India

I choose the country of India because we have had a few children enrolled in our Headstart program from India. It is interesting when you have a family come into your school that is from ay different country than your own. You do have to prepare yourself in many ways in order to help the child and the family to adapt to their new environment. I guess you can say that you as a teacher and the family will be learning alot from each other. In preparing myself for a family coming from a different culture I would want to research everything I can about their culture. I would want to meet with family along with family service worker from school and get to know each other. I would want to talk with them about what they expect their child to learn in school and their preferneces about language, foods and etc. I would want to make sure they understand that I have an open-door policy and that we are working together to give their child the best learning experience possible. I would also look for outside resources to help me in the classroom but to also help the family in the home if they should ask for help. I would make sure that they are felt welcomed. If parents could not speak English I would want to make sure I have someone who could speak the language for me when meeting with parents and also have ways to type letters in their English that are sent home. I would invite the parents to share things from their culutre with the class. We once had a family from another country and we let them come in a prepare a meal with a varitey of foods from their culture and they even wore the clothes from the other culture to school that day. The children loved being apart of this and it was such a great learning experience for them. I hope that by preparing myself that I will be able to help their child learn to the best of their ability and that we will become a team. I will learn from them as well as they will learn from me. I want to make sure that we have a way to communicate because giving their child the best learning experience possible will be important to me. I want them to feel comfortable and know that by the things I do that I care and want to be there for them.