I enjoyed seeing more variety in the videos. I wish the deeper thinking
had been more involved, I feel like a lot of the things we talked about had already been a part of
my work for years and I just didnt need to see them again and again. Some of the examples of
preschool classrooms were antiquated and were not at all what I would consider great practice.
This is also to be said about Sherees style of teaching, with this being her first experience in
teaching adults, no experience working in early childhood, it was very obvious that she did not
know what she was doing, particularly when it came to talking about actities for the classroom.
We wasted way too much time on irrelevant activities that were not important.
I did learn a lot about myself. There were assignments that pushed me to think deeply and
reflective about who I am and where certain thoughts and beliefs happen for me. The persona
doll had wording in the assignment that required us to think of the culture in which we were
raised, and it was something I didnt want to think about. It was even worse when I had to decide
between keeping to my word and speaking up for myself, staying away from a relationship that I
knew was not good for me. I am surprised that a simple innocent assignment an art or crafty
assignment could have such an impact in myself as well as the other students in the class.
I was very nervous about the format of a weekend class. I was worried that I would not be
able to handle the long day in class. The class was actually surprisingly excellent, I enjoyed the
conversations and the laughter. I learned a lot, though I still think there was more to learn. I
worry that with the very recent changes to the class and the structure of the class (adding the
online component) distracted from the learning and overburdened with unnecessary extra
assignments.

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HD 412: Working With Children and Families in A Diverse Society

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