God Bless You One and All

I would like to wish all my colleagues, professors, and support team at Walden a blessed Christmas and a peaceful New Year.

Blog for Week 8 EDUC 6358

An explanation of your most passionate hope for your future as an early childhood professional and for the children and families with whom you work or will work.

Acknowledging early childhood education is crucial for young children proves that the importance of a trained person and one who is willing to share and accept new ideas and learn new ways of teaching.  I think keeping updated is important for all early childhood educators, knowing what research tells us and having contact with professionals. 

I want to be a person who helps educate the teachers of early childhood education, to be a presenter at seminars or workshops.  I would like to be a person who helps single parents find and learn how to use the resources to improve their lifestyle.
 

A brief to my colleagues:

I want to express my thanks to all of my colleagues for their support and communication.  I hope that this communication can continue past this class and the Capstone class.  I also want to express my appreciation to Dr. Shephard for her encouragement and assistance when things did not go as planned.  She has been great!

References:

Early Childhood Education/360 Solutions, 2012, Retrieved from

http://www.360-edu.com/early-childhood-education.htm

Impacts on Early Emotional Development

     I chose West Africa, particularly Guinea, much of my heart is still there.  The education system is far below standards.  When I was there, there were no public school; every child that did attend school had to pay a tuition fee.  There are a few good French school in the the larger villages but not in the small villages.  The article by Michele Akan Badarou relates that an organization from the Netherlands, with the support of other NGO partner’s schools called “learning Along Borders’ project”.  There is a new learning strategy; groups of eight are set together with a tutor from the students.   The students study the basic subjects along with technology, arts and science. 

     The education secretary of Forécariah Prefecture, Monsieur Souleymane Kaba, said, “This project has come just at the right time in order to integrate and keep each child, including refugee and displaced children, within a diversified and adapted education system.” (Badarou, M. 2010)

     The challenge is that this system of education is for a specific group of children, children in conflict-affected communities on both sides of the borders.  This does not include children inland.  In the large village where I lived had limited access to education, with tuition and transportation costly. 

      Another challenge is the Girl Child Health Issues; this is designed to be a protection for the girl in children in poor household have a high work burden of household chores.  The girl child’s time is restricted, leaving little time to develop interests of her own and reach full imaginative potential.  I have seen girls as young as five carrying baby sibling on their back, to free mother to do her work. 

     An UNICEF article points out that girl’s education is important, as educated girls are more interested in protecting themselves against HIV/AIDS, have healthier pregnancies with healthier children.  The campaign includes thirteen West African countries with six countries in Southern Asia (UNICEF, 2003).

     While in Africa, I saw children playing in the streets at school times, because their parents could not afford to send them to school.  I had a  little boy sit in the window of a broken down house across the street from my house-school.  He asked me many times if I could teach him.  The mission said ‘no”, time was a restricting issue.  My heart hurt for this child, he wanted to learn and the opportunity was not there or allowed. 

     When I left Africa, I donated three boxes of books to Save the Children to be used in a village that was working on teaching English.  I was asked to go to this village during our school break.  I was willing but then had to come home. 

References:

Badarou, Michele Akan, 2012, at a glance: Guinea, In Guinea, UNICEF supports an innovative school programme for children in conflict-affected communities Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/guinea_62302.html?p=printme

Ouagadougou, 2003, New York, UNICEF Launches Girls’ Education Initiative in Western and Central Africa, News Release,  Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/media/media_10944.htmlUNICEF Retrievced from:

 http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

Quotes: A four-year-old girl, in the dramatic play area of her preschool, begins swaying her hips and singing, “Baby, I’m your slave. I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave.” When her teacher goes over to talk to her about it, she volunteers that she learned the song from her eight-year-old sister. After doing a bit of research, the teacher discovers that the words are from a highly popular Justin Timberlake song.

Halloween costumes for young girls are so suggestive and risqué these days that Newsweek runs a story titled “Eye Candy: Little Girls’ Halloween Costumes Are Looking More Like They Were Designed by Victoria’s Secret Every Year. Are We Prudes or Is This Practically Kiddie Porn?”(Levine & Kilbourne, 2009)

Share your reaction to the topic of the sexualization of early childhood.

Children are paying an enormous price for the sexualization of their childhood. Girls and boys constantly encounter sexual messages and images that they cannot understand and that can confuse and even frighten them (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). I feel so strongly about this that I posted the above quotes on my Facebook.  It will be interesting to see what kind of response I get.

Provide three or more examples, from your personal or professional experience, that further illustrate the exposure of young children to a highly sexualized environment.

Personal experiences include my own granddaughters: one five and the other twelve.  The twelve-year-old has been exposed to sexual interplay in the family situation she lives in.  She is beautiful, the woman her dad is living with styles her hair, and buys clothes for her that portrays her little sex queen. 

The five-year-old dances and sways to many of the same kinds of music in the quote.  She also says her favorite actor is Sheldon, from the Big Bang Theory.  Relatives and friends laugh as they think it is so cute. 

The third example is my eleven year old niece.  Her mother allows her to read books that are far above her age and maturity.  She posts things on Facebook that upsets me because of all the sexual implications.  I have spoken to my sister about it but she said she has spoken both to mom and the granddaughter and they neither one see anything wrong.  One example she shared is: My only injection is to marry One Direction.

Explain the implications this may have on children’s healthy development. Include ideas you might have, as an early childhood professional, to best respond to these concerns and to reduce the negative impact on children.

First of all, I would like to say that lack of positive supervision and teaching from the parents is a major cause of my two granddaughters have babies outside of wedlock.  I know that this is not a usual occurrence but that is the problem.  This happens too often.  I feel that the parents are partially responsible from their lack of “parenting”.  I know this is the case of both girls, one is eighteen and the other nineteen.  The first one was called the princess and told how beautiful she was from a young age.  This is not a bad thing if they had not dressed her with the exposure clothes.  The second was exposed unusual adult living styles and sexual approaches in view of the children. 

As an educator of young children, I need to be s aware of play, talk and responses to ways children express themselves.  I would address any issue that arose with the parents, and ask them how they wanted me to talk to the children.   As Levin & Kilbourne says, how children are taught their value is determined by how beautiful, thin, “hot” and sexy they are (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009).

I am aware that when children have too much sex on their minds, their mental development is impaired.  

Describe the ways in which your awareness of the sexualization of early childhood has been influenced and/or modified by studying the topic this week.

I was made aware that others are thinking about the destruction of our children’s purity and innocence by all the sexualization of the media, music, books, iPods, and other sources of media.  I am thankful that there are researchers who are working to protect children from this kind of media.

References:

Levin, D. E., & Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1-8). New York: Ballantine Books. 

Retrieved from: http://dianeelevin.com/sosexysosoon/introduction.pdf

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

My personal experiences consist of living a year in Old Mexico as a missionary with my family of four young children. Later I live a year and half in Northern Canada attending French Emersion School with the University of Quebec.  I went to Guinea, West Africa to teach missionary children for three years while there teaching two teen African boys English. Being very ill, I came back to the USA healing for a year, and then went to Arizona to teach in an American Indian Christian Mission for one year and a half.  Upon returning to Manhattan, I taught in a preschool that had many international children, as their parents were students at the Kansas State University.  I also spent time visiting a teacher in Australia, showing me the educational system in her area near Sydney.

Because of many exposures to a variety of cultures, I have seen stages of development of children in different ethnic living arrangements.  Observing family systems in each of these countries has given me openness as to a child’s growth: emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual.  The vast differences of family systems from Mexico to Africa to American Indian Reservations has shown me that parents love their children and want the best for them but approach this system quite different. 

In Guinea, the grandparents have the greatest influence on the children.  The paternal grandfather is the one who names the child at birth.  The maternal grandmother is the one honored at the baby-naming ceremony.  The mother stays in the background during this time and the father accompanies his father during the festival.  This shows how important the grandparents are in the life of the child.  I attended two baby-naming ceremonies; I felt culturally ignorant but learned how important children are in this area of Africa.  The saying is cattle first, children second and then the wife in the steps of value.  I am not sure this is always true as I saw many men hold their wives in high honor. 

The “ism” that I have experienced is the LGBT.  My ex-husband divorced me to move into the lifestyle of the gay man.  I was rejected, looked down on, shunned and disowned by some of his family when the news of his change of life surfaced.  I was blamed, and still am blamed by some for his choice.  This happened several years ago but sometimes it surfaces and I am hurt all over again.  People made me feel dirty and the possibility of aids was an issue.  I have been tested eight times for HIV.  This has given me a different attitude toward this “ism” than other educators might have. 

As I have studied this “ism”, I see that many families with two of the same-sex parents can and are good parents.  They are no different from other parents, wanting the best for their child(Derman-Sparks & Olsen Edwards, 2010). 

My understanding of people, with no regard what their life choices are is respect and honor.  This is my theme: love every person, child or adult, that is God’s command and I chose to follow His word. 

Reference:

Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).