- Do you find yourself communicating differently with people from different groups and cultures
- If yes, in what ways do you communicate
When Communicating with other I have found myself to communicate with people differently. When Talking with my own culture/race I use a lot of slang, but when working with other families I'm relaxed, but I speak in a professional manner. In the area that I teach in there is a very heavy Hispanic population. Although I communicate with them and talk to them just like I do my African American and Caucasian families, I do at times find myself a lot of the times trying to figure out what they are saying. This happens with my Hispanic students as well sometimes. I know when I am communicating with my families I use a lot of non verbal communication and alto of visuals epically when I'm not able to have one of my coworkers to come in and help translate for me. When I'm talking with both my students and families I still show them that I care and am interested in what it they are trying to communicate to me. I find my self talking slower to them as well just to see if with the little English that they know they can still kind of get an idea of what I'm saying to them as well. I know some Spanish, but not enough to carry out a long conversation. Whenever I do have a coworker come help me I always make sure that the family is comfortable with them doing that because I would never want it to seem like I do care or that I'm not trying to communicate with them at all. The whole time that I am talking to them I'm making eye contact with them and not just with the person that is translating. I still want my Hispanic families to feel comfortable with talking to me. Since I have a very welcoming attitude and classroom I have developed a lot of trusting and respectful relationships with not just my Hispanic families, but all of my families.
In Order to better the communication with a diverse group of children and families some strategies that I could use would be to withhold judgment of others, learn about their cultures represented in the classroom to better communicate and be accepting (Gonzalez-Mena, 2010). I need to make sure that I am putting away my own biases and beliefs. Also when meeting new people I need to go into the situation with an Open mind and be a more informative listener.
Resources
Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2010). Looking at Nonverbal Communication Across Cultures. In 50 Strategies for Communicating and Working With Diverse Families (pp. 80-81). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.
5 comments:
Chawanda,
Have you always taught in a population where a lot people spoke Spanish? I have had a few ESL students but they could speak and understand English much better than their parents. Does your school or county provide classes for you to take to learn the language? I am sure communicating can be very challenging!
Caitlin
What is your employer doing to help you learn the different lanugages? Do you feel that it is the employers responsibility or only the employees?
Chawanda,
I am just like that too when I am with my "girlfriends" we laugh and us some slang words. Or short cuts in conversation verses saying everything but at work it is completely different. Now I feel strongly that at work the way that I talk to my girlfriends is not the way that I should talk to my parents. Also we have some Spanish students at our school and I find myself talking a little differently and that is only to understand what is being said sometimes. So just looking at this overally you do recognize this differently when pointed out.
-Rachel Hendrix
Chawanda,
I talk slang sometimes to my brothers, friends, except my grandmother, and dad. When it comes to parent I be a professional of watching my tone, how I use my words, and how I talk to them. I have experiment with other culture like Chinese and Germany but the most culture I have deal with is Hispanic
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