My Personal Birthing Experience

My most passionate hope for my future as an anti-bias educator in early childhood education is that I continue to grow in my comfort and expertise in working with children and families in my anti-bias classroom.  I hope that I continue to add to my strategies and practices so that I am the best role model, educator and communicator that I can be.  I hope that I do not stay stagnant and that I continue to grow and learn both from my colleagues and the children themselves.  I hope that my children and families have a strong enough relationship with me so that they can communicate with me when I have unknowingly shown stereotype and bias to someone in my classroom or community so that I can make adjustments to my behavior.  I hope that I am able to pass along my communication skills, interaction skills, knowledge of stereotypes and bias and other strategies onto both my students and families so that they can also become role models of anti-bias educ...

For this assignment, I choose the country of El Salvador due to the recent heightened political interest in illegal immigration.  I had always thought that the majority of our illegal immigrants were from Mexico, however, according to recent data that is incorrect.  Central America, India and China make up the most of our illegal immigrants.  In this blog post, I will discuss what challenges the children and families of El Salvador face (United Nations Child Emergency Services Fund).   El Salvador is plagued with violence and poverty.  It is the smallest country in Central America and is the most densely populated and most industrialized.  Central America consists of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.  It is the most violent country and has the highest murder rate in the world.  El Salvador had 448 rapes of minors in 2008.  In 2009 there were 241 children killed between 13-17 in the first si...

I felt very strongly that the views presented in the article So Sexy So Soon:  The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids.   I have taught first grade in my school for over twenty years so I have been able to witness shifts in parenting and behavior firsthand.  Children are exposed to sexual images and sexual situations all the time on TV, on the internet, online, other media and in their environments.  What used to be considered inappropriate is now considered normal.  I have students dressing like little adults and making statements that another child is “hot” or another child is their boyfriend or girlfriend.  They shake their buts when they dance and sing songs with adult themes.  I have even seen children draw penises on their papers.  Even children of the best parents can’t keep their child from this type of exposure.  It’s everywhere (Levin & Kilbourne, 2...

The biggest take-away I have from all the coursework I have taken on anti-bias education is that we need, as educators, to set the example of what we want our children to be. Children learn biases early on in life, from family systems, friends, classmates, well-meaning teachers and even different types of media.  Adults, even the most well-meaning adults, pass their biases and stereotypes onto children without even intending to.  My parents, when I was young, never really spoke out negatively about people who were different in my hometown.  As I have mentioned before, I come from a hometown where the people are almost all Caucasian and are from two parent families.  Anyone who was different was avoided, even if we were never given the indication that those different people were bad people.  So instead of speaking out negatively about these people, our lives were just arranged so that we would not come into contact with these people...