What I Have Learned

One hope that I have when I think about the children and families that I work with I wish that they will see what may be hard now will only make them stronger in the end. Sometimes the children that I work with do not see the good in others because their situation is so bad. They are just trying to survive and are not worried about anything or anyone else. I wish that they would really see other people for who they are and take a step away from survival mode. I wish that sometimes the families that I work with would take the time and share their stories and take the help that is offered to them. Sometimes it is a pride situation and they don't want to admit that they are struggling. I just hope that they one day will have a better future where they can take time to relax and enjoy life more.

One goal that I would like to set for the early childhood field is that people will take the time to listen to children's stories and get to know them. So many times we hear about students because of the bad things that surround them. Teachers need to not listen to any of those notions and start on a fresh foot and get to know their students for who they are and not for their past stories. Every child deserves a chance and for our children every school year should be a new chance and a clean slate with a welcoming teacher.

Thank you to everyone that took the time to listen to my stories and share their thoughts with me. I have taken the last 8 weeks to really reflect on diversity and my personal views, finding things out about myself that I did not know. I am glad that I am going to be able to give my students and even better education after the things that I have learned. Good luck to all!

Creating Art

When I think about what I have learned through this course I think more about how I am going to teach the children to grow up to be anti biased and get to know people for who they are and not what other have bestowed upon them. I think about how I can explain this to the children for them to  understand that we are all individuals that should be given a chance. These are the think I would always remind my students about.

Opinions

Don't judge a book by it's cover

Listen before you speak

It's what's on the inside that counts

Go in blind

See things in black and white

Do onto other as you would want done to you

Make your own opinions

Be you not who they want you to be

Be free not judgmental

"We Don't Say Those Words in Class!"

I have a child in my classroom that has Treacher Collins Syndrome, by looking at him he looks very different than my other students. He is also very hard to understand, most of the time you can't understand anything that he says. One of the first grade classes were walking by us in the hallway and one of the students noticed my student. She yelled out, "He looks funny!" All of the students started to chuckle and my student got very quiet. The other teacher told her students to be quiet and mind their own business. They kept going on to their classroom without stopping to ask or talk about the situation.

The teachers response was that we do not talk about it and we mind out own business. She would have rather not talked about the situation and let the children believe that he was a "funny looking". If she was an anit-bias educator she would have let her class talk to mine, because my students know and understand why he looks different. If she was uncomfortable with that she could have asked me and I could have given her more information to go over with her class. I also could have given her the information without her asking or given her students information as the comment happened in the hallway. Now my students have gotten use to telling people that he is different and way, they are very protective of him and make sure others don't make fun of him.