Reflecting On Learning

I have several passionate hopes for my future as an early childhood provider as well as a parent. I want to remain an open minded person who is able to learn from those around me and continually learn. I hope to be able to teach my own children as well as the students that I will come into contact with. I also hope that I can show students the same type of love and caring that I have for my own children. I can recall the teachers that touched me when I was in school and the reasons I remember them. Some of those reasons were because I trusted them and felt a genuine caring from them. I want to make this same connection with children and make their lives better in any way possible. I want to be that person that makes a difference and shows the children that they are important and can be anything that they want to be.

I would like to thank all of my fellow classmates for all of their responses and suggestions. I love learning from you all and look forward to joining you in this exciting career field when I retire from the United States Air Force in the next 2 years!

Sorrow In Afghanistan

I chose to look at Afghanistan because in my job that is currently the country we visit the most. When we travel there, our troops take clothes, blankets and candy to hand out to the children. It is amazing to see how excited children in that part of the world are over receiving a single piece of candy. Children take care of each other in this part of the world. It is common to see children around the age of 6 or 7 carrying infants through the villages with no adults around. According to the UNICEF Fact sheet, there is 26% child labor in this country. “ Decades of conflict have eroded the physical and social fabric of Afghanistan and continue to impact the lives of children by hampering their access to school and basic services, exposing them to increased violence and abuses and jeopardizing their very survival” (UNICEF, 2011, p.1). Children essentially have no hope for the future with no school or opportunities to develop.
One challenge this country encounters is fear and insecurities. The country is in such turmoil and violence that the villages are afraid to allow outsiders in to assist or evaluate what is needed. One huge challenge is the attitude that the country owns in regards to women and children. They are not considered important or a priority. There are no laws to protect children or women and they have no rights in this country. “In July 2011, 40 religious leaders attended a workshop led by scholars from Al-Ahzar University, where they discussed topics including: early and forced marriage, child labor, breastfeeding, birth planning, under-age recruitment, domestic and sexual important in this country.

All of these issues have very real and obvious consequences on the lives and development of the children. Without protection these children are left to raise and defend themselves. They are not given the chance to learn to better themselves and are raised with no sense of self-importance or self-esteem. Their medical needs are not met and they are not educated to know any better. One huge insight I have when looking at these children is the difference between the United States and other countries. We seem to have so many issues here yet the issues that other countries have almost make ours seem trivial. Any issue with children is serious and it is important for us to help our own children as well as those who have no one to advocate and help them

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

I have to say that I have experienced the exact same concerns that Dr. Levin and Dr. Kilbournes discuss in “So Sexy So Soon”. I have a 3 and a 4 year old daughter and I am due with my 3rd in the next 12 days. Society today scares me when thinking of my girls and all the sexually oriented songs, movies, costumes and media we are surrounded with. This past Halloween shocked my husband when we were searching for the girls costumes. Most of what we found would have made a pedophiles dreams come true. The costumes designed for these toddlers were more sexy and risqué than anything I would even wear. My daughter loves to dance around and just the other night she said “look mommy, I can drop it low”! I know that some of this she learned from her siblings at her dad’s house but she came home from school singing a Lady Gaga song that I don’t even know. She can sing every word to every Justin Bieber song and says he is her boyfriend. I try to explain that boyfriends are for when you are much older but it does not seem to sink in with my little ones. My four year old already wants to wear makeup and knows how to apply it. She told me “mommy, even though you don’t wear makeup, I want to”. I am still not sure how she learned about makeup. She has also already asked me several times if she is fat or pretty. Those are issues a 4 year old should not be concerned with. “A narrow definition of femininity and sexuality encourages girls to focus heavily on appearance
and sex appeal. They learn at a very young age that their value is determined by how beautiful, thin, “hot,” and sexy they are”. (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009, p.2). We try to surround our children with Disney yet the sexually oriented concepts still seem to find their way into their little minds. We took our girls shopping to the mall a few weeks ago and the mannequins were wearing undergarments. My girls went up and touched the “private parts” of the male mannequin and giggled thinking this was funny. We cannot even walk through the mall without seeing ads for Abercrombie that have teenagers with only half their clothes on. As any early childhood professional or as a parent, these are difficult topics to discuss with young children. The pool of innocent and acceptable role models seems to be few and far between so it is hard to redirect the children. This makes it important for us to instill self-worth in all the children we teach. Building a string foundation that they are beautiful, unique and perfect the was God made them will be the initial fight against this sexually charged world.

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Most of my jobs have placed me in a situation where I have been the minority as the white female in the office. I am currently in a position where I am the only female and also surrounded by Hispanic co-workers. One time I was in an office with all African American females and males. I was the ranking person and was brought into the office to be in charge and run the programs. When I arrived I could not figure out why the others seemed so cold and were not very accepting of me or my ideas right from the start. It was rough for a few weeks. Finally one of the junior Noncommissioned officers told me they did not need another racist white female in charge of them. I could not believe that this group of people would automatically assume this about me without ever having known me. Of course I talked to them and through time, proved that I was in no way the type of person they had so quickly assumed I was. They then confided in me that the previous supervisor was a white female who treated them very badly and they were afraid I would do the same. That group of females became some of my best troops and I still keep in touch with them.

I believe being treated this way would and has made me much more sensitive to racism and that it is not always the perceived dominant culture imposing this bias on someone. I would probably be more prone to watch how others interact and ensure that this type of racism is not happening anywhere else. I hope not to concentrate too much on the dominant culture to ensure that “reverse racism” is not occurring there due to what parents are teaching their children.