Communication and Culture

Throughout my years as an public educator I have been in contact with many families from different countries and various backgrounds.  I believe I communicated with them efficiently. I try to respect everybody differences as unique and even though my view points are different from theirs I never try to impose my opinions on them.  There have been situations where I had to understand different customs and beliefs and do things that challenge me but as a professional I think I did a good job.  For instance, I had to speak to a parent that was Muslim about a situation with her child.  The mother would not talk to me she had to wait until the father came to the school.  For me, this was frustrating because it was something simple that I believed the child needed glasses and I believed that since he could not see correctly that was one of the reasons that he was having trouble in class.   For me that was a simple situation in which I just needed conformation that the child would go to the eye doctor. In my opinion, it was nothing serious that needed to wait until the father came to the school.   In this situation I had to put my own beliefs and perspectives to the side and just wait until the father came.  When I spoke to him I tried not to show my frustration even though I had a sense of curiosity about their customs.  Strategies that I can use to help me communicate more effectively with people are: to learn more about the individuals beliefs and customs.  For the situation above I could read the Koran and talk to a Muslim woman or man and ask questions about their religion practices. Possibly visit a Mosque.

A few months ago my neighbor who is Korean stopped me outside and held a conversation with me.  It was very hard to understand her through her heavy accent and lack of the English language.  I did everything I possible could to try and understand her and she did everything to try and get her message across to me.  Finally, she took out a piece of paper and drew a tree on it that had fallen down.  We both began to laugh because she wanted the name of the tree service that I used to remove the tree that had fallen on my house.  That conversation took us 45 minutes to figure out what she was asking me for.  In this situation the best thing we did was to use pictures to gain needed information.  We have talk since this incident but we used her niece as an interpreter.