The Bear Necessities
February 21, 2020
Negative Environment Impact on children
PAT Did you know??
We have had over 300 families enroll this year in Parents as Teachers.
We currently have a waiting list of 38 with most of them being days. Families are matched with a parent educator on several different attributes, not just the order they enroll.
We continue to recruit families as the waiting list goes quickly -especially at the end of the school year as kiddos head off to kindergarten! Please be sure to continue recruiting and information sharing efforts so caseloads will be full in the Fall!
Equity work
The first is from Jeanie, Culturally Responsive Holidays...this one will really make you think!!
The second is a story about a young addict. Many of our families are struggling with addiction. This story is written from her perspective, giving us a glimpse into her life. Getting to know someone helps you develop empathy and compassion for the PERSON. Heads Up: This story does reference religion.
Culturally Responsive Holiday Celebrations
Lunar New Year, Part II
The Leading Equity Center has always welcomed feedback from the Weekend Voice and after last week’s post on the Lunar New Year, we’ve received some feedback - some of which sparked additional thoughts regarding cultural appropriation which will be discussed in a few weeks.
It was brought to our attention that some of the recommendations on ways to celebrate the Lunar New Year (reading stories about the Lunar New Year, using charts with Chinese characters for numbers, and the phonetic pronunciation for simple math games, and giving students a Mandarin orange and a red envelope with a $1 coin) may incite cultural appropriation. Cultural Appropriation is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of another culture.
The Leading Equity Center appreciates the feedback and agrees that it would not be appropriate in many cases for cultural outsiders to attempt to participate in cultural traditions that are not their own. Here are some suggestions to consider based on some of the feedback we received:
Educate yourself about other cultures by attending events organized by cultural insiders
Share your experiences with your classes and what you learned instead of trying to mimic or replicate your experiences for your students
Reading books is helpful but again, ensure that the books read are also written by authors who represent the culture they are writing about.
By way of context, the teacher who shared the suggestions for the creation of last week's Weekend Voice grew up in Asia, and is familiar with both Cantonese and Mandarin. The charts that were used had phonetic translations on the top, but as someone familiar with Mandarin and Cantonese, the teacher was able to bridge that gap. The teacher was also comfortable with offering hong bao as the teacher had received hong bao during New Year’s visits and had given the children in their family hong bao over many years.
We received clarification on the red envelopes which are given during the Lunar New Year. They are called:
hong bao (Mandarin)
hung bau or laih si (Cantonese)
ang pow (Hokkien)
We learned that the amount of money given in them needs to be even and to try to avoid 4. (4 and death are homophones.)
Snow Day Info, my best guess at this point
So we have missed the following days:
Dec 16 - Monday
Dec 17 - Tuesday
January 17 - Friday (no students)
January 24 - Friday ( no students)
January 29 - Wednesday (late start, AM missed school)
February 5 - Wednesday
February 13 - Thursday
Our students missed 4 total days of school, but our AM class actually missed 5 due to late start day on Feb 5th.
Because so many of these days are Fridays, we will not make those up with students. Here is what I think:
May 19th for 12/16
May 20 for 12/17
May 21 for 2/5
May 26 for 2/13
May 27
May 28 STAFF LAST WORK DAY
Our Week:
Tuesday - here, Jeanie AM home visit
Wednesday - both here, Kerry to WLE lunch
Thursday - both here
Friday - both downtown for HS mtg 8:00-1:00