WK8: What I Have Learned

One hope I have when working with children and families from diverse backgrounds is that they can feel they are understood and welcomed. It is typically easy to look nice and exchange friendly conversations. However, the roles of early childhood educators are deeper than being nice around the children and their families. I hope to understand what their beliefs are, what differences and discomfort they have experienced when dealing the dominant groups, and what anxiety they have so that I can help the children to develop positive identities and to be fully nurtured.

One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field is to increase the number of staff and teachers who are educated on anti-bias education. Anti-bias education is very important because it affects healthy identity development. I believe this is more important in the long run than teaching letters or math. However, I feel that currently more and more time and interest are devoted to more academic topics. That is why I set this goal.  

                    

To my colleagues,

Thank you very much for sharing your insights. I hope we all can become true anti-bias educator and make changes in the early childhood field. Please let me know if I can help you with something even after we finish our course.

 

Aya

Start Seeing Diversity Blog: Creating Art

What I wanted to show in the illustration is that children build their identities from what other people think about them or their groups, which can be biases, something that causes children to feel discomfort or trauma (Spay of the colors indicating that). I also wanted to show that those messages or experiences stay in children as they grow up. I did not add physical features for the children because the differences among children are limitless and these differences are equally important. The colors are both in dark and bright colors because children get positive and negative messages and the mix of the colors can be taken as beautiful or dirty depending on people viewing it because I believe that identities are the same since some people may think one person’s features are cool and others may not agree. I chose to not put faces on the children as they are growing up in the illustration because some children view their identities as positive and others do not. I also wanted to show identities are subjective and dynamic in some ways.

 

Start Seeing Diversity Blog: "We Don't Say Those Words in Class!"

While out shopping at the mall with friends, my six-year-old daughter and her friend saw two adults with restricted growth walking, they started to giggle and said, “Look at those people!” to us moms while pointing at them. I told my daughter not to point at them, while my friend said the same to her son, and explained, in serious tone, that there are people who look differently and it is not something we should think of as funny.  

 

Our children instantly stopped giggling and did not pay attention to them when we came across them again later on as we shopped. So from our reactions, our children learned that we should not regard+ physical differences as funny things.  At that same time though, they might have taken our response as a message that we should not have interests or curiosities in people who look differently than ourselves.

 

An anti-bias educator might have used this as teachable moment. For example, he or she could have used the children’s curiosity to cultivate understanding. An anti-bias educator might have asked the children why they think little people were funny, explain why they are short and try to give a chance for the children to talk to those adults with restricted growth and ask if they are different inside.

 

Gender, Gender Identity, and Sexual Orientation

Some of the ways you noticed that homophobia and heterosexism permeate the world of young children including books, movies, toys, stores, culture of early childhood centers, and schools.

 

I see homophobia in stores. Toys-R-Us’s website clearly identified boys’ toys and girls’ toys. This limits kids’ options on what toys to want and how to play and implies that playing with toys of different genders is bad or weird. I also see homophobia in the older Disney Princess movies. Princesses are usually beautiful girls who don’t voice their opinions if they even have them. They are beautiful and do housework without complaining, until they are saved by a Prince. However, I see changes in more recent kids’ movies. Fiona in Shrek fights against enemies with martial arts and makes a very deliberate choice to remain an ogre, which is considered ugly even though she could have remained a beautiful woman. The main characters in Chicken Little and How to Train a Dragon are not strong or powerful but end up becoming heroes because they care for others, and are smart

 

Your response to those who believe that early childhood centers should avoid the inclusion of books depicting gay or lesbian individuals such as same-sex partnered families.

 

I would explain that our job is to provide children with environments that help them to build high-esteemed identities and to become people who respect various kinds of people. To do so, we need books depicting gay, lesbian and same-sex partnered families because it makes them visible in their world which raises awareness. Hiding that there are gay and lesbian people gives children biases that people who are not heterosexual are abnormal or less important. I would also explain that awareness does not increase the rate of children’s becoming gay or lesbian as adults.

 

 

 

 

 

WK8: Thank you & good luck!

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I am always motivated and supported by your diligence and common desire to make the early childhood field a better place for children and families. I hope we will see one another again in future courses and I also wish you good luck in all you do.

WK6: Team

I think high-performing groups are hardest to leave. It is not only because it is working well but also it has a history that makes it a part of my identity. I have always had an important team since I was a child. Some of the teams that were hard to leave were my volleyball team, McDonald’s where I worked while I was in college and a school where I taught as an English teacher. I think they were hard to leave because I had memories of working together for goals and had achieved some of them, and the members grew by helping and learning from each other. Except for the volleyball team, I had parties as a kind of ritual. It is nice to have a ritual to be able to thank teammates and say good-bye to them.

I imagine that adjourning from my colleagues will be hard but also somewhat happy too because I will be sad not to be able to have contacts with them often but I will be glad that they will be thrive as early educational professionals as they wish to. I think adjourning is essential because we need to move onto our next goals. It will benefit the organizations we belong to and help us to grow up.  

WK5: Conflicts

This is a small conflict that happened at work. At the school where I work the art teacher visits the classrooms to teach arts. She brings the stuff she needs to teach. The lead teacher for my class has asked me to watch out for that the art teacher does not take things that belong to the class and to not let her to use them as much as possible.

 

At the first art class of the school year, the children used markers. The art teacher had two big boxes of her own markers, but she put our class markers on the table without asking. I thought it was not what the lead teacher wanted her to do but I did not stop her because her markers were black outside and our markers were white outside. So I thought I would be able to distinguish them and put them back to where they should be at the end of the class because I am the one who does the majority of the cleanup.

 

At the second art class, the lead teacher was around. I put classroom markers on the table because I knew the art teacher wanted to use them again. The lead teacher asked me not to let them use our markers. So, I put them back saying “I see.” However, the art teacher stared to put our markers on the table a minute after that because she was not watching us. The lead teacher told the art teacher, “I do not want your markers and my markers mixed. Mine are white and yours are black. So please do not mix them when putting away.” She also explained the same thing to the children.

 

This experience made me notice that I tried to avoid conflicts even small things. I do not like to show disagreement. The lead teacher’s attitude showed that we can and need to speak out about what we want even in politeness. She gave this as advice too. She also said, if we do not show what we want or what we think, we could get in a trouble even if we are right.