Connecting Across Cultures: The Helper's Toolkit

Chock-full of fun exercises, surprising tips, and real-world case examples, Connecting Across Cultures: The Helper′s Toolkit provides both students and professionals in health care, education, and social services with the skills to develop respectful, smooth relationships with clients and the community at large. The book offers communication tools to defuse defensive interactions, resolve conflicts constructively, and engage respectfully. Written in a warm, inviting style, the author shares her own mistakes as she explains what not to do and how to do it better. The book provides practical, hands-on strategies for connecting with people across differences related to ethnicity, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, disability, age, gender, and class. Because cross-cultural relationships involve extra challenges, this book will help you with almost every relationship you encounter.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Diversity Is Unavoidable, and That′s a Good Thing 2. The Starting Place: Knowing Who You Are 3. Creating a New Awareness: What You Didn′t Learn in School 4. The Invisible Boundary: How Privilege Affects Your Work and Life 5. But Everyone I Know Agrees with Me: The Influence of Family and Friends 6. That′s Not What I Mean: Effective, Respectful Communication 7. Say What? Why Words Matter 8. Making the Connection: The Four Relationship Vitals 9. Keeping the Connection, Even When the Signal Is Faulty 10. When the Golden Rule Isn′t Working: Respectful Conflict Resolution Conclusion

About the Author :
Pamela Hays holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Hawaii, a B.A. in psychology from New Mexico State University, and a certificate in French from La Sorbonne in Paris, France.  From 1987 through 1988, she served as an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester School of Medicine.  From 1989 through 2000, she worked as core faculty member of the graduate psychology program at Antioch University in Seattle. In 2000, she returned to her home town on the Kenai Peninsula (Alaska) where she has since worked in community mental health, private practice, and with the Kenaitze Tribe′s Nakenu Family Center. Her research has included work with Tunisian women in North Africa, and Vietnamese, Lao, and Cambodian people in the U.S. Pam lives in Kasilof, Alaska, which has a population of 500 people and several thousand moose.  She provides consultation and teaches workshops internationally.