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.