Supporting diversity through meal times

This vignette shares how Early Childhood Educators support diversity through meal times with the young children they work with. In this clip Jessica, Kelly and Jasmine share their learnings from the Leading Learning Circles for Educators Engaged in Study training facilitated by Griffith University.
Transcript:
Supporting diversity through meal times
QCOSS EMBRACE 2015
Jasmine Williams:
Another challenge that I've come across with families from different cultures is the food as well. Um... So finding out what the child eats at home especially when their looking at the food, and it's spaghetti bolognaise and to them, it's … their … what is this?
Kelly Dykes:
Where as we, the children provide their own food. Which is wonderful. Because we're learning so much about, yeah what their eating as well. Yeah so it's fabulous. And um yeah, and they have that comfort I guess of having their own food and being able to...
Jasmine Williams:
Yeah it's something that they know from home.
Kelly Dykes:
Absolutely.
Jessica Connors:
I was going to say, we're the same as Kelly. The families provide thier own food. But I guess it's just the different cultures and the way they serve the food. At morning tea time, going to heat up his lunch at morning tea because that's when he usually eats it, rather than making him eat it at lunch time with everybody else. So now we're more understanding of that's how his family do it, so that's how we should do it at the centre. We've got staff that have been there 10, 15, 20 years. So it's very much this is the way we do things. This is how we've always done things. So I guess it's just bringing that understanding into the centre. Um, even I was a bit like that, like um, he doesn't like his water in the fridge because it makes him sick so, um, I found that hard to understand because in Australia it's hot we always keep our water in the fridge. It made me think about, my values and that my values don't go for everybody.
Kelly Dykes:
And I guess allowing those families to say that, I don't want my water in the fridge. And that's okay, that's okay. Yeah ... Yeah, allowing that to happen.
Jessica Connors:
I myself like to do a lot of cooking experiences, and this family is vegetarian so it's just incorporating vegetarian recipes, rather than meat into the recipe. Yeah. I have a lot of conversations with this family as well, and I always ask permission if we're going to have different food in the centre. I pull her aside and show her the ingredients and she says yes or no. She'll give me ideas of what we could do to adapt it. So I guess that's a big one for my centre.
Acknowledgements:
This vignette shows participants learning and reflections from “Circle of Change Revisited”.
Camera Operator and Sound Recordist:
Ranu James
Production Assistant
Cherie Lamb
Director/Editor
Ranu James
EMBRACE Culture in Kindy and Program with the Queensland Council of Social Service
Interviews by:
Lari Stojcevska
Kingston East Neighbourhood Group Inc.
Thanks to:
Kerry Smith
Associate Lecturer
Marilyn Casley
Associate Lecturer
School of Human Services and Social Work
Griffith University
Jessica Connors
Lead Educator
Good Start Early Learning Centre, Daisy Hill
Kelly Dykes
Director
Occasional Care Child Care Centre
Kingston East Neighbourhood group
Jasmine Williams
Pre-kindy Lead Educator
Active Kids Early Learning Child Care Centre
Logan Central
Leading Learning Circles for Educators Engaged in Study training facilitated by Griffith University
Supported by:
Kingston East Neighbourhood Group Inc.
EMBRACE Culture in Kindy
Queensland Council of Social Service
We would like to acknowledge that this film was developed and filmed on the land of the Yugambeh, Jagera and Turrbal nations.
Leading Learning Circles for Educators Engaged in Study can be found at:
www98.griffith.edu.au/dspace/b...