Reflecting on Learning

Hi Everyone!!!!!
My most passionate hope is for children, their families including myself to build a solid foundation in collaboration with parents to insure the best education for that child.


I have enjoyed my time here and will miss the team. Thank you for all the support, insights, and help you have provided me over the past 8 weeks.

Jamaica

Jamaica, I’m planning a trip for me and my husband as an anniversary present and I would like to know more about this country and the struggle they face.


Challenges children in Jamaica face are identified by the struggle that deeply affects them by the violence that is a part of their daily existence. Some of the challenges include exposure to sex, to being shot at; being robbed, and being a victim of violence due to the loss of a family member or close friend to murder. These experiences traumatized these children so bad that they cried, while others whimpered quietly or were unnaturally withdrawn as well as students telling stories of their fears sketched in their drawings illustrating stick figures holding and shooting guns, children armed with weapons, portraits of their parents, siblings and grandparents dying by gunfire.

Intervention strategies to reduce children's exposure to violence should include community education on the impact of exposure to violence on children, particularly the loss of a significant person, and the development of a range of school-based violence prevention programs. The thought of the teachers doing praises dances in the classroom, to help children cope with the fear of violence is a great success. The children are able to open and express themselves spiritually.

As an educator, we are good at guiding, leading, loving and showing children that it is okay to open up and express themselves. If they see us do it, they will be inspired.

Reference:

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

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

If you think about it the average child in the United States today has countless opportunities for exposure to sexualized messages every day. Television, music, billboards, prints media, Internet, and cell phones offer children numerous possibilities where they can encounter sexual messages of all sorts. In some homes kids are only a click away from seeing sexual intercourse. Others children however, (like me at a young age) are being exposed to actual sexual behavior in their daily lives that gets played out by the adults and older siblings around them.


If you look at the photo above you can see, how the little girls are dressed up like grown woman. I personally feel that a child needs to be a child, when they are about 16 its okay for them to be in pageants. Doesn’t everybody remember Joan Marie Ramsey? She was a pretty little girl, who grew up to fast. I personally feel that the mother was living her life through her daughter. Another show that comes on television is “Toddlers and Tiaras”. This show brings out the cruelty in the parents as well as exposing the little toddler’s sexuality. For some people, they think that it helps build confidence and instills great values in the children. I personally say no.

Reference of picture image:

mrscottyl.blogspot.com

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Classism is held in place by a system of beliefs and cultural attitudes that ranks people according to economic status, family lineage, job status, level of education, and other divisions. Middle-class and owning- or ruling-class people (dominant group members) are seen as smarter and more articulate than working-class and poor people (subordinated groups). In this way, dominant group members (middle-class and wealthy people) define for everyone else what is “normal” or “acceptable”. People who are poor/working class sometimes internalize the dominant society’s beliefs and attitudes toward them, and play them out against themselves and others of their class. However, schools play a central role in maintaining classism. All (from every socio-economic class) children’s learning is diminished by the effects of institutionalized and personal class bias. For example, a child living in poverty cannot afford a persona; computer to complete homework assignments because their family being of the poor working class.  When I was in middle school, I witness an incident, where a girl at my school wore the same clothes at least twice a week, because her parents could not afford to buy and wash her clothes. She was a very bright student, but could never complete online assignments because she did not have a personal computer. One of the teacher, at times allowed her to go to the library to complete her assignments. I felt that this was noble of the teacher however, regardless of what class a family is in, they deserve a chance.