Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This weeks topic has been an eye opener for me. Microaggression happen more than we really see them. I can look back and see myself many times showing some type of microaggression to someone and I really didn't realize that this is what I was doing. I can think of a time when this occur when my boys were in school and the insult came from a teacher. We all know as teachers we are suppose to have faith in our students but this one teacher really put my kids down. It was during their Junior year in high school when they were preparing for the high school graduation test. We were meeting with some of their teachers because we were conceerned about some things going on in another class not the one the teacher added his comment to. He looked at us with our kids in the room and said he knew that our boys would never pass the science part on the test because they couldn't learn it in class and they would never be able to pass that part on the graduation test. Talk about putting the boys down and how it made us feel because he was suppose to be a professional helping students to acheive their success. Well, to make a long story short they both passed aced all five parts of the graudation test the first time and for me I gave an insult back to the teacher. Working with headstart program we sometimes tend to forgot that all families are not like ours and we may sometimes look at others different. In our community we are a small comminuity weith mostly whites and africian americans. When we do get the spanish speaking families in we tend to have that look as if you all come into our world you should learn how to speak our language. This has happen often in the past few years as we have seen more and more families from another culture come into our area. I have to work on myself to learn how to help these families and find ways that I can serve them. Again, microaggression is all around us and we sometimes just don't realize what we say and do to others until it is too late. I have learned alot through this discussion this week and I plan to work on making sure that the way I approach my families and others that it is in a way that is helpful and not hurtful.

Family Culture

What would I take with me? I would say the three things I would choose to take would be my Bible, box of family pictures and my mother'ring given to me when my children were born. I would choose the Bible because it is God's word. It helps us to live a better life and serves as a guidebook showing us how to live on the right path. The Bible is important in Christian worship because it is the foundation of faith. The Bible would serve as my guidebook to help me in another country to survive. My box of pictures would be family pictures that mean alot to me. It would include my wedding pictures and pictures of my children when they were born. These pictures would serve as a reminder of the family I love and care for. It would help me to get through each day by having those pictures to look at. My last item would be my mother's ring given to me when my children were born by my husband. This ring I would wear and it would be a constant reminder of how much my children mean to me and how much I love them. It would serve as a reminder that we are together no matter what the circumstances may be and that they will always be in my heart. If upon arrival I had to choose I would take a family picture out of the box and stick it in my Bible because with the word of God in my hand I know that I would be able to get through the tough times and having the family picture in the Bible would let me know that my family is safe because God is on our side. I have realized that my family culture is all about family being together and that we serve a great God who will look after us and protect us from evil. We are a family who believes spending time with each other is important and we want the tradition to continue for our younger generation as they get older.