Final slideshare assignment

1. 1. Challenges for Lauren as a Korean-Canadian child in Canada
2. How should I deal with these challenges as a Lauren’s mother
3. Professional responsibilities as an early childhood educator
Lethbridge College
Eunhee Han

2. Background
• Lauren was born in 2011 July at the Foothill
Hospital in Calgary.
• Her parents moved from Korea in 2009.
• As she turned 4 years in July 2015, she
needed to be involved with other children.
• Currently, she complains about many
difficulties she is facing on as she goes to the
library, church and family centre.

3. Challenges she is facing
1. Language
- She speaks Korean fluently but has just started
learning English.
- Sometimes, she is depressed because she does not
understand what teachers are saying. She likes to
read books at the library, but she does not
understand when library teachers read the books.

4. 2. No extended family members.
- She has grandparents from both mother and
father’s lines in Korea. When she sees other
children’s grandparents playing with them, she
says to her mother, “I miss my grandparents.”
- She has many cousins in Korea. She talks with
them on the phone. Whenever she feels lonely,
she wants to meet the cousins. She says, “ I want
to go to Korea and stay there.”

5. 3. No close friends
- Usually children get close when their
mothers are friends. For Lauren, she
doesn’t have close friend because her
mother does not have close
relationship with Canadians.
- She always says “I wish that I could visit
friend’s house and I could invite them
to my house.”

6. 4. Cultural conflict
- Family, community and groups are more important
than individuals in Korean culture. We willingly
sacrifice our rights or advantages if the
community takes benefits from it.
- In Canadian culture : They use word “I want”. We
rarely use this word.

7. How should I deal with these challenges
as her mother
- Language
Expose more English speaking environments to
Lauren in order for her to learn English faster. For
example, send her preschool or read English books
for her.
- No Extended family
Visit Korea at least once two years. Make good
relationships with neighbors. If she doesn’t feel
lonely, she might not miss them a lot.

8. How should I deal with these challenges
as her mother
- No close friend
Go to the library and family center with Lauren
and make some close friends who have same age
children.
- Cultural conflict
She cannot avoid it as she gets older. I cannot say
which is better, but both sides are important.
Building Canadian and Korean identities must be
good outcomes.

9. Professional responsibilities
as an early childhood educator
• Being an ally to immigrant and refugee
children and their families.
• Be curious about their culture, family,
community, and methods of child rearing
• Respect families’ value-driven approaches to
child rearing
• Be aware of the issues that are most central
to the lives of the families you work with
• Establish trust and create opportunities for
children and their caregivers to approach
you

10. Professional responsibilities
as an early childhood educator
• Establishing a supportive environment for
immigrant and refugee children and their
families.
• Children and their families feel emotionally
supported
• Children and their families feel that the program
is applicable to their lives
• Children and their families develop knowledge
and skills to thrive in their new context
• Increased opportunities for Children and their
families’ learning

11. Practice 1: Meeting needs ‘in the moment’
- Accommodating the cultural needs of
the particular client group (e.g. food
preferences, issues of timeliness)
- Providing support for children and
their families with issues as they arise
in their lives (e.g. moving, loss of
work, economic and familial issues)
- Modifying program objectives based
on the client group promising

12. Practice 1: Meeting needs ‘in the moment’
- Understanding immigrant and refugee
children and their families
- Knowledge of historical, political and social
context from which immigrant and refugee
children and their families have arrived and
how that may impact their current conditions
- Curricular models that are sensitive to the
vulnerabilities
- Understanding the cultural contexts in which
they feel most supported
- Having consistent measures in place to assess
progress

13. Promising Practice
- Be patient, observe, listen, learn
- Foster parental involvement in immigrant and
refugee child’s life
- Willingness to let learning be a two-way activity
- Be patient with the curricular process and
unexpected turns along the way
- Be curious, humble, sensitive, flexible and patient
- Varied and divergent curriculum that repeats the
same message
- Offering different ways of doing things to expose
caregivers to diverse parenting approaches

14. Promising Practice
- Be patient, observe, listen, learn
- Allow immigrant and refugee children to be absorbed
in an activity without rushing him/her, allow as much
time as needed
- Use ‘challenging’ moments as learning opportunities
- Be sensitive to the ways in which social and cultural
contexts of immigrant and refugee children informs
their learning capacity

15. References
• Kelity, J. (2015). Intro to early child education, Lecture notes at Lethbridge Co
llege, Lethbridge, AB
• Dietze, B., & Kashin, D. (1957). Empowering Pedagogy. Toronto, Canada
• http://www.spcottawa.on.ca/sites/all/files/pdf/2010/Publications/Immigrant-
Family-Report-English.pdf