Blog: What I have Learned

One goal that I have when working with children and families from diverse backgrounds is to welcome them into the educational system, the classroom, and the community, and I will become an advocate for diversity in both the educational system and my community by being responsive to my student's needs and their family's members needs and values by teaching people to respect, value, and celebrate diversity.

One goal of social justice, equity, and diversity is to equip my students, my students' family members, my colleagues, and my community to recognize and challenge our racial, homophobia, sexist, and ageist bias towards different groups of people because they do not look like us. I will advocate for children to have the right to learning opportunities which will help them achieve their full potential and for the children to become engaged learners and valued members of society.

My colleagues, I have valued your feedback from the discussion that we have had in this course. We have shared personal experiences which has shaped us for the person that we have became today. I have valued the diversity of my colleagues and your insights and thoughts, and Dr. Dassa your feedback and guidance in this class has been invaluable and insightful.

A Poem to my Mother a Dementia's patient-Trauma

I watch you struggle with your memory
You could not understand our conversation sometimes
But I was there for you because you were my mother
I would hold you hands and look into your eyes
I knew the real you was still inside but your dementia was not letting you speak
There were times your medication would keep you up for two days with no sleep
You would sing all day and night worshipping our God
Yet we was there for you
The last conversation we had
You were sitting in your wheel chair and you reached out your hand as I was walking by
I pulled up the chair next to you
The conversation was not vocal because the dementia would not let you speak
It was a mother and son holding hands and looking into each other eyes
I still needed you as my mother, and I did not want to let you go
but I knew you had fought the good fight and It was time for you to rest now
You was not confused that day, but the smile on your face and the love in your eyes
let me know that you were still there even though you could not speak
The hardest part was letting go of your hand and walking away from you, but you smiled
and you let me know that it was going to be okay only as a mother could.

Start Seeing Diversity Blog. "We Don't say those words in class.

An incident comes to my mind is when a young white child who was shopping with his parents came up to me, and he started a conversation. He was asking me why I had this display table in this retail store. Why were people putting money in the basket on the table? His mother and father were standing a few feet apart looking at clothing. While we continued to talk he came around the table to stand next to me, and we continued the conversation. However, the next question he asked changed our conversation.

He put his hand right next to mine, and he asked my why my hand was darker than his? I turned to look at his parents to see if they were going to answer the question. Their reaction were priceless. They both looked at me and their child with shock and embarrassment. The farther walked away from the clothing rack, and he did not look back, and his mother turned around and begin to continue looking at the clothing like nothing had happen. I answered him by talking about God. You know how God made animals to be different, and he said yes. I told him that God made people with different skin colors. Even though our skin colors are different, we should still get to know people. It is not the skin color that will decide if we are going to become friends with that person, but it is their words and actions.

He looked at me and, we continued our conversation, and then he said goodbye, and he walked over to his mother, and they left the store. An Anti-Bias educator would have asked the child why he asked that question. In the Laureate Education Video one of the teachers asked a young girl why she did not want to play with the brown doll and she quoted "because the brown doll was dirty." (Laureate Education, 2010) The teacher set up a time to wash all of the dolls, and the student begin to play with the dolls because it was now clean. Early Childhood Educators should show people of color in pictures as doctors, lawyers, nurses, policemen and executives in businesses. Some television shows, books, and photographs still portray people of color in stereotypes roles as criminals.

In Africa, people people live in cities and rural areas and not just the jungles. Anti-Bias educators must include photographs, books, and start conversations to help children unlearn their biases toward their peers. Instead of asking children questions of characters that they have seen on television, children should be shown images of people during the same things because images can help children depict stereotypes which will help children unlearn stereotypes about people.