Thank you Everyone

First I want to thank everyone in this class that supported me and took the time out of their day to respond to my discussion questions or help me on my journey in this class.

• One hope that you have when you think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds 
• My hope that I have when working with the diversity with my families is, everyone that I come in contact with will be as excited as I am to continue to learn to build a stronger community and a better way to communicate.
• One goal you would like to set for the early childhood field related to issues of diversity, equity, and social justice (any format and any length)
• One goal I would like to set for myself is in the next 8 years to fluent in a language other then my own. This is something that is not only important to me but I feel a true passion for this cause.
•  

The New Student

My family has arrived from Spain. I will be culturally responsive by having different phrases hung on my wall in order for the staff to become better acquainted with the child.

¡Hola! - Hello

¿Cómo está usted? (frm) ¿Cómo estás? - How are you?

No entiendo / No comprendo – I don't understand

¡Lo siento! - I'm sorry

Un idioma nunca es suficiente – One language is never enough

I would research and ask questions about the cultural background of the family and make my schedule adjustable for any questions.

I would ask the family to bring in objects from their home so our class could become more acclimated with the child.

We would read folk tales from Spain and look at globes, pictures.

We would also feast on authentic Spanish food

I would hope these adjustments would not only benefit the child that is entering my classroom but also my other students. These small tasks would add to cultural equity and hopefully the children would not only benefit from this in early childhood but carry the experiences throughout their lives.

Resources

(2013) Omnigolt retrieved from http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/spanish.php

Racist Comments

• What memory do you have of an incident when you experienced bias, prejudice, and/or oppression, or witnessed someone else as the target of bias, prejudice, and/or oppression? Keep in mind that one can encounter such incidents in real contexts, including online environments, as well as in fictional ones, such as movies, books, television shows, and the like.

The assistant director at my center tells the story of when she was in the Kindergarten room years ago. There was a child that was giving her an especially hard time and she turned to correct them. The child stopped what they were doing and turned, looking at the assistant director saying, “ My father said I didn't have to listen to you because you were nothing but a monkey.” My assistant director said her heart had never felt so broken. She is a black woman.

• In what way(s) did the specific bias, prejudice and/or oppression in that incident diminish equity?
  Because of the racist comment from the father, the assistant director was not looked at as an authority figure. Much less a human being.
• What feelings did this incident bring up for you?

This brings up feelings of sadness for the assistant director that she had to experience this, sadness for the child that she will grow up with such a racist outlook on life and hatred for the father.

• What and/or who would have to change in order to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity?

In order for equity in the kindergarten class we would have to bring more diversification in the classroom. Through literature, food, speakers, music ect it would have to be taught that an African American or anyone should never be called such horrific things. Last year in the Kindergarten class they went to the museum and learned what slavery was.

An example of microaggression that I experienced was when a parent who is a psychologist and from California came to pick up his daughter. It had been an especially trying day and the children were just not in synch with me. The father walked in the door sat down tiredly and watched the children as I tried to get them in order. I turned to the father and apologized. I told him that I was a little intimidated because he was a child psychologist and I merely worked in a school age room. He stood up and said he make 270.00 dollars and hour to examine or diagnose a situation. I told him I make seven.

When the father used how much income he made in order to shut down any proceeding conversation we were about to embark I felt powerless. I didn't feel it was worth his time for him to ask me a question about what was exactly going on in room but to give me the message that he simply wanted to go home.

I can honestly say that this week has really opened my eyes with stereotypes and prejudice. I was surprised that there was just such an underlying nastiness in the way people talked to one another to gain power in a situation. Yesterday in work when a woman was put in charge to close down our building and tried to undermine what I said to the children as a way to embarrass me and empower herself I felt a sense of “bitchiness” when I retaliated. I feel guilt when I am in this situation and I am forced to regain power by speaking up for myself.

Diversity and Assimilation

I would like to begin with saying the first person I talked to an Indian coworker named Nita. Nita to be seemed very much involved in her heritage but I was really surprised by the answers she gave me about culture and diversity. She told me about her daughter who is in 5^th grade. Through out the years, the administrators and teachers would constantly get her name wrong, even as going as far as spelling it wrong on a certificate she received in school. Nita said she tried to explain to her daughter that she had a difficult name and to have understanding when people were not able to pronounce it. I told Nita about our reading and how this is really an event that chipped away the spirit of this little girl. What I had taken out of the conversation was that assimilation was more important to Nita then diversity. The reason I came to this conclusion was because with each example of an Indian tradition that was taken from my reading there was an excuse why this couldn't take place in an Early Childhood setting.

My husband says culture says a certain number of people who have similar beliefs in society while diversity is people with points of views or backgrounds/differences.

The last person I asked about culture and diversity was a parent of Chinese decent. We had a conversation on how American and Asian culture were different. She told me that she did not practice a lot of the traditions that were from her home country. An example of this would be, on the child's first birthday the baby picks from a group of objects to determine what their occupation will be when they become older. She thought this was silly when she thought of others doing this. She said it didn't bother her when she thought people thought she was something other then Chinese. What I had gathered again from this conversation is assimilation is more important and traditional cultural values have taken a backseat.

“All young children first develop their self-concept within their family, getting their initial sense of place in the world from who their family is and where they fit inside it. By preschool age, they begin also developing group cultural identities and social identities.” Sparks, D. L.& Edwards O. J. (2008)

I really enjoyed talking about other peoples cultures and it opened my eyes to assimilation and diversity. With the people that I talked to there was a lot less of the diversification that I expected.

Reference

Sparks, D. L. & Edwards J. O. (2008) Anti Bias Education for Young Children and Ourselves. National Education For Young Children

The emergency government has decided that the surviving citizens will be best served if they are evacuated to other countries willing to take refugees. You and your immediate family are among the survivors of this catastrophic event. However, you have absolutely no input into the final destination or in any other evacuation details. You are told that your host country’s culture is completely different from your own, and that you might have to stay there permanently. You are further told that, in addition to one change of clothes, you can only take 3 small items with you. You decide to take three items that you hold dear and that represent your family culture.

This is the first item I would take with me. It is a coin that my husband got me after my grandfather passed away. They would give these coins to fighter pilots while my grandfather was in the Navy. This holds dear to my family culture because it reminds me what my values were based on. It reminds me of the stories that my grandfather instilled in me since I was a little girl and how I still pass these stories on to this day.

These are metro tokens from Trenton New Jersey. I actually have them on a necklace instead of a pair of cufflinks. I wear them frequently because they ground me and help me remember where I come from whenever I feel as though I am lost. My tokens are pretty beat up and it only has meaning to me. To everyone else they look like a coin.

The third thing I would bring is a clothespin. This clothespin would represent my grandmother raising us. It would represent the plastic tubs of water she put in the yard for us to play in the Summer and the smell of fresh laundry we would run through that she hung up. My grandmother is a huge part of my culture and things I also still use today.

If I was told I could only keep one of these items, it would feel was though I would have to give up that memory. These identities are so engrained in me I do not think this would be possible.

The Journey: Research Around the World

The Journey: Research Around the World: What are some of the current international research topics? One thing that I noticed while looking at the Early ...

Thank you for helping me

Before I start my blog post I want to thank everyone in this class for my journey. I was really nervous in the beginning that I wasn't going to be able to pull through but with your help I am almost at the end. This is one of the most insightful classes I have taken so far at Walden. I've learned how to put together a research study while keeping an ethical perspective. I have a better understanding of quantitative and qualitative although I do struggle with the both a little. “One of the first tasks of the child development researcher is to decide on a basic method by which to collect information. Scientific inquiries generally fall into two broad categories: those conducted using qualitative methods and those conducted using quantitative methods. As the word "qualitative" implies, qualitative methods employ nonnumeric designs and attempt to study phenomena inductively, as a process, and in the place in which the phenomena occur. Conversely, the quantitative approach attempts to measure phenomena numerically and make conclusions deductively and with respect to outcomes or products. Both approaches are well represented in the study of children.” (n.d) Methods of Studying Children - Qualitative Methods Of Child Study, Quantitative Methods of Child Study retrieved from http://social.jrank.org/pages/413/Methods-Studying-Children.html

My ideas have changed about research because now I see it more as a process. I didn't realize that if you become emotionally \involved with the participants, this might affect your study. One of my favorites topics this semester is children and power relations. In the past when research was conducted it was done so unethically without the consent of parents. This is no longer the case. When we are conducting a research study the safety of the children must come first, we must also decide on what method we will use to study the children. Some of the challenges that I have encountered was learning the terminology and before those helpful hints on how to read a research study, I also struggled with that.

Some of the research topics that I came across in Africa was

The Development of an Integrated Early Childhood Development Urban Model

Training Program for Informal Minders and Community Volunteers

in Ghana

Building Community Leadership for Quality Sustainability in Madrasa Preschools:

The Case of Madrasa Preschools Post Graduation Support ( This one is about community resource teams supporting the community preschools)

Pilot Study of the Adaptation of an Established Measure to Assess the Quality of Child Services in Selected Orphanage in Zambia: The Inclusive Quality Assessment (IQA) Tool ( IQA stands for Inside Quality Insurance. What this tool does is focus on the perception of the people that live at the orphanage. They used this tool to see if the best interest of the child was being met.)

Utilizing Indigenous Stories in the Promotion of Early Childhood Development Programs ( This happens to be one of my favorite sites. This started off as a pilot program and grew much larger. It focuses on collecting stories from children and examining the themes and the moral beliefs. They see this work as important because it calls attention to policy makers about the importance of early childhood education.)

In Australia I explored the website www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org. Looking through the Voice archive I found some interesting topics. The Australia's vision for Reconciliation focused on the heritage of the Aborginal and Torres Strait Islander. It seems to me after reading this that this is were their diversity problems start. They are looking to build holistic relationships with these people by becoming more engaged and creating more of a culturally rich dialogue. Side noteworthy; “Beginning in 1910, non-Indigenous Australians began to take Aboriginal children from their homes and families. These children, known as the Stolen Generation, were either given to white families -- to be raised as white children -- or to institutions and orphanages where they were forced to assimilate to white society. Between 1910 and 1970, when the practice stopped, over 100,000 children had been separated from their families and culture. In 1967, following the example of the Civil Rights Movement in America, the Aborigines began to fight for equal rights. The white Australians -- the only ones with the power to vote -- passed a referendum to the Australian constitution that gave Aborigines the right to vote. The passing of the referendum also meant that Aborigines could be included in future censuses, officially recognizing them as citizens of Australia.

Aborigines are still fighting for equality in Australia today, and racism is still prevalent throughout the continent. The life expectancy of a typical Aborigine lags almost 20 years behind that of a typical white Australian [source: The Independent]. Aborigines still don't own most of the land that was taken from them during the colonial period.”
Johnson, R. (n.d)

I also read about the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF) that was started in 2009. The projected outcome for this program is for the child to gain social competence, and ethical behavior. This program sees play as an opportunity for learning and through this program believes that the learning outcomes would be reflected as long as the classroom is diversified and there is flexibility in the planning.

I also explored http://journalauthors.tandf.co.uk/pdfs/howtogetresearchread.pdf on the topic of How to get my rsearch read. ( A guide to publishing your journal work). I thought because we are exploring the contents of how to conduct a research study it would be interesting to actually understand how to get one published when the time arrives. I was also hoping to read the “What's New” section under the European Early Childhood Education Research Association but it was still under construction.

Resource

(n.d) Early Childhood Australia retrieved from www.earlychildhooaustralia.org.au

(n.d) European Early Childhood Education Research Association retrieved from http://www.eecera.org/conferences/

 Johnson, R. (n.d) How Aborigines Work retrieved from http://people.howstuffworks.com/aborigine3.htm

The topic that I would choose is a nature/nurture study of children being brought from an environment that is not conducive to their upbringing and then put in environment that would give the child a chance to grow and succeed. I would have a few different control groups measuring the outcomes by observing by following the children if material possessions or outside social activities have more of a positive or negative effect on where the child finds themselves when they are 40. I would also have a control group where the child was taken out of the negative environment and put in a positive but had very little possessions and had to work for what they were trying to achieve. I am fascinated with the nature/nurture aspects and the biological elements that make up young children. I believe that the positive contribution would be that we would learn where drive comes from and do we have to pay a large price for it. 

Cultural Paper

The paper that I am working on for the simulation is cultural responsiveness with children and educators. The first paper that I researched explored how teachers can be more culturally responsive even before they set foot in the classroom. This article was interesting because the teachers were in the first semester in their senior year of college, they were all dual majors and all European American. When the project was designed it was to expose teachers to others cultures because there was to much superficiality in the classrooms when it came to this matter. It was really nice because it was centered were the teachers would most likely become employed. This project also focused around literature included were a folktale, a historical fiction novel and one realistic novel.

The next paper that I read focused on cultural responsiveness and using a Early Childhood Ecology Scale (ECES). Ecology is “the study of the interaction with people and their environment”(retrieved from dictionary.com) The teachers used this observation form to observe the classrooms. The teachers were then able to reflect and engage more with the students after evaluating them. The self assessments of the teachers were later compared to the classroom observations.

The article that I read was about enhancing the environment of a child of changing demographics. Because of the diversity of the backgrounds there is often a lack of communication in cultural awareness. This being said, in order to be more socially competent as a teacher it is crucial that we are aware of the child's surroundings through out the day. We need to utilize the child's strength by being aware how we are interacting with the child on a daily basis. This involves cognitive as well as social and emotional.

I am not sure if I am on the right path with this or picked to broad of a topic. If anyone has any suggestions please let me know.

I would first like to bring up the words Developmentally Appropriate Practices. This is something that means a lot more to me after talking to my international professional. The United States as well as Capetown Africa need to work on policies and issues regarding the way that our children learn. We need to start including the physical, social and emotional as well as cognitive. This is something that will make a more well rounded child and community.

Another consequence of learning is economics. This is something that is an issue in Capetown as well as the United States. We need to provide more home visits in the United States and overseas we should be more concerned with the education of young women.

The last consequence I would like to bring up is looking at children as a commodity. When we do this whether it is in Capetown or the United States, children lose their childhood. We forget about play and focus on testing to try to “catch up” with everyone else

A goal for international issues is that I help with more of the poverty issues and the education of girls. I did donate to Pennies for Peace and used the lesson plan to help build schools for girls and would like to do more in the future. This is a cause that I do believe in.

I received a late response from my contact in Africa and I wanted to share this with you

Dear Jen,

Apologies for the late response but I was busy with the students last week and it became a very full week indeed!

There is currently a difficulty with career-pathing within the Early Childhood Development sector. We have Level-4 and 5 Certificate courses and then there is quite a big jump to the Early Childhood Diploma.

We also have a Foundation Phase degree for Gr. R – Gr. 3 (national curriculum), but this doesn’t fit with our way of working which does not separate the Gr. R (6 yr old child) from the 4 and 5 yr. olds.

Our Diploma is a very rich and in-depth course which covers the 4 -6 yr. old but this is usually very difficult for our second language speakers.

Our government is currently looking at a Level-6 Diploma which focuses ONLY on the Gr. R (6yr old) year. We do not agree with this at all, and many other ECD organisations and educators are against this as well.

Personally I would like to be able to do an Early Childhood Waldorf degree training, and we are looking at this but it seems a long way off at this point.

In the meantime I attend workshops, courses and conferences whenever possible, to further my professional development.

Our government has also stipulated that further professional enrichment for teachers every year, is a mandatory requirement for further development (teachers get credits for these ongoing courses).

I hope this has been useful information for you, and I wish you well on your journey ahead.

Warm regards,

Robyn

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Six Educational Goals

I found this on the site and I thought these were amazing goals for anyone in the early childhood field but especially amazing if it was accomplished by 2015

The first would be improving education for all children but especially those with special needs. My nephew is seven and was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes. He was told by after care programs that they did not accept his kind. We need to educate teachers who work with young children on what it takes to care for those who are different.

The second would be by 2015 that all children have access to free primary education. Especially girls. This is very important because without a stable education these young woman grow into mothers who raise children themselves.

The third is that childrens needs are met through programs where they are taught skills that are not only academic but will help with growth

The fourth is that we have especially women literate. At least 50 percent

The fifth is that there is gender equality.

and the last is we need to make sure that there is some sort of measurement in place so we know where we stand in early childhood education

retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/education-for-all/efa-goals/

What it is to be a professional

Brunei Darussalam is where five year old Irfran Bin Md Zulkili lived when he was asked the question what is a really good childhood. This contest was for people living in the Asia-Pacific region. There were 900 entries from 23 countries. I would like to express three things that I learned from this site through this child. I will also include my professional goals.

1. The child's world is full of color and love. As a professional I would like not only children to participate but have a smile on their face as they do so. If you look closely at the picture the young girl has her hand on the teachers arm. This woman is loved.
2. The woman is showing the pictures. As an educator this teacher is in tune with the children and teaching them with information that relates to their world. In the picture it seems to me the birds are not even caged, they are there because they want to be.
3. The third would be as a professional the children are reflecting the demeanor of the woman. This is something that I strive for. To be an example. 
   
   I also wanted to share this picture. If you look at the picture below even though it is a family and the one above. There is unity. I believe as a professional this is what we need to strive for. To fill a child's world with color and love                                                                                    resource                       "Five year-old boy won the regional Photo and Drawing Contest  What is a good early childhood?” (2012) retrieved from “http://www.unescobkk.org