Reflecting on Learning

My most passionate hope for the future as an early childhood professional and for the children and families is for people to respect the rights of other people regardless of their gender, race, culture, social economic, sexual orientation, and varying abilities. I understand that anti-bias education is accepted and practiced so it is written. My personal goal as an early childhood professional is to help families, children, and educators to practice ant-bias more consciously, so that young children will be aware of acceptance, respect, and care for all people no matter what color, gender, sexual or religion you are. If their is more acceptance, respect, and compassion in the world for differences, this place we call home would be a world that accept and welcome diversity. To all my colleagues, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your comments, inspiration, and most important for your love and compassion for early childhood education. I wish you all much success and a bright future in early childhood education.

Impacts of Early Emotional Development in Jamaica

The area that I choose to investigate was the Jamaica.  Growing up I have always wanted to see the world and experience different cultures, so the first place I ever went to was Jamaica, but before I went to Jamaica I thought in my mind that this was a beautiful tropical Inland with pretty sand beaches and everyone who lived in Jamaica was so lucky to live in a place that was so beautiful. When I first got to Jamaica it was what I thought this place was suppose to look in mind beautiful and full of lots culture, which was a mixture of Jamaican culture, is defined as the origin of its entire population. The Jamaican culture is mixed as most of the society is ethnically diverse. There are several nations and peoples, the majority are African, then Indian and Chinese, then the minority being European.

Population and growth of Jamaica is Children, aged birth to 17 years, constituted about 35% of the population of approximately 2.65 million persons of Jamaica in 2005. Marginally more than a half of the population is urban. The average household had 3.3 persons, with rural households being a little larger – 3.6 persons on average – and female-headed rural households having 4.1 members on average.

Some of the challenges that children from the Jamaica are confronted with include sanitation, water, education and health. No data was collected on the deprivation of children with respect to food, shelter and deprivation. However, the study indicated that of the four (4) areas where data was collected, the highest frequency of “severe” deprivation was estimated for health, 9%, followed by water, 5%. No Jamaican children were reported to be severely deprived of education, and only a marginal 1% was severely deprived of sanitation. As with the headcount, children with a severe deprivation were more likely to be found in rural households, in large households, in households headed by persons with low levels of education, and in households composed with vulnerable and unemployed persons. Income inequality persists, poverty levels remain unacceptably high and there is a high probability that many who are only living just above the poverty line could fall back into poverty. Self-employment accounts for about a third of total employment, and the majority of it consists of very small scale low income petty trade and related activities. In addition to the threat of the return of traditional diseases, Jamaica is challenged by a high incidence of HIV/AIDS10, unacceptably high infant mortality rates, and high rates of cardiovascular diseases.

There is almost universal enrolment of children in pre-primary schools (ages 3-5 years) - 96.8 per cent in 2004 (Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions, JSLC, 2006), with an attendance rate of approximately 71.3 per cent. While enrolment of children in pre-schools remains high, the quality of services is often poor. According to official estimates, fewer than one out of three children entering grade one were ready for primary level, and some 30 per cent of primary school dropouts were illiterate.

Reading this week on Jamaica I learned that the governmental involvement, UNICEF, and RUFAMSO other programs can make a difference in the lives of children and their families.  The  government  and the program seeks to improve both children’s readiness for primary education and learning outcomes in selected curricular areas in primary education, such as child rights and life skills-based education

Resources: Witter, Hamil,& Spencer., (October 9, 2009). Child Poverty and Disparities in Jamaica

                                        

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

"So Sexy So Soon"

This week we read, "So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids. Reading this week article really made me more aware how young girls today are having self-esteem issues today, but I did not realize how big sexualization of early childhood is. Levin & Kilbourne (2009) shared that young kids are talking about “blow jobs.”

I can recall a few examples of how prevalent sexualization is in early childhood. I remember growing up and my best friend was very busty and sometimes the children would make fun of her. This started when she was in third grade, and it is to the point that my friend didn’t want to go to school. Looking at some of the tv shows like that show young beauty queens really shows how the people really glamorize little beauty queens. Watching this program you see how serious the program is. You see little girls crying on national tv when they don’t win or they think they’re not pretty enough that’s why they didn’t win. Last of all, in my classroom I seen little girls try to kiss the boys on the cheek and sometimes the boys would react and say, that’s my girlfriend four years old. I’m not sure where they learn this behavior from but with everything that goes on in children’s houses and in the media, children are bound to pick up this type of behavior.

Sexualization in early childhood is a big problem because children are still developing themselves (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). Children are growing up too fast and missing out on their childhood because they are worrying about adult issues. As an early childhood professional we have to talk to our students but first making sure that what we talk about is ok with parents and the institution we work for to discussing age appropriate behavior that young children should be doing.

This topic of sexualization in early childhood has really opened my eyes. I think children today have it a lot harder than when we grew up. They have to worry about so many things. This discussion this week has made me aware that children are growing up to fast because of the bias environment they live in. As an advocate and as a family of early childhood professionals we can make a difference in the world by educating families and children about sexualization.

Reference:

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

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

In the early childhood field you will come in contact with different types of people. During my first year at Head Start I had a student whom would say racist things to African Americans. For instance he would say, "He didn't have to listen because my dad said so," or" He would tell the teachers that black people are beneath me."In  listening to this student I really had an issue understanding why a parent would allow a child to speak in this manner. When I spoke to the parents about their son behavior in class the first thing the mom said was, "I don't know why he talks like that and the mom continues to tell the teacher that her husband is ADHD and whn he doesn't take his medicine sometime he can be a bit all over the place especially with watching violent movies and playing video games." Well the teachers and some of the staff expressed their concernes about this behavior in class because it was getting to the point were other students where going home and telling their mom what was being said and some parents called and expressed there concerns. Needless to say once we talked to the parents and also talked to the children about racism the children understood that we all are created equal and no one is superior to another race. Once this student started taking medicine for his behavior he calmed down a lot. He actually became one of my best students.

This experience really showed me that children learn from what they see, and hear and as educators we also have to becareful in what we say because every little word or thing could affect chiledren on how they speak and interact with other children and people. Parents are children first teachers but so is professionals in the field of early childhood education.