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Authentic Curiosity Builds Relationships
January 23, 2018
Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.
-Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer and journalist
-Doris Kearns Goodwin, biographer and journalist
In the November/December edition of Exchange magazine, Lori Ryan and Rebecca Kantor write a response to research summarized by Alison Gerlach and Diana Elliot, offering suggestions to help early childhood professionals work successfully with families from diverse communities. Ryan and Kantor explain:
"In our view, the most important approach that is foundational to all others is having a disposition of an ‘open learner’ with an authentic curiosity about the families and children in our classroom or caseload. Families can sense if we as professionals truly want to know who they are, and what they bring to the educational partnership (including their unique characteristics, strengths and challenges) or if we have come to ‘fix’ them, make them fit our western, middle class ways of being, which then implicitly communicates their ways as inferior."
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Comments (2)
Displaying All 2 CommentsSanta Monica College
Carlsbad, CA, United States
I really appreciated the authenticity of the comments about not having parents feel that we are there to "fix them" or that their cultural practices are somehow "less than!" I presented as part of an international team at the World Forum in New Zealand last May and our topic was Family Engagement and as we were from all over the world it was interesting how this all related. When dealing with other cultures the assumption that those within are all the same can add to the miscommunication and lack of trust building that is needed to establish relationships.
Early Childhood Council of Larimer County
Fort Collins, CO, United States
Nice reminder! Thank you for sharing this "open mind" and curious process in working with families. Where and why is it that we lose that natural curious nature from our childhood?
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