School Readiness

My research topic is on school readiness. We are hearing so much in today's soceity about the standards that are being placed on children in shcool today. What was once taught in the the first grade chidlren are having to learn in kindergarten. I want to find out if child's life influences their preparation for formal learning, how parents and family influence on school readiness and how family life is important. I want to learn ways to better help families focus on school readiness because preparing students for school today has to be a team effort. It can not be all done by the teacher alone. I also hope to find through research if placing a child in a preschool program at an early age supplies furtheer reinforcement in a child's general school readiness. I want to find out if school readiness prepares children at a young age to face the learning experiecne that they face in schools today. Children are expected to learn quicker and learn things at an early grade compared to what we were taught when we were in school. I hope to share some information with my classmates and if any of you have any information on school readiness you would like to share I hope to hear from you. Good luck to everyone.

Goals

When I think about working with children and families who come from diverse backgrounds I think about wanting to give them the best learning experience possible and to have a sense of being comfortable. I want to learn new ways to become better prepared to serve those from diverse backgrounds. I want to make sure that I meet the needs of my students as well as their families. We can make it a fun and learning experience between the teacher and the families. We will learn from each other as well as giving others in the classroom a chance to learn about another culture. I want to make sure that I keep an open door policy for all of those that I serve. We are a team that is learning together in giving our children a chance to succeed in life. My goals would be to make sure that I am prepared to serve those from diverse backgrounds and that I accept that students are differ in capabilities and take these differences as the starting point for teaching and learning. I want to also find ways to make sure that I active involvement from parents because learning and growth of their children is crucial. I want to make sure that I am properly trained and others who may work around me are trained to learn more about diversity, equity, and social justice. I will find trainings that will help me along the way to become more knowledge in these areas so that I can share it with others. I want to give the best so that I can serve those around me. I want to wish all of my classmates the best of luck. Remember we are in the field of early childhood education because we want to make the difference in the lives of those we serve and we also serve the families as well. You can only be truly accomplished at something you love. Don't make money the goal. Instead, pursue the things you love doing, and do them so well that people can't take their eyes off you. All the other tangible rewards will come as a result. -Maya Angelou

India

I choose the country of India because we have had a few children enrolled in our Headstart program from India. It is interesting when you have a family come into your school that is from ay different country than your own. You do have to prepare yourself in many ways in order to help the child and the family to adapt to their new environment. I guess you can say that you as a teacher and the family will be learning alot from each other. In preparing myself for a family coming from a different culture I would want to research everything I can about their culture. I would want to meet with family along with family service worker from school and get to know each other. I would want to talk with them about what they expect their child to learn in school and their preferneces about language, foods and etc. I would want to make sure they understand that I have an open-door policy and that we are working together to give their child the best learning experience possible. I would also look for outside resources to help me in the classroom but to also help the family in the home if they should ask for help. I would make sure that they are felt welcomed. If parents could not speak English I would want to make sure I have someone who could speak the language for me when meeting with parents and also have ways to type letters in their English that are sent home. I would invite the parents to share things from their culutre with the class. We once had a family from another country and we let them come in a prepare a meal with a varitey of foods from their culture and they even wore the clothes from the other culture to school that day. The children loved being apart of this and it was such a great learning experience for them. I hope that by preparing myself that I will be able to help their child learn to the best of their ability and that we will become a team. I will learn from them as well as they will learn from me. I want to make sure that we have a way to communicate because giving their child the best learning experience possible will be important to me. I want them to feel comfortable and know that by the things I do that I care and want to be there for them.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

Thinking about the personal side of bias and predjudice brings my mind back to the racial outbreak that happen in my small town community back in the 1980's. The reason for the outbreak has never really made any sense to me. It was because two races couldn't get along. We had many things to happen, alot of fights, alot of threats made to everyone and even extreme violence broke out. Yes, it was a white/black situation for whatever reason I still don't understand. I have never seen anyone as different because we are all in this world to live together. During this time I witnessed many harsh things being said among people and saw many violent acts among each other. I plainly remember the day we were called from our classroom to report to the office because our parents were picking us up due to a bomb threat that had been made among the school. Our community was on the news everytime you turned the tv on or picked up the newspaper. This racial outbreak lasted for a couple of weeks but did eventually die down. I forgot to mentioned yes, there were people that served jail time for the acts that were committed during this time. As the years have gone by the memeories still remain here in this communinty of this day but the way we live is together. It does seem like that day back in the 80's actually made us a stronger community who have come together and united as one. That is the way we are all suppose to be. As we all live in this world we are always going to have people or groups who pinpoint out certain things about people and who don't like the way they live or do things but we have to remember that we are all on this planent together as one. I hope and pray that one day we will all be living together in harmony instead of against each other.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

This weeks topic has been an eye opener for me. Microaggression happen more than we really see them. I can look back and see myself many times showing some type of microaggression to someone and I really didn't realize that this is what I was doing. I can think of a time when this occur when my boys were in school and the insult came from a teacher. We all know as teachers we are suppose to have faith in our students but this one teacher really put my kids down. It was during their Junior year in high school when they were preparing for the high school graduation test. We were meeting with some of their teachers because we were conceerned about some things going on in another class not the one the teacher added his comment to. He looked at us with our kids in the room and said he knew that our boys would never pass the science part on the test because they couldn't learn it in class and they would never be able to pass that part on the graduation test. Talk about putting the boys down and how it made us feel because he was suppose to be a professional helping students to acheive their success. Well, to make a long story short they both passed aced all five parts of the graudation test the first time and for me I gave an insult back to the teacher. Working with headstart program we sometimes tend to forgot that all families are not like ours and we may sometimes look at others different. In our community we are a small comminuity weith mostly whites and africian americans. When we do get the spanish speaking families in we tend to have that look as if you all come into our world you should learn how to speak our language. This has happen often in the past few years as we have seen more and more families from another culture come into our area. I have to work on myself to learn how to help these families and find ways that I can serve them. Again, microaggression is all around us and we sometimes just don't realize what we say and do to others until it is too late. I have learned alot through this discussion this week and I plan to work on making sure that the way I approach my families and others that it is in a way that is helpful and not hurtful.

Family Culture

What would I take with me? I would say the three things I would choose to take would be my Bible, box of family pictures and my mother'ring given to me when my children were born. I would choose the Bible because it is God's word. It helps us to live a better life and serves as a guidebook showing us how to live on the right path. The Bible is important in Christian worship because it is the foundation of faith. The Bible would serve as my guidebook to help me in another country to survive. My box of pictures would be family pictures that mean alot to me. It would include my wedding pictures and pictures of my children when they were born. These pictures would serve as a reminder of the family I love and care for. It would help me to get through each day by having those pictures to look at. My last item would be my mother's ring given to me when my children were born by my husband. This ring I would wear and it would be a constant reminder of how much my children mean to me and how much I love them. It would serve as a reminder that we are together no matter what the circumstances may be and that they will always be in my heart. If upon arrival I had to choose I would take a family picture out of the box and stick it in my Bible because with the word of God in my hand I know that I would be able to get through the tough times and having the family picture in the Bible would let me know that my family is safe because God is on our side. I have realized that my family culture is all about family being together and that we serve a great God who will look after us and protect us from evil. We are a family who believes spending time with each other is important and we want the tradition to continue for our younger generation as they get older.

Topic

My topic I would choose would be on autism. The reason I choose this topic is because we are seeing more and more children in Head Start that have autism whether it is a mild case or severe case. I have had the opportunity to work with a few children with autism and it is a challenge when you really don't understand the reasons behind autism. My research topic would include many issues that could possible help us understand autism in children. Research would be to help determine if environmental factors might increase the risk of a child developing autism and if vaccines play a part in children developing autism. Understanding genetics and how the brain develop in autism and the affects of whether medicines help some reduce behavioral problems in children with autism. I would also like to research effective programs that combines parent training and help families with chidlren of autism. I see the number of children being diagnosed with autism increasing. We hear more and more about this disability than ever before. It took me a long time to fully understand what it was and it is a challenging disability for some and for teachers and society who don't understand the challenges that these children face with autism. I posted a few quotes I found that relate to autism that I wanted to share. >"A child with Autism is not ignoring you, they are waiting for you to enter their world." "If you've met A child with autism, you've met A child with autism. Each and every one of them is so wonderfully different."