Welcoming Families from Around the World – EDUC 6164

Imagine being an early childhood center director and/or teacher and you receive a phone call from a family service worker that is trying to find child care for a family from Yemen. What would you do to prepare for this child and family? This was the question asked of us this week in class. Why Yemen? Ok, don’t laugh, but I really have wanted to learn more about Yemen ever since poor Chandler had to go to Yemen to get away from Janice on Friends.
So, what would I do to prepare for a child from another country? To begin with, I would have to begin doing some research on the traditions people from Yemen feel are important to their way of life. I would search organizations on the web that could give me correct/up-to-date information and purchase books on traditions and other important aspects of their culture. I would also ensure that an interpreter would be present to help with in communication with the family.
I would also being to look at activities I could include within our curriculum to help the child feel welcome in the classroom. I found a great website that has some information about certain countries for this. It is called Explore and More – Culture for Kids and can be found at: http://www.exploreandmore.org/world/default.htm . I feel having activities and/or materials to put in the classroom would help the child and family see that we are trying to ensure that they feel comfortable and that their culture is just as important as the other cultures in the classroom. Just by adding pictures, learning a song, having writing, or just a story about Yemen or in Arabic would help the child see familiarity within a new environment and can ease stress.
I believe the communication is a key to building a relationship with the family and building trust with the family as well. So, I would learn how to speak some basic, but important words in their home language. Words like; hello, yes, no, good-bye, and other words that would help begin a conversation to allow the family to see that we are trying to show the importance of their culture.
Coming to a new country (as I would think it would be for me going to another country) can be trying and stressful. By having something from their homeland, I feel that a child can begin to feel a little secure within the new environment. Therefore, learning some of the foods they may cook that are different from our food and that might be the child’s favorite would help with transitioning the child into the center and feel that there is a piece of home within his classroom.
One of the final things I would do is to sit down with the family and begin to learn about their specific family. Their traditions, parts of their culture that is important, the specific way they handle discipline within their culture, and any other information they feel might be important for us to know, not only about their child, but their home life as well.
Hopefully by preparing my staff and myself through these steps, we can help the family and child find security within our program. Preparing for a family from a different country would take some work and we wouldn’t be perfect at everything we were trying to do, but I feel that the family would see our effort and help them to be less stress in leaving their child in our environment. By making the family and child feel secure and welcomed, the foundation for trust and open communication is built and hopefully a life time of learning on both sides will grow.