From Brazil to America

Imagine the following:

You are working in an early childhood setting of your choice—a hospital, a child care center, a social service agency. You receive word that the child of a family who has recently emigrated from a country you know nothing about will join your group soon. You want to prepare yourself to welcome the child and her family. Luckily, you are enrolled in a course about diversity and have learned that in order to support families who have immigrated you need to know more than surface facts about their country of origin.

My new family will be coming from Brazil.  In order to prepare for their arrival, I will do research and learning related to Brazilian culture. 

The first thing I would do to prepare would be to research basic facts about Brazil.

The second thing I would do would be centered around language. I would discover that they speak Portuguese.  I would look deeper into the language and learn a few phrases that would be helpful to the new child, like hello, goodbye, eat/hungry, bathroom/diaper, sleep, and what family members are called. 

The next thing I would do would be to print a large map of the country so that the child or his parents could show me where they are from.  This would also give me an idea about their life (rural or urban). 

I would also look into what religions are common in their area so that I might be prepared for things such as holidays.

One last thing I would do would be to research Brazilian music.  I would look into traditional music like lullabies or children’s songs that would be sung in the home.  It would be my goal to procure a few CDs that might have some of these on them to play in the classroom. 

My goals with these preparations would not be to learn every last detail about Brazil, but to familiarize myself with a few things.  This way, when I do engage with the family, I at least have a foundation for some of the things they might talk about.  Transitioning from one country to another cannot be easy, and it would be my goal to open the doors of communication and create fertile ground for the growth of the child, as well as the growth of the family in America.