My Supports

When I think about the supports I have on a daily basis compared to those supports a child in my classroom may need, I come up with two different answers.

The supports of a child in my classroom could mean something as similar as pictures with words cards for my ESL learners to an open classroom layout to the child who may have a physical disability and everything in between or beyond. Supports in the classroom include partnerships with families, the back up of administration, and relationships with colleagues. These supports help insure a child is and feels successful each day when they are at school.

However, for myself my supports come in different means. My job brings a paycheck which brings money to pay bills, keep my car running, keep food in my house, and allows me to provide for my needs and sometimes my wants. Without my job bringing a paycheck, I would end up without money to pay my bills which means I could end up homeless. However, I have a supportive family of those members I am close to. They have provided me with a place to stay and food to eat as well as loans of money when the need has arose. Without my family as my baseline of support through everything I have encountered I would be lost. I then have my friends. I can say that I have those I talk to about anything, those that I pick and choose what to say, and those that are casual acquitances. I can also say that I have had friends come and go, but the lessons learned in this relationships have helped make me the person that I am today. While I could tell my family anything, I am glad that I have my friends for support because there are topics I do not want to talk with my family about becasue since they are my family, they have their biases and sometimes don't look at the whole picture. My friends provide a different level of love and encouragement to keep me moving on even when life has thrown out the lemons.

I do not believe without my family and friends that I could survive. I have had the unfortunate occurence of being without a job, without a cell phone, without a car and through the help of family and friends made it through. It is nice to know that I have a support system when life throws me lemons, they help me make lemonade.

My Connections to Play

As I thought about this week’s blog, I spoke to my mom. I had different toys I liked at different times so I needed to narrow down my list to when I was four or five. Once I spoke to my mom, I confirmed what I had thought and that is the toys I enjoyed at the age of four and five were my Cabbage Patch dolls and my Smurfs. My sister was 2 at the time and I enjoyed ‘playing house’ with her as well. A quote I found in an article I read by Rollins (2012) that comes to mind in reference to my play as a child, was one by Maria Montessori that states, “play is a child’s work.” Although I cannot recall the author or the whole poem right now, there is something I read once that discusses what takes place in the different learning areas in the room and how when a child says he played all day, he truly was in his mindset working and learning.

When I think about play now versus play when I was younger, I realize how much has changed. Today children are on computers, playing video games, or watching television. I have often heard people make reference to these things as babysitters for children instead of parents interacting with their children. When I was a child my television time was limited and I did not have a computer in my home until later. My sister and I played in our play room or outside in the yard as did the friends we had. The adults in my life would perform one of two tasks during play, participate along with me or watch. This tells me that my play was self-initiated and I directed the play experience (Berger, 2009). I would like to hope that in collaboration with the parents of the children I teach that my students would go back to play and spend less time with technologies. I would also like to hope that my classroom is child-centered and play is the most important element in my classroom. There are too many skills developed through play to go without play experiences. Children develop problem solving skills, fine motor and gross motor skills, social skills, and emotional skills just to name some (Almon, 2002). This summary of play leads me to the second quote among a list of quotes on play I found (Jeanneweier, 2012), it states “play is the beginning of knowledge (Dorsey, 2012).”

As I reflect on my own play experiences as a child and what I have come to the unfortunate realization of play today, my hope is to help advocate for more play opportunities both in the classroom and at home. The quotes that I used here represent what play should be now as much as it represents play for now.

Almon, K. (2002). The vital role of play in early childhood education. Gateways, 43. Retrieved from http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/GW43almon.pdf

Berger, K. S. (2009). The developing person through childhood (5th ed.). New York

Publishers.

Jeanneweier (2012). 25 quotes about the importance of play. Retrieved from

http://move-with-me.com/blog/25-quotes-about-the-importance-of-play

Rollins, S. (2012). Theories About Play in Early Childhood Education | eHow.com retrieved from http://www.ehow.com/about_5444159_theories-play-early-childhood-education.html#ixzz211FMFNFR

Relationship Reflection

As I read the resources for this week and thought about this blog assignment, I had to stop and recall my own childhood as well as relationships I have in my life currently. I am still amazed at how revealing true reflection can be and how much more effective I am in my professional and personal life when I take time to reflect.

When I thought about the relationships I have, I could not help but thinking about relationships I have had in the past. While relationships today are reflective of the here and now, I believe relationships from the past can have an impact on the person we are today. There were quite a few people who were friends at the time that I would not even know now. On the other hand, I have people I was friends with in high school and youth group as a teen and young adult that I keep in contact with through facebook. In addition, what I found as I reflected is I had teachers I loved and hated to leave as well as teachers I had that I was not sure if I would survive their course. The teachers I loved were the ones who took the time to get to know me, not just as a student but personally. This was especially important when I was a junior in high school and lost my grandfather. A couple of my teachers were more concerned with my make up work than with how I was managing. While the ones I often think of still today were concerned about me and how I was coping with the loss. Prior to that I remember my fourth grade teacher who was used to teaching sixth grade and taught us on such a level, he often made me feel defeated with the work I could not seem to accurately complete; work given to fourth graders on a sixth grade level was not appropriate. These interactions are important reflections for me today as an educator. I want to be a teacher my students and their families remember for not only teaching their children but for taking the time to get to know the child as an individual person (likes, dislikes, family dynamic). I want my students to know that yes I am their teacher, they are with me to follow directions and learn new things, but what they did over the weekend or on a vacation interests me because it is important to them.

This brings me to my current relationships. My family has and always will have an important role in my life. They have helped make me who I am. They are there to offer guidance, support, advice, love, and care no matter what. Growing up my parents provided my needs and told me what to do, now they are in more of a supportive role since I am grown and no longer living at home. My sister and I growing up would often fight and argue, now we talk and spend time hanging out. One of my cousins is actually one of my best friends and her daughter will grow up to call me 'aunt.' Each member of my family in one way or another has had an impact on my life, some more positive than others.

After my family, would be the relationships with my co-workers. To have a positive working environment the relationships one has with his/her co-workers needs to be positive. What I have found with previous co-workers is that even if you do not care for the person, if you can be cordial the environment is more positive and conducive to learning. Additionally, I do have previous co-workers that I am still friends with, although not close we do keep in touch with each other. Presently, I have a couple of co-workers that I have closely bonded with and we share life happenings. This is important for me because sometimes there are things that happen at home that I do not always want to share with my family, but need someone to 'vent to' about it and those I am connected to at work have become friends to me because of it.

Finally, I would have to say my relationship with my boyfriend is one of importance in my life. We began as a long distance relationship for the first 3 months prior to my moving to NJ, then we hung out and spent actual time together for 8 months, then due to finances on both parts became roommates in addition to being a couple. Living with someone else is not easy. I have left and come back once. There are times when we do not agree, see eye to eye, have the same interests or desires, and sometimes fight. I have learned, and am still learning a lot about myself through this relationship. I am learning how to compromise on some issues, stand my ground on others, all the while sticking to who I am. This relationship is truly teaching me how to fight for those things that are important.

Relationships are important for all of us and different relationships have different impacts and meanings depending on the person. As educators, we need to understand that just as the students we teach are different so are their relationships and how they form them with others.

Looking back on EDUC 6160

As I look back on what I have learned this week from my fellow colleagues and the resources read I think of a quote I use often and that is at place atop my resume.

One hundred years from now it will not matter what the size of my bank account was, the type of house I lived in, or the kind of car that I drove but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.

I want to take a moment to thank all of my colleagues for all you have taught me and hopefully continue to teach me as we progress through our journeys together in future courses or simply as blog followers. I wish each of you the best in your endeavors and all that life may have to offer you.

Testing for Intelligence

When I think about standardized tests and a child being 'tested' it kind of makes me cringe. Kottler, Zehm, Kottler (2005) state that to be an effective educator one must use varied groupings and lesson formats to reach all the children in the classroom. So, if we are teaching and children are learning in multiple ways, why are we testing with only paper and pencil? This issue truly bothers me from a personal standpoint as well, I have members of my family who do not test well; it doesn't mean they are not competent in the areas being tested. I have strong beliefs against standardized testing being used as the only means of measurement for achievement. I am in support more of measuring the 'whole child' and using multiple areas of assessment to determine the 'academic level' of a child. Additionally, I feel a more wholistic approach should be used to assess the effectiveness of teachers too; I have heard that the scores on standardized tests, in some places, determine an educator's job. So that means if a teacher has a classroom full of children or even a quarter full of children who are not test takers, he or she will lose her job? That's wrong on some many levels.

There is so much more to a child than a score on a test!!! Anyone who has stepped foot into a classroom for even a short period of time should be able to tell you that and it's time that we take the stress off of standardized tests and find new ways to assess the children in our classrooms.

Kottler, J., Zehm, S., & Kottler, E. (2005). On Being a Teacher The Human Dimension. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Haitian children face what sounds to me as a much harsher outlook. On a 10 point scale a child must average 5 points to pass a class given three "trimestrial exams a year with a final in July, families must purchase textbooks (and most do not have the money to do so) and if they do have a textbook it may not be in alignment with the Haitian material, children are in school from Oct to July with a vacation at Christmas and Easter. This information came from http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/598/Haiti-EDUCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html but every article I looked in for information discussed how the Haitian education system needs to be redone. Some even mentioned how the earthquake in 2010 seriously impacted an already struggling educational system through the loss of teachers, children, and buildings that housed the schools.

So the 'testing' to assess not only occurs here in the USA but in other countries as well. But again, I cannot stress enough how important I feel it is to find an alternative to assessment than a test.

Stressors on Children

To be an effective educator, we must take the time to get to know our students and the backgrounds of the families they come from (Kottler, Zehm, Kottler, 2005). Therefore, when we encounter a family that has had a stressor altering the life of that family, we can be better prepared.

One such stressor in Haiti if you visit the World Vision website, worldvision.org, is hunger. Child in Haiti suffer from hunger and are therefore malnourished, under developed, and often sick. Some children in Haiti will die from hunger or complications associated with hunger. It is so sad to think of children and families dying from a lack of food.

On the other hand, growing up although I never viewed it as a stressor at the time, I had the stress of not knowing if I would have a home in the morning. I lived in Florida for most of my life and hurricanes were a frequent happening in Florida. We lived in a trailer so when a hurricane was coming, we took important and necessary items and went to my grandparents' house. Not only did I leave not knowing if my home would be there when we returned, but my dad was a part of a team to move people from the beaches so he was never home the night the hurricanes would hit. I never realized it then, as I said, because I knew I was well taken care of, but looking back now that had to have created tremendous stress not just for myself, but the rest of my family and others who lived around us.

A stressor for a child can be something as simple as not getting to wear a certain shirt to those stressors that are more complex as learned about through the resources this week. How we as educators help our students handle these situations as well as assisting the families sometimes can be beneficial in changing what could be the outcome(s) for the student.

Nutrition and Education

This week I reflected on the topics and while some, as you will see in this post intertwine, I felt nutrition was an important topic. So many children, not just around the world, but here in America are suffering from malnutrition. I remember as a child, my mother teaching and her and my father taking Happy Meals on the weekend to a family whose child was in her classroom. When I asked her about it, she said that the only time he got to eat was for breakfast and lunch at school during the week and that while McDonald's all the time was not good for you, he got something to eat over the weekend. I do sponsor and support a child in Haiti, as I mentioned last week and I am grateful for the opportunity. But sometimes I wonder why all the ads you see on television are to support children in other countries and not here at home in the USA?

Nutrition is important for all, from the prenatal infant to the grown adult. At different stages in life, people will need different amounts of the nutrients required for good nutrition. In infancy, most will say that breast feeding is best for a child to receive the necessary nutrients she needs to develop successfully. However, for some who do not get breast feed, as long as nourishment is meant with the necessary nutrients that child will develop successfully as well. What I have learned over the years, through watching and listening to my mom as a teacher and being a teacher now myself is that if a child is hungry he will not learn. A child who is hungry is distracted, unable to focus, and his mind is only on one thing 'I want to eat.' Additionally, as I learned through the Foundations course and then again in the Berger text, if a child does not receive proper nourishment he is more likely to become sick and if a child is sick he will not even be present at school (and if he is, he won't be focused either). So nutrition does affect development, but nutrition also plays in impact in a child's ability to stay focused while at school to learn.

What I found interesting while researching nutrition in other countries is that through World Vision educational services are provided to women on nutrition and these women then go out into their communities and educate others on the value of nutrition. The article I found, specifically dealt with a woman in Peru who said, 'nutrition is not so much about money as it is about education.' I love that! Too often I believe people chalk up their inability to eat right to the amount of money they have available and that isn't it. If you have adequate knowledge on and about nutrition you can receive good nutrition no matter the budget.

http://www.worldvision.org/news/peru-child-malnutrition-hunger

The more I am re-learning about child development as well as the new things I am learning, the more excited I am to learn more. The more I learn the greater the difference I can make with the children I teach.