Presentation at Trainer Summit

On June 18th, I presented at the Child Care Aware MN 2016 Trainer Summit, a conference held for trainers and professionals working in professional development. The topic is one near and dear to my heart- that of cultural competence. One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in life is that people crave to be heard, understood and acknowledge. Through mastery of cultural competency we can maintain our customs and beliefs (or change them if we so choose) while other can do the same. In virtually all environments we encounter people who are different from ourselves, and at times, it can be uncomfortable. Yet, we have to overcome these feelings and create safe spaces for the work we do, especially in ECE. During the presentation we talked about active culture, cultural relativity and cultural bumps- and it was a great experience. Based on the success of that presentation I’m preparing a class based on cultural competence that I hope to offer soon!