What I Have Learned

As I work with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds I hope they feel acknowledged, accepted and included in my classroom.  I hope they see my desire to want to learn more about their backgrounds and incorporate that into my classroom.  I hope they feel confortable enough to be open and honest with me and willing to work with me to help educate their child. 

I believe it would be beneficial for the early childhood field to provide more professional training related to issues of diversity, equity and social justice.   This would be helpful for all professionals but especially for early childhood educators who do not see a lot of diversity in their classroom but need to be aware of it and educated about these issues.  My goal would be to encourage my school district to provide more professional training related to diversity, equity and social justice.   

Thank you to all of my colleagues for your great work during this course.  I have enjoyed reading the discussions and learning from your experiences and sharing of great information.  It is always interesting to hear what other people are thinking about different issues.    

Creating Art

This art represents the importance of having a strong support system around a child.  Love is in the middle because every child needs unconditional love and everything else helps support the love.  I traced my daughter’s hands to surround the love and then placed important components in each hand.  Children need support, encouragement, acceptance, teaching, education, learning, help and forgiveness.  Having a strong support system from birth throughout one’s life is important for a child’s healthy physical and emotional development.  

We Don't Say Those Words in Class!

 “Although children may not understand the full meaning of their biased comments, these can become the basis for more developed prejudice if adults do not respond to them” (Pelo, 2008, p. 45).  I know there have been many times when I have not responded appropriately to a child’s bias comments.  This definitely happened more prior to being a preschool teacher.  I cannot think of a specific incident but I know when my son was younger there were times when we would see a person who was extremely heavy and my son would comment “Look how big that person is!”  These comments always made me feel uncomfortable and I definitely did not want the person to hear my son say these comments.  My first response to my son would be to try and silence him.  I would tell him to be quiet or that is not nice to say.  By handling this situation in this way I was probably portraying to my son that it is not okay to talk about people’s different sizes and it may have made him feel like I was not acceptable of people that were a bigger size. 

I enjoyed hearing the response from a teacher in this week’s media segment.  When a young girl mentioned she did not want to be friends with someone because they were fat the teacher responded, “People come in many different shapes and sizes.  I have friends who are fat and friends who are thin.”  I like how the teacher used herself to portray an example of acceptance of all different sized people. 

One suggested guideline by anti-bias educator Eric Hoffman for responding to children’s curiosity that stood out for me was “Always respond – If you do not know what to say, explain that you want to answer but must first think about what to say.  Get back to the child with your response by the next day” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 33).  I think this is very important to remember.  I know there have been times when I have responded inappropriately to a child’s comment and I believe if I would have taken the time to really think about my response I would have handled the situation better.  My response would have been a much better teaching tool for the child and for myself.  I need to remind myself that it is okay not to have an answer right away.    

References

Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, DC: NAEYC.

Laureate Education (Producer). (n.d.). Start seeing diversity: Physical ability and characteristics [Video file]. Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu

Pelo, A. (Ed.). (2008). Rethinking early childhood education. Milwaukee, WI: Rethinking Schools.