The demographics in Merced, CA
Merced in California is found in the valley of San Joaquin. During the census in the year 2010, the population was 78958 and operated under government headed by council manager in the city of charter. Its name originated from river Merced that is found nearby and is located at a distance of utmost 2 hours when using automobile from the national park of Yosemite, near Pacific Ocean.
Amtrak is a rail that serves the passengers in the community as well as airline and bus lines. It is located 180 kilometers away from Sacramento, 210 kilometers away from San Francisco. Merced has recreational facilities such as zoo and Applegate Park as well as stage theatre (Ggudykunst, 2003).
At school, students are able to understand one another, their background, where they reside in a multicultural as well as multiethnic environment. Public schools are diverse and there is increased demand to get effective and better ways to succeed in their academics and appreciate one another. The challenge that most teachers get is ensuring that instructions are responsive culturally without favor or discrimination.
Proactive approach considers creating positive surrounding where teachers as well as students have respect for different backgrounds. Classrooms, which are structured, have highlighted diversity, where teaching is structured in a way to cater for various perspectives.
For example, during a lesson of history, attention is given to citizens of North and South Vietnam, feelings of soldiers and Americans diverse views. Diverse Group discussions are formed with activities that ensure every student contribute and participate actively, which help to discover every contribution that can be made by different students.
Mutual respect helps the teachers to ensure that respect is maintained all the time without tolerating disrespect. Rules and regulations to be followed should be established and kids involved in establishment of the rules. The work of principal is to ensure opinion of everybody is respected and every issue is looked at from different perspectives (Ggudykunst, 2003).
The law of no child is left behind ensures that all the students at school are successful without considering the background of their language as well as ethnicity. Schools should set the standards for yearly progress and goals to be achieved by all students in various demographic subgroups, which include those who are disadvantaged economically, disabled students and limited proficient in English.
Failure to meet the above goals results to classification of school as one that needs improvement or suffers the consequences. Strategies should be set for proper learning and teaching rather than addressing the gap of achievement quickly.
Special occasions at school create awareness on diversity with the warning that the events need to be school based. There should be no excuse to any student but rather the principal and teachers should come up with ways of ensuring that the child is able to learn, there is healthy meals, good place of study and has the necessary support.
Hmong have their customs, language, and way of living as well as adopting the life of their country. There are clans among the Hmong and children belong to the clan of the father in order to know about the ancestors. Once women are married, they belong to the family of the husband while the name of their father remains. Leaders of the clan who are respected help in solving conflicts and maintain rituals.
English is the language of Hmong who live in United States, which makes many children not to be fluent in Hmong. This results to problem in communication between the young and the old people, which makes the old people to feel isolated and depressed. Elders use gestures and nonverbal means of communicating with the children.
Much attention is needed in engaging Hispanic in order to ensure that trust prevails. The process of evaluation and planning by leaders brings about acceptance of education. It is important to respect the learners in Hispanic culture where the teacher greets every learner, papers are handed over to individual learners and education materials are written according to the appropriate level of reading.
In Hispanics, consideration should be made to the levels of education, skills in the language, level of income and values (LaCasa &Noble, 1991).
African diversity is in the climate, geography, religion, beliefs, culture, and art. The history of Africa is dynamic and is where human societies originated as well as many civilizations. Americans hold the image of Africa as inaccurate and fragmented and misrepresent the curriculum.
The diversity of linguistic in Africa has been a problem to most of its people because more than two thousand languages are spoken. There were languages without systems of writing, which lead to study, and examination of African languages.
The Community Resources and Social Services Available In Merced, CA
In Merced, people are given good health facilities, quality education, finance and security as well as encouragement. Merced as a county faces many challenges due to poverty, low education level, lack of employment, abuse of substance and many children are neglected. The community has different ways of finding solution to their problems by coming together.
The employees in different departments work hard to get the solution and agencies of human services connect the neighbors to the available opportunities that they do not know. The agency of Hinds hospice gives aid and home care to the residents who need their services.
The services are available all the time in the hospitals and facilities that offer care to the residents. They have the mission of ensuring that there is dignity, those who have terminal illnesses and their loved ones are taken care of, as well as supporting those who are grieved (Bandura, 1997).
The corporation for community development ensures the communities are strong by making good use of the facilities that are already available in the community and empowering the groups and individuals on how to utilize their talents in order to improve their life and life of other people.
The organizations, which are faith based, help to keep proper records of all the resources that the churches get from the county so that they can be distributed to the needy and these include cloths, food, and equipment. This is facilitated through the counselors, use of computers to network with organizations and other churches. A playhouse is used to educate the community, offer entertainment facilities, and community enlightenment.
The council of arts in the Merced County helps the youth in performing literary and visual art by forming workshops, festivals and teaching services. There are classes for telling stories and art where materials are given to parents for children to be involved in activities, which are both creative and social in order to develop all the required skill.
The bus offers transport in the whole of Merced County at regular schedule. The students use Cattracks, which is a bus of UCM’S to go to their apartments at the campus.
There are many learning institutions in Merced, where within a radius of one hour, the students who attend universities and colleges are almost one hundred thousand. There are two campuses of public schools and a college in the community, which enroll over ten thousand full time students.
Institutional Barriers
The schools should have strategies where the entire community and parents are involved in education as one of the plans for improvement. The structures that already exist are taken care of by local boards, groups of parents as well as council of advisors.
This promotes proper setting of goals, introduces changes, and ensures there are activities for learning at home, school, and community where working together in partnership is encouraged instead of public relations. The organizations in the education sector should work together to involve the public in order to prepare documents, provide materials which are audio visual or printed in order to support new initiatives.
The documents help to inform the school and students about the changes in education and ensure communities and parents participate in the process of learning. There are forums as well as in-service to inform parents on new developments in education and raise issues with social groups, labor and business.
The institutional barriers that are likely to arise are that the educators believe that parents are only supposed to receive information after all the decisions have been made. Parents on the other hand know that they should be given the opportunity to provide their suggestions before the teachers make decisions as well as being updated all the time.
Parents who want to be involved in the process of decision-making are a threat to the teachers who feel that their profession is challenged. The reason that makes teachers not to involve parents is the belief that professionals are the only ones who should run education well instead of all the parties.
The parents lack opportunity to give their opinion due to lack of time and communication between school and the parents at home is poor. There is fear of the conflict and intimidation, which both parents and teachers experience. The teachers do not value the contribution of parents and fail to value the issues raised by the parents.
Many administrators are not cooperative and do not agree to make decisions together with the parents. The expectation of the decisions made is not clear and therefore the parents and teachers fail to come together to raise their issues. Insecurity acts as a barrier and the people involved in decision making feel that the information may not be confidential resulting to threat in their security.
In order to address the barriers, people in the education sector should ensure that professionalism is reduced so that parents get involved freely. Parents should be given a chance to provide their opinions and suggestions at the central office. In the process of decision-making, guidelines should be developed on how to ensure all parents are able to participate.
The role played by parents when decisions are made should be clear to everybody. The teachers should guide parents on how to coordinate learning at home using the instructions and services they get from teachers. School outreach is very important where students get involved in the community in a constructive way because the whole community is supposed to participate in raising a child.
The children’s well being is a responsibility that is shared and support as well as commitment of agencies and families is required. The instability of the families, substance abuse, neglect, hunger, and violence act as barriers to proper learning. These barriers should be removed through efforts, cooperation, innovation, and creativity (Briscoe, 1994).
A Plan of Action Which Will Help Cope With These Potential Barriers and Ensure That Families and Communities Feel That Care About Success
Assessment of the community helps to gather all valuable information about conditions of families, children, community, their strengths, and concerns. There are many sources of this information, which include family members and parents through focus groups, demographic data from local agencies as well as interviews.
Due to participation of many partners in assessment, administrators, staff, members of the community, parents and teachers, the information gathered is accurate. Community assessment major focuses are resources, gaps, activities, and local assets where appraising and identifying this information help in partnership.
Vision statement- the vision statement gives the information needed when taking an action. When the vision statement is clear, the assessment becomes useful and has focus. It is used to make choices of the useful information and interpretation of what is learnt.
When emphasis on the vision statement is prevention, the focus of the assessment is nutrition and health of children. The information in the assessment should be specific and not all topics should be addressed at the same time.
Ongoing process- when community assessment is ongoing partnership it is able to respond to the conditions that are changing and those that cannot be controlled (Wiggins, 1993). When community needs are reviewed, the activities are monitored closely to help in evaluation.
Accuracy in assessment has multiple perspectives of viewing the community. It has recognition for economic diversity, special needs and linguistic, Information from families, staff of the agency and community members (Wiggins, 1993).
Forms of Intercultural Communication Will Likely Need To Become Proficient In and Sensitive To In Order To Help Students Feel Valued
Self-knowledge is important for teachers when taking care of literacy as well as cultural needs of children in order to know what influences the culture of children. This knowledge is gained through discovering all the assumptions that create obstacle when teaching. The teachers should take care of dialects and language together with Standard English that makes literature good.
There are barriers that result from social interests; values, goals, and language of the teachers, which makes them, fail to understand what to teach children from diverse backgrounds.
This barrier can be broken through self-knowledge, as this would help to acknowledge both literature and language meant for the student. When teachers know the values and their cultural backgrounds, it becomes easier to address and know the bias that does not allow them to understand and teach the students effectively (O’Conner, 2010).
Understanding culture refers to knowledge about how it can bring self-esteem in order to mould the behavior and perception in a classroom situation. The building of student skills involves knowing where they come from, culture, values, and literacy practices. Educators enhance similarity in culture among cultural groups that are diverse in order to unite them.
What remains the challenge are the cultural differences even when the way of thinking for different groups is similar. Cultural differences in a diverse society should be an on-going process characterized by common knowledge and understanding (Wiggins, 1993). In every educational set-up, the knowledge about language is paramount as it describes the communication pattern in the teaching learning process.
The learning of second language is very important and how it affects acquisition of literacy. Standard English is used in many schools but it is not used in the classroom. Students who learn second language from many languages find it difficult to follow instructions, meet the standards, or involve themselves in learning when English is used as the only language.
Despite the diversity in culture and linguistics among students, schools still have their targets when it comes to the use of language and communication pattern. Study shows the disconnection between literacy, what is interesting as well as engaging to the students (O’Conner, 2010).
This situation is avoided through educators having strong bases of knowledge, giving students chance to get meaning and accepting the preferences of the students.
Knowledge based on teaching that is informed about the culture helps educators to have a sensitive learning environment and verbal interactions, which helps all students to participate in the classroom. A teacher who is responsible culturally is sensitive to all the cultures of different students and uses their understanding of effects of culture when teaching.
The teaching strategies are influenced by knowing needs of students, which makes the learning environment optimum. Research is very important in teaching that is culturally informed in order to know different interaction patterns and understand individual needs of students regardless of linguistic and cultural backgrounds (O’Conner, 2010).
Design Techniques and Strategies, Which Will Enable to Apply These Human Relationships Skills in the Educational Setting and In Interactions with Families from Diverse Communities
Heterogeneous grouping of students helps to identify students from low achievers and minority ethnic groups and teaching them in a manner that they will understand. Instead of reducing the gap of different groups of students’, instruction methods help students who are not advanced in order to take care of the skills that they require when they attend school for the first time.
There is problem when students with special needs are isolated in their own classroom because they do not have the opportunity to interact and share with other students. It is advisable to allow disabled student to share same classrooms with normal students in order to promote learning and socialization.
Development practice helps to know about child development and learning, which emphasizes on interaction between the teacher and students as well as assessment. Curriculum that is all-inclusive in diverse classroom emphasizes on strengths while taking care of children needs especially those with delay in development and disabilities.
Curriculum of early childhood is based on theoretical principles on child development and learning; achieve physical, emotional, and cognitive goals and takes care of the individual interests of children.
The target by teachers for their students should be high even with the prevailing diversity in culture and linguistics in the classroom set-up, as this would promote the success of the students. This will help them to provide all the necessary support to achieve the expectations (Nieto, 2007).
Students should be helped with strategies that help them to study successfully, participate, and prepare for classes. Students should learn general practices by forming discussion groups, reading assignments, which are lengthy, and knowing the time required to complete assignment.
It is very important for students to know about the achievements of teachers for them to follow their good examples , take notes and learn from the lessons of more experienced ones. When instructors inform the students that they spent time and worked hard in learning, the students know that with effort they are capable of succeeding.
Instructions and guidelines to the students should be communicated clearly and the grading criteria provided. Grading criteria communicates the expectations and the intention of the teacher to the students for them to be successful in their assignment.
There should be rapport between the teachers and students in order to build confidence and trust among students for their instructors. The students should be reminded of the resources available for example facilities for those with disabilities and learners of English as a second language as well as services in the campus.
Despite the effort by the instructors, the experiences of students and their perspectives may not be valued. This requires change or may lead to misperception by the students, which requires information and formulation of response. The tests made by the teachers do not provide all the information to students because they only give information on the learning.
A gap is developed between the goals of students and classroom goals when students think they are unsuccessful in their performance. Students end up having unrealistic goals, ineffective strategies of learning and excuse themselves when their performance is poor (Calfee, 1993).
References
Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman
Briscoe, C. (1994). Making the grade: Perspectives on a teacher’s assessment practices, Mid-Western Educational Researcher, 7, 21-25.
Calfee, R. (1993). Student portfolios: Opportunities for a revolution in assessment, Journal of Reading, 36, 532-537.
Ggudykunst, W. (2003). Cross-cultural and intercultural communication. California: Sage Publications
LaCasa, J. & Noble, J. (1991). The Hispanic way: Aspects of behavior, attitudes, and customs of the Spanish-speaking world. Chicago: Passport Books.
Nieto, S. (2007). Affirming diversity: The socio-political context of multicultural education. Pearson Education.
O’Conner, J. (2010). Intercultural communication: A layered approach. California: VangoBooks.
Wiggins, G. (1993). Assessing student performance: Explore the purpose and limits of testing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.