Reflection on the course

In the last eight weeks and throughout the whole Master program, I have grown so much. I used to think teaching diversity only means to meet children’s different learning styles and interests, but now I have a fuller picture of diversity and equity. Diversity is a fact of who students are and a tool to help teachers make our teaching more globalized. 

One of the passionate hopes that I have in early childhood education field is to implement anti-bias curriculum into current curriculum to support children to understand and to appreciate similarities and differences in the world around them. Building the positive partnership with families will be the great backup that we can get. Children need consistency, which makes it essential if families and the school are on the same page for the anti-bias education. As diversity is the trend happening in the world, it is significant if children, families and educators can learn, value, and respect diversity and differences among people. Children should be proud of who they are, and be valued for who they are.

I have been working with many colleagues in the past two years, and we have helped and learned from each other.  Thank you all for your wonderful stories and insights that are shared in the courses. I believe our class is a class of diversity, and I have seen how we respect and value each other throughout the journey. I hope everyone in the course can reach the finishing line of Master journey soon, and let’s keep in touch. 

Impacts on early emotional development

The region I chose is East Asia and Pacific, as I have been to some of the countries in this area. I am in China, so I feel I need to know more about the situation in this area. I have been to Cambodia with my husband to visit an orphanage, and the situation is bad. When we were there, there were 80 children in the orphanage aging from 10 months to 17 years old. Most of them were waiting for people from other countries to adopt them, and some of them gave up the hope. We went there, because one of our colleagues has adopted two children from that orphanage. We went there to travel and to buy them some stationaries. They do not have enough resources to support their study, and they were extremely to see the stationaries that we brought with us. On the way to the hotel, we saw many people walking and resting on the streets, sometimes, people will approach to us to ask us if we want to adopt their child. I feel really bad about that.

From the website, I have learned that the health care is one of the biggest challenges in the region. As there is a large population of poverty in this area, most countries do not have enough money to give free immunization to people who cannot afford them. Many children in this region still die of diarrhea and pneumonia. Those two are still the top two killers on the list, even though they are easily prevented and treated today. The other challenge that I have found is about inequity. Most countries in this region still have a very conservative way to look at boys and girls. Most orphans are girls, and girls still do not have equal rights as boys do at home in many countries here. This inequity prevents children from having the equal rights to be educated to create their own futures. Poverty is another challenge for the children in this area. They barely have enough food to keep them away from starving, let alone having some food with nutrition that they need every day. It is not healthy for their development.

All the challenges that I listed above can have the impact on children’s development. They will not have a chance to know what the world looks like, as they do not have the access to it. They do not have the chance to change their future, as they cannot go to school or have enough educational resources for them to use and learn. They do not have health care when they need to be protected from the diseases. Their parents will even talk about adoption right in front of children, it will hurt children’s feelings. They cannot feel loved or safe from their homes. It will not help them grow to be the resilient people.

I do think no matter how hard it is for parents, they have the responsibility to take care of their children. No one can be better than parents in a child’s life. Children in the orphanage  that we went to have smilies, but I still can see sadness in their eyes. They want to be loved; they want to have visitors to make them feel they are visible to the world; they want to have the same rights as other children to be educated to be able to change their futures. All those needs are the basic ones, but only visiting them cannot help them. We need the whole society and the world to work together to make certain children can all access to education, so they at least have a chance to change their lives in the future.
Reference
UNICEF (2011). Retrieved from:http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html

Sexualization

I was shocked when I read the stories that are shared in the article. I did not have that extreme experiences yet, but I can imagine the reality of sexualization in nowadays. I think the whole society has the responsibility to protect children from being exposed too early to sexualization, as I do no think it has positive impact on children’s development in their lives. Media, toys, posters on the streets, those are the things that we cannot control to be part of our children’s lives, especially right now children growing up are bombarded from a very early age with graphic messages about sex and sexiness in the media and popular culture(Levine & Kilbourne, 2009). However, if the toys, movies, books are meant for children will contain something about sex in them. I should say if it is meant for children to watch, to use, or to read, it should make sure that it is age appropriate.

One of the stories that I would like to share here is about three German children (two boys and one girl) in the class. They were five, when the story happened. They lived in the same compound and were neighbors. One morning, when two boys were talking and doing their morning routine jobs, one of them stood up like a rocket from his chair. He shouted to the other boy who was still drawing, “ No, you did not, you did not kiss her.” He was angry when he let those words out of his mouth. The other boy was sitting there, relaxed, saying, “ Yes, I did, I did kiss her under the tree in her garden. She liked me.” I did not response to that situation, as I did not know what I was supposed to do. They were talking like to men who were fighting for a beautiful young lady.    Apparently, they knew that kissing is part of love or likeness. If the boy got the chance to kiss a girl, and the girl did not get angry. This love can be mutual. They probably got this message from the movies, or books. However, I did ask them individually later if they liked the girl and why. They gave me the similar answers “ She has long hair, beautiful and thin, just like the princesses in the movies, and I am the prince.” Thinking of that comment, it proved what was stated by Kevin & Kibourne (2009) that children can learn at a very young age about their value which can be about how beautiful, thin, hot and sexy they are. No wonder, why another German girl was not that popular among the German children community in the class, it probably because she is a little bit chubbier than other girls. It made me feel sad, because children at such an young age, they start to judge friends by how they look.

Another story that I remember was also about a child who was five. It was school’s sports day, and all the kindergardeners went to watch the middle school students’ relay races. All of a sudden, a boy said “ whoa, she is sexy, she has big boobs.” We were shocked by his judgement. Children who sat next to him looking at him. He was trying to tell other children that girls with big boobs are beautiful. We stopped him, and asked him to focus on the game itself. I do not know who to blame for, as I do not believe it is healthy for children at this age to expose to sex so soon.

The last story that I want to share here is about a 4 years old girl who was adopted and chubby. She was sweet and caring, and she loved to run. However, she did not have any chance to play with boys in the class, because they told her that they did not want to play with her. She was resilient, and tried to show boys that she could ran as fast as they could. She did it, but it did not make a change at all. Boys still did not allow her to play with them. She was sad and did not know why. I went to ask a couple of boys why they did not want to play with her. It turned out to be that a boy in that group was telling everyone that she is fat. If someone plays with that girl, it means he likes her. Boys did not like that rumors, so nobody played with that girl. 

Children are easily convinced and biased from what they are exposed to. If they expose to early to sex and related topics, they will lose the happiness of their childhood. As sex is often liked to violence, it cannot be good for children’s development (Kevin & Kibourne, 2009). If children are exposed to sex and violence, it is a robbery of their valuable time for age-appropriate development tasks, and they may begin to engage in precocious sexual behavior (Kevin & Kibourne, 2009). As early childhood teachers, we have the responsibility to work closely with families to help children grow in a healthy way to eliminate the negative impact of sexualization in their childhood.

Sexualization is happening earlier and earlier each year with the high development of technology and media. We cannot control what children see, as most of them will have older siblings. Parents can control what babies are watching and exposing to, but it is hard to tell if children will absorb information from other tunnels. As teachers in early childhood field, we need to know that children today are different children from the old days. They can be more open and relaxed about certain topics that we cannot imagine of. They probably do not know exactly what they are saying, and they bring the topics up to show how cool they are. However, once we figure that out, we need to work with families to see what we can do to help children develop in an age -appropriate way.

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

My own experiences

As a Chinese working and socializing among the people from various backgrounds, I can feel and see some people have their stereotypes against Chinese people and culture. On the other hand, we Chinese have our own biases and stereotypes when we communicate with people who are different from us. All those stereotypes and biases cannot be eliminated straight away, as those biases and stereotypes have been in our lives for so long. However, what we can do now is to unlearn those, and to get to know people individually.

I remember sometimes people will complain how loud Chinese are, and they will ask me why I am talking in a soft voice. I do not know how to answer that question. I am a Chinese, and I am who I am. Not every Chinese has the same attributions. One time, I was on holiday in Indonesia, and at the airport, one Indonesian girl asked me where I am from. I told her that I am from China. She looked shocked and commented, “Oh, you are too dark to be a Chinese!” “Yeah, I just went to the beach for three weeks,” That’s all I could tell. Another time, I was having a conversation with one of my friends, and she said before she came to China the only impression that she got about Chinese is wearing a camera in front of their chests, taking photos all the time. She said, I did not see any one do that when I am here in China! 

All those stereotypes that people hold about China and Chinese people are mainly from TV and other media. They come to China with the biases they held to treat the local people differently than people who share the similar culture with them. From those people’s interactions and attitudes, I can feel that Chinese local staff are not valued or respected much in our community. That makes me wonder if we cannot treat our colleagues equally, how can we promote inclusiveness in our school community. There is not much I can do to change the whole school’s atmosphere and tone, but what I can do is to collaborate with the team members to implement anti-bias education in our classes. We have experienced unfairness and it hurts, so we do not want children to be hurt emotionally or physically. We want the children in our classes to treat each other equally with respect, and to be proud of who they are and value the differences from each other.