A Shout-out to my Colleagues

As we close out the final week in our class, I just would like to thank each of you for helping to contribute to the knowledge that was gained during this course. It was just a pleasure to interact with you all through the method of the internet. I also thank you for sharing with me and others about your passion for early childhood and your experiences. You all are a very valuable and knowledgeable group of individuals and I definitely look forward to interacting and learning from you in future courses. I wish you all much success in your future professional and educational endeavors.


Here are some quotes regarding children that really caught my eye:

"An aware parent loves all children he or she interacts with- for you are a caretaker for those moments in time."
- English Proverb

"The soul is healed by being with children."
-Mohandes Ghandi, political and spiritual leader in India

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education shoud be to unlock that treasure."
- Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady

"Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children."
-Dr. Seuss, author

Assessing Children

Assessing children can be positive or negative. It can be positive because the abilities of the child can be assessed. It can be negative because the whole child is not assessed. When a child is assessed, the assessor and all involved only see a snapshot of the child's abilities. I really think that Gardner and Brofenbrenner were on to something with their theories. Gardner's Multiple Intelligences believes that children have different intelligences, such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, etc. Brofenbrenner believes that they best what to assess children is in their natural environment. I, agree with both of these theories, because assessing children only through testing, does not offer a fair and justifiable understanding about what the child can actually do. When assessing children, I think that the child should be observed within a child friendly learning environment that invites the child to be themselves. Assessing their social skills, cognitive skills, physical skills based on their age and developmental stage can help to give an accurate view of the child's abilities.

When preparing for this blog post, I looked for information regarding assessment methods from around the region and world. What I found was that PISA also known as Programme for International Student Assessment is being used to assess children. The general age starts at 15. It's main goal is to offer school systems and other stakeholders the progress that is being made in schools and whether or not students are mastering key learning concepts.

Racism

When I was a child, I had my first experience with racism in Springfield, Missouri. My family and I had moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Springfield, Missouri. It was in this awful city that I was introduced to the hate and dislike that is racism. The people who lived behind us were extremely racist and they would make all kinds of racial remarks whenever they would see my siblings and I out playing in the backyard. We would tell our parents and they would tell us to ignore the ignorance of others. Well, it was an awful feeling to be singled out and ridiculed due to my skin color. I even had to ride the bus with these kids. At school, the racism was even worst. at lunch these three boys would stick their hands in my lunch and says, are you going to eat that ******. I would try to follow the instructions of my mother and report it to the teacher, but she would never do anything about it. I read about the racism that my grandparents had to endure, so in my day it was an eye opener to even think that racism was still going on. As an adult, I am even more aware of the racism that still goes on, but is a little less obvious than what it use to be. Though, change has been made we still have a long, long way to go.

I decided to learn about racism in Japan, I was really surprised to see how Japan shows racism to foreigners, blacks, and hispanics. I was so out done by reading how they exclude blacks and foreigners from using their restrooms, eating in their restaurants, and shunning away from them in public places. I even read that they discriminated in the areas of healthcare, employment, and housing. This type of racisme would be detrimental to the well being of young children whose parents had to move to this country due to job relocations. They would have to endure smirks and jeers of racist young Japanese children and they would more than like suffer from maltreatment if they are denied health care due to their race. I would have never thought of that Japan was a racist country. I must say I learn something new everyday.