What I Have Learned

I hope that in working with families and children from diverse backgrounds that I can be sensitive to their unique needs and points-of-view.  I hope that I can use all I have learned to help other staff to better serve the children and families in our programs and the community.

My one goal is to bring the Anti-bias philosophy to my agency.  There is so much 'multi-cultural' but so little anti-bias curriculum.

Thank you all for your posts and input this semester.

Start Seeing Diversity Blog: Creating Art

The picture I decided to make for this representation was of a flower garden.  The flowers represent people.  The soil is the foundation that has been laid by the family the child has grown up with.  This foundation has created a foundation for the roots that the child has to fall back on and navigate the world.  These will dictate how the child reacts to flood or drought.  The different flowers represent how depending on what goes into the child the flower is unique.  All of the flowers are close, or in the same community, but they have each experienced unique soil, rain, sun, diseases, etc.  The different experiences have caused a different flower to blossom.  The lightning represents trauma, and the bee represents the passing experiences that may only fly by in an instant but causes a lasting impact.  There is so much that can be interpreted from this picture.  What do you see that can represent what we have learned so far in this course?

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

A time when I witnessed an adult reprimand or silence a child after he or she pointed out someone they saw as different was when I was at the mall. a couple of weeks ago.  While at the mall I watched as a father shamed his son for asking a double amputee why he didn't have any legs.  The boy was about five years old and approached the man in the wheel chair and simply asked, "Why don't you have any legs?"  The man began to answer when the dad stepped in front of his son, apologized to the man in the wheel chair, and then yanked the boy by the arm away from the man, and told him to never point out why people are different.  He asked the boy how he would feel if someone asked him about how he was different.  The man went on and on shaming the boy until he was in tears.

The message the man communicated to his child was, its not okay to be different.  It is something to be embarrassed about and definitely not spoken about.  My own daughter asked why the man had no legs, and we discussed the possible reasons.  We also talked about how life would be different for him without legs.  Our conversation lasted about three minutes, and ended with my daughter shrugging her shoulder and saying, "Huh, he must really have fun wheeling around in his rolly chair!"  The boy and my daughter both were curious and trying to make sense of the world around them (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010).  However, my daughter got the message that its okay to ask questions and be different, while the boy received the message that it is shameful to be curious, and not okay or safe to be different.

In my classroom I would have allowed for the boy to ask the question of the man.  I would have listened to the exchange and allowed for more questions.  After listening I would have figured our what the boy really wanted to know about the man in the wheel chair.  For example, my daughter was more interested in knowing about the rolly chair.  I would have then talked about what the boy learned and talked about how he approached the man and what he learned form asking the question.  I think this would be appropriate for anti-bias education.


Reference



Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and

            ourselves. Washington, DC: NAEYC.