Wk8 Reflecting on Learning

    My passionate hope is that all early childhood professionals create and maintain an anti-bias environment for all young children, their families and the communities that the families live in. All children and their families should feel welcomed and appreciated at all times within the learning environment.

     Throughout this course and is class, in my judgment we all have learned many ways to help young children in our care as well as their families, so we all need to take what we have learned, the ideas, and the resources and distribute them to those in our care. We should not just stop with this course, it MUST be given to those around us.

      I would like to say Thank You to all of my classmates for all of the positive feedback throughout this class as well as this course. We all have learned from each other and I can only imagine how life will be for the young children that we may come on contact with. Good Luck and Best Wishes to all, we only have 1 more class!  Do not ever give up, keep striving forward!

WK 7 Impacts on Early Emotional Development

For this week’s blog I chose Eastern & Southern Africa.

         I chose this area, because of the issues and concerns that the region is going through with HIV and AIDS. Globally there are 34% of people with HIV that live in Southern Africa.  There are also over 30% of deaths among children under the age of 5 that occur in the first month of life- two biggest killers are pneumonia and diarrheal diseases. Other main causes are Malaria, injuries, and HIV/AIS and Measles.

       I also learned from this that basic education and gender equality between 2000 and 2006/8 the number of children in primary school rose dramatically from 45 to 70 million. The office net enrollment is 88% for boys and 87% for girls. In 2008, around 8.8 million children in primary school age were excluded from enjoying their right to a basic education. For secondary education, rates are lower regional average are 25% and 33% for boys and girls and an even smaller proportion actually attends school was 24% boys and 22% girls.

       On Feb, 2, 2012in South Africa,  UNICEF call attention to international and national legislation protecting children from all forms of violence, abuse and maltreatment. January 16, 2012, Zambia: Netherlands provided the United States $10 million dollars for UNICEF education program.

      When young children are subjects of the above mentioned issues, he or she cannot grow properly and they lack the proper nutrition that will help to keep them at the same pace as other children their very same age. Every child rather boy or girl should be given the same opportunity as the next child, in all reality there may be some girls that feel like boys are given more opportunities and the girls may drop out of school or just not go.

       As an early childhood professionals, I would seek to administer to all children fairly and equally. I want to provide an ant-bias environment so that all children regardless of race, sex, religion or culture, be given the same opportunities to grow and develop into productive citizens. I have learned that even though we may think that the world we live in is so bad, there is many others that are worse off and need more help than we do.

 Reference:
http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/index.html

WK 6 The Sexualization of Early Childhood

      After reading the article, “So sexy, so soon”, I was truly bothered. I work in a public school system at a primary school that has pre-k through second grade students and I have seen some of the things that the article mentions.  Parents need to be made aware of what their child and their child’s friends are doing, not only at school but even in their own homes and neighborhoods.

      Some ways that I have observed children the sexualization are: I have observed some of my pre-k students singing certain songs, dance a certain way, and even talk like they are much older than they actually are. I have seen young children participate in videos, watching certain movies, I have even heard a first grader telling another student, “Hit me up on Facebook”.  I am not sure if he has a Facebook page or not, but that is way too young for a first grader to even have that conversation. There was another incident were a second grade female student told another student that her sister took some pictures of her and she would send them to her on her phone, the principal was there as well.

     These situations help to make our children grow p faster than they already do, there is a time and place for everything and young children should be kept away from certain issues at such an early age. Children have too many electronic devices and not enough of outside and kid games.  I would suggest that early childhood professional redirect young children when these issues arise and I have told my own students that, “School is not the place for that type of behavior, we are here to learn.” However, in all reality a young child should not be involved in that behavior until they are able to understand the differences in what are good choices and not so good choices. I would show and have examples of good behavior versus bad behavior.

     I have learned that as an early childhood educator I must be prepared for any and all issues that arise, with young children and if I cannot help a young child with an issue, I must use outside resources. Young children need to be sheltered and loved and not given the opportunities to grow up so fast. The society is full of mischief, so we as adults must help the young child to grow and learn responsibly.

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.