Reflection on what I learned

I have really enjoyed this class and I have learned something new each wek. We learned about so many different cultures and every culture that we learned about had something that made them special and different in their own way. We learned about being Culturaly compotent and being aware that we live in a world with so many different cultural backgrounds and the fact  we have to respect them and accept them for who they are and be non- judgemental. On the Cultural Competence spectrum I would say that I fit in the acceptance stage  I would like to be in the two stages above acceptance  which are the adaptation, and intergation. As of right now I do not know sign language or any  other languages really so the communcation aspect may be diffcult for me with certatin cultures. I do want to learn sign language and some words of other languages sometime during my life,

We had quest speakers that came in to our class and I learned something from all of them.
We had a guest speaker who works at Broken Arrow he talked to us about the Aborginals and the kind of work that the agency does. I remember him telling us about a family that he went to vist with a female co-worker. The lady was knocking on the door but the family would not answer he explained to us how that is unacceptable in there culture for someone to knock. One of my most memorable moments was the day we went to the Quntie Mohawk school. The whole day was great we were given a tour of the school, we took part in their cultural dance, we played with them outside, and we helped the students make a bracelet. Overall it was an awesome experience that I will always remember.

 We also had two quest speakers who came to our class and they work with an agency named LGBTQ. They put on a great presentation and I learned a lot. I did not know Bellville had a high Gay population it was higher then I had thought. Ron, Brian and |I had the opprtunity to sit in on one of the Say it out loud group sessions. It was a great experience, We learned a lot about the youth that attend that group and the also the purpose of that group.

We also had another quest speaker that came in to our class that was a DSW. She spoke to us about people with intellectual disabilites. She talked to us about the language that should be used when working with people that have disabilities and also the language that is commonly used in a negative way. It was intresting to hear the perspective from a DSW.

 Our last guest speaker that came to the class was a man named Erin who was deaf. This was a great learning experience for me and everyone else in the class. I did not know much about the deaf culture but after hearing Erin speak I had a better understanding. I find sign language to be a very intresting type of language and very visual. Erin showed us this machine that he uses as his alarm clock it flashes when someone is at the door and it also makes his bed shake to wake him up. There was many other things I learned that day this was just one example.

At the beginning of this class I some knowledge of Culture and Diversity. The Cultrual presentations had a big impact on my learning. I gained an awareness of the cultrual groups beleifs, values, tradtions, how a CYW can work with them, types of food they enjoy and many other things. I enjoyed the videos that we wacthed in class they were very powerful and they also had an impact on my learning. All the quest speakers that came into our class were great they all spoke about different topics each one of them were helpful. I feeel that this is just the begining of my Culture and Diversity jounrey I plan on learning much more about my own cultural background, Cultures I learned about in class and also groups that I have very little knowledge in.

We had a guest speaker that came in to our class today. She is DSW teacher in the school. She shared some of her experiences and the type of clients she works with. She talked to us about children that have inteclluctal disablites and how they misunderstood by many people. She gave each of us a strip of paper that had a few words on it. Some of the things that were written on these pieces of paper were types of defects, deaf, common sterotypical words, and there was many other different things.

We got toegther in our highlighted groups and split the words up that we had into a category of good and bad. It was intresting to look at the words when they were broken up by things you would say and things you would not say. I can't remember all the words that my group had but I remember some of them which were birth defect, cognital defect, we had alot of strips of paper that said defect on them. When looking at some of these words people in my group said words they would use instead of defect it was intresting.

The speaker shared some stories with us about instutions that they use to put people in who may have struggled mentally, phyiscally, and even devlopmentally. I can't remember everything she said but I do remember her telling us that they were treated very badly and they were injected with needles. I felt devstated when I heard this. Some people in this world are just mean and heartless. After the speaker was done talking she took questions and there was some good questions that were asked. One of the questions was what resources are avaliable in the community? I was amazed when She told us all the different resources that can help people who may have Autism, Down Syndrome, Fetal Achool Syndrome, and many other developmental or mental challenges. The lady did not speak for a long time but for the time she was there it was helpful and I learned alot.

After the speaker left we Sarah talked to us a little bit about the deaf culture and showed us vidoes that related with it. One of the videos was a music video, the name of the song was waiting on the world to change. It was a powerful video all the people in the video were using sign language to communicate. Some things that I got out of the video were that they just want to be accepted for who they are and that just because they are deaf doesn't mean they can't be sucessful. At the start of the video there is some quotes

We wacthed another video that had these young people who you could tell had some physical and mentall challenges but they all were happy and beautiful people. They were asked some questions like what is your favourite food, what is one of your dreams, who do you love, what is something you don't like? and other questions. It was a really sweet to see how they responded to each question. It is hard to put into words how i felt when wacthing that video but i enjoyed it.