Sunday, December 23, 2012
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.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
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
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.
Saturday, December 15, 2012
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
Saturday, December 8, 2012
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
Saturday, December 1, 2012
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).
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