Reflecting on Learning

My most passionate hope for the future as an early childhood professional is to continue growing and exploring other resources that could be use for the children and families I work with. I have learned a lot, but I still have more to learn, knowledge that I will obtain from the children and families I work with as well as from the day to day experiences. I will continue provided quality care to all the children I work with, without making any extinction or discrimination, creating and maintaining an atmosphere of equity and justice, where you parents and children can feel welcomed and accepted as part of our classroom family. Promoting and encouraging an anti-bias environment were children feel free to express, learn and question. Where parents feel welcomed, appreciated and valued as important members of our society.

Thank you all for your wonderful comments and resources that over the course you have shared with us, we have all learned from each other. I look forward on hearing from all of you again in this coming course as well as during our currier as Early Childhood Educators.

Impacts on Early Emotional Development

After reviewing the struggles countries face in various parts of the world I choose to explore more about Eastern and Southern Africa, focusing my attention on “Malawi”. Malawi, currently suffers from serious condition due to the deadly combination of chronic poverty, bad weather conditions, bad harvest, a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS and an outbreak of cholera.

About 40 percent of the population which is a total of 4,916,000 people are in need of food assistance, due to this 48 % of children under five years of age in Malawi are stunted and 22 % are underweight or malnourished. Despite the effort to reduce these percentiles, they duplicate each year affecting directly children under five years of age.  

The humanitarian situation is particularly serious for the rural population. More than 65 per cent of Malawi's population lives below the poverty line. Due to the food crisis these families suffer, cholera is another health hazard that the Malawi population phase.  The country also has an extremely high prevalence of HIV/AIDS, which affects an estimated 16,4 per cent of people aged 15 to 49 and accounts for some 70 per cent of hospital deaths. Some 400,000 children under 15 have been left orphans due to the death of their parents from this illness.

The fact that children are suffering from so many factors, such as malnutrition, poverty, sickness and the trauma of losing many of their family members due to these factors make a tremendous impact on the child overall development. Their ability to grow healty, learn and succeed in life slowly fades away as they continue suffering from these deathly factors.

As a parents and professional in the field of education I fell the responsibility to support organizations such as UNICEF, which does a remarkable job all around the world to alleviate many of the challenges that children and the families are suffering. It is also important that we model and encourage are new generations to also see the struggles other people are facing all around the world and give a helping hand. I we would all give a little of our time, effort and support to others less fortunate then us, this world would be a different place.

 

The Sexualizaton of Early Childhood

My reactions after reading this article was of wanting to learn more about this topic,  I have always been concerned about the messages children were receiving in the media and society in general. My fears are based on behavior, a have observed over the years as a head start teachers, and seeing how things have gotten worse. My first experience of sexualization was in a head start full day classroom 12 years ago. During our group time we were all dancing when one of the little three year old girls started to dance in a way that seemed very sexual and provocative. I remember seeing the others children’s face as they tried to figure out what she was doing. I had to eventually turn off the music, since she just would not stop and started to get to close to the boys while she was dancing. Then I a had a little boy bring one day, a stack of cards of playboy girls that he was showing to the boys during free play, when I asked the little boy were he got them he said that his uncle gave them to him, because all men like see girls like this. I can sadly provide a list of examples that I have been aware of children being exposed to sexual material and behavior that they should not be exposed to. Sadly material that caregivers are not taking precaution in order to prevent this from happening. Children are seeing rated R movies, soap operas and magazines that are full of imagines and sexual behavior that children often play out in school, because they do not actually understand the meaning of what they see. Then my ten year old daughter, which in fifth grade was telling me that her and her best friend are the only two girls in her classroom that do not have cell phones and Facebook. She also mentioned that many of her classmates already have a boy friend and are all exited, because of San Valentine’s day coming. After she mentioned this to me, I tried to talk to her about what each think meant and why they were things that at their age were not necessary to do or have.

In my opinion the implication of racing children in such a high sexualized culture, is as the article So Sexy So Soon mentions “Boys and girls are routinely exposed to images of sexual behavior devoid of emotions, attachment, or consequences”. Girls are growing with the miss conception that appearance and sex appeal are the most importance aspects of being a girl, the sexier you are the more value you have. Boys taught see girls as objects with no feelings or value. What this promotes is more insensibility and violence towards women, men and children as frustrations and self esteem grow as they try to meet the expectation that society places on them.

As a professional in the field of Early Childhood as well as a parent of 3 children, my suggestion is that we should inform parents of the implications of exposing their children to unnecessary sexual images. It is so easy to just ignore or consume products that are not age appropriate and just because they look cute. I would also include activities in my lesson plan that talk about the importance of respecting our body and others. Also activities that talk about things that make us unique and important, things that have nothing to do with being pretty, sexy or strong. The way in which learning more about sexualization of early childhood had influenced my conception, it’s encouraged me to learn more about the subject as well as to inform the parents I work with of the implications as well as seeing these factors more seriously.

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

I would like to share a personal experience, where I experienced racism toward my oldest daughter when she first entered a daycare when she was 2 years old. We had just come from Mexico, and my daughter had never experienced being in a daycare center, nor speaking or hearing another language other than Spanish. I remember that the first impression I had from the center as I asked for information, was that it was a clean, well organized and child orientated center. Qualities that I was looking for, I also noticed that the teachers were very attentive and nurturing to the parents and children, so without hesitation we enrolled our child right away. After the second day we both my husband started to notice that my daughter was one of two children that spoke Spanish all the rest were either polish or white, and none of the teachers spoke Spanish, and they all were Caucasian. Then we noticed that our daughter was having a very hard time with separation and she would stay crying and when we would pick her up she was still crying. None of the teachers ever approached us to let us know how she was doing and what they have done to help her. The sad part of all of this, was that we were never acknowledged, we were never greeted when we dropped our child nor when we would pick her up it was as we were invisible and not important as other children and families from the center.  

When we asked how our daughter was doing the teacher answered “Well she cries mostly all day, and we really can’t comfort her, because we don’t speak Spanish and we can’t understand what she is saying. The teacher also mentioned that she would take her to the quiet area to give her some space, but she would stay there for most of the day, and refused to interact with anyone else. After hearing this, my impression was that they didn’t even try to help my child, and that they had a certain bias against Spanish speaking children, because of the distinctions both my husband and I observed. We both were disappointed to the point that we also adapted the same behavior towards the teachers, behavior that was not health for u or our child. We ended up taking our daughter out, after two weeks of invisibility. This experience affected the whole family,  in regards to our ability to trust in others ability to set aside their personal bias an actually do the work that needs to be done. It was until my daughter’s kindergarten teacher that we actually felt valued and respected, our language, culture and values we just as important as the rest of the families in her classroom. Until this day our 17 year old daughter still remembers her teacher and the many moments that we shared our food, stories and cultures with the rest of her class and teacher.

How important it is that as teachers we provide an environment were all children and families feel welcomed, were all feel just as valuable as any other, and were language, skin color, culture etc. do not affect the level of the quality of work we do with the children and their families.