Talking About Gender Diversity & Education

It is not often that I find a text book prescribed to me by the University to be super foundational to my learning and highlighting some biases I carry. However, in ECE 325 our textbook Anti-Bias Education for Young Children & Ourselves has done this for me.

Recently in ECE 325, we were given the opportunity to explore a variety of social justice education issues over a course of a few weeks. Each week we were tasked with reading a chapter from Anti-Bias Education and exploring it as a group through a series of discussion questions.

For this blog post, I would like to shine a light on Chapter 9 of Anti-Bias Education – Learning About Gender Diversity and Fairness.

So, Let’s Make Some Connections…

Text to Self

When considering how I was taught about gender as a child, most of my experiences were implicit. It was implied to me that there were only two genders, that boys were strong, and that girls were kind. These things were implied to me by the adults in my life.

My experiences in being socialized to only know a gender binary is reflected in Chapter 9 of the text. The text talks about how teachers play a role in constructing children’s ideas about gender such as: organizing teams by gender or assigning roles/tasks based on gender. These are things that I experienced in my school years. Although the adults in my life may have not meant to teach me these things about gender their attitudes and actions were what helped me to construct my ideas about gender. It was not until my pre-teen years where I began to learn that gender is a spectrum and can be expressed in many different ways.

Text to Text

Batya Greenwald speaks about how she had to become more reflective about her own teaching and biases in her TED Talk “What kindergarteners taught me about gender”. These learnings came to her after a previous Kindergarten student came out to her as Transgender which inspired her to reflect and change her teaching practices to become more inclusive and not reinforce the binary gender model. Chapter 9 of the text highlights the ways that educators can do this. The text suggests to establish non-gendered routines and experiences, use teachable moments to have clarifying discussions about gender, discuss gender diversity on a regular basis and include representation in the classroom, design curriculum that encourages children to try things outside their comfort zone, acknowledge children’s gender expression that is not stereotypical, model behaviors that go beyond gender stereotypes and many other ways. Greenwald also speaks about the ways that she did this in her classroom and she found that the children in her classroom began t understand things on their own after they made a list of what only girls and boys do. The next day after analyzing their list the children began to go outside their original comfort zones: boys played dress-up and the girls played with trucks.

April 17, 2021 by jnw786 Categories: ECE 325, Third Year, Uncategorized Leave a comment

Talking About Different Abilities & Education

It is not often that I find a text book prescribed to me by the University to be super foundational to my learning and highlighting some biases I carry. However, in ECE 325 our textbook Anti-Bias Education for Young Children & Ourselves has done this for me.

Recently in ECE 325, we were given the opportunity to explore a variety of social justice education issues over a course of a few weeks. Each week we were tasked with reading a chapter from Anti-Bias Education and exploring it as a group through a series of discussion questions.

For this blog post, I would like to shine a light on Chapter 11 of Anti-Bias Education – Learning About Different Abilities and Fairness.

SO, LET’S MAKE SOME CONNECTIONS…

TEXT TO SELF

The area of this chapter that I resonated with the most was the discussion of how young children construct ideas and attitudes about different abilities and disabilities. This section of the chapter outlined the curiosities of children in regards to different types of abilities and how to approach those situations.

I found this section of the chapter to be very informational as it gave some insight on what educators can say to curious children. This is a skill that I know that I should work on developing because as a child if I had questions about people with different abilities I was simply told to not say anything or ask any questions.

From my degree program and research on how to talk to children about things they are curious about that are seen as political or taboo I have found that honesty is the best policy. If we can talk to children like they are capable of understanding and being respectful to one another I am sure that we will see a change in acceptance and understanding.

TEXT TO TEXT

Reading this chapter made me think of a video I saw a while back by BuzzFeed. This video talks about the things people with disabilities wish you knew:

I appreciate that this video touches on the topic of children’s curiosities about persons with disabilities. In the text there is a discussion of how telling kids it is impolite to stare at a person with a disability or ask them questions about their disability teaches children that there is something wrong with having a disability (p. 153). Instead of implying that there is something wrong to children, one of the people in the video suggests that we should celebrate the disability instead and be open about talking about different abilities with children.

TEXT TO OTHERS

When we were given the opportunity to have a discussion about the chapter in class we talked about how for a lot of us people with disabilities were perceptually invisible growing up. The majority of my group were not given the chance to interact with people with disabilities as a child and it was not really discussed either. For some of my group members the first meaningful interactions with people with disabilities came later in high school where their high schools had FIAP programs or special education classrooms.

After discussing our own experiences in the group we began to talk about how these experiences related to the text. We talked about how it would have been very beneficial to have been a part of an anti-bias education program that celebrated differences so that our own biases around disabilities would not have formed as adults.

April 14, 2021 by jnw786 Categories: ECE 325, Third Year Leave a comment

Talking About Economic Class & Education

It is not often that I find a text book prescribed to me by the University to be super foundational to my learning and highlighting some biases I carry. However, in ECE 325 our textbook Anti-Bias Education for Young Children & Ourselves has done this for me.

Recently in ECE 325, we were given the opportunity to explore a variety of social justice education issues over a course of a few weeks. Each week we were tasked with reading a chapter from Anti-Bias Education and exploring it as a group through a series of discussion questions.

For this blog post, I would like to shine a light on Chapter 10 of Anti-Bias Education – Learning About Economic Class and Fairness.

So, let’s make some connections…

Text to Self

On a personal level, I really connected with this chapter because over the course of my life my economic class has drastically changed. In the early years of my childhood my parents were very poor and we did not have much, but when I became a teenager, my parents obtained jobs that pay very well in comparison.

I thought that the best way to talk about my experiences in relation to the chapter was to make connections to the myths about families with low income because this is the part of the chapter that had stuck out to me the most:

Myth #1: People are Poor Through their own Fault

In the text, they discuss how in reality the reason people suffer financially is due to a variety of reasons and circumstances and very rarely is it because of the individual’s faults. I know that from experience, my parents were not poor because they did not work hard. They were poor because of their circumstances and they had to fight and work ten times harder than individuals whom had the economic resources necessary to succeed financially. One of the reasons that my parents were able to make a magical break through out of poverty was thanks to education. My Mom was able to obtain a degree and find a job that paid well.

Myth #2: Families with Low Income Do Not Value Education

In the text, the author’s discuss how it may not seem like families from low income households support education because they may support their children and the teacher in different ways than families from greater income households. The reason for this may be because those from low income backgrounds do not have the time or money that higher income households do. In my family’s case this was exactly true. As a child my parents did not really have the time to volunteer in the school or the money to donate resources to the classroom. However, when my sister was a child they did have the time and money to do those things, but it did not mean that my parents did not value education. Both of my parents think that education is very valuable.

Text to Text

When reading this chapter I made a lot of connections to Kandice Sumner’s TED Talk “How America’s Public Schools Keep Kids in Poverty”. Although her TED Talk is shown through a very different lens than my own because she speaks from a Black Woman’s perspective of growing up in a poor American urban community I realized that the biased we have in regards to economic class and education exist because of institutional design.

In Sumner’s TED Talk she tells the audience how her students from low income background felt as if they were not deserving of the donations. She also talks about how her students were baffled that someone cared enough about their education to help them. I would argue that the main reason her student’s felt this way is because young children naturally construct ideas and attitudes about economic class.

In the text, the authors’ highlight what sort of ideas students construct about economic class such as, the value or importance of certain possessions and feelings of superiority or inferiority. Sumner’s students had developed all of these ideas. They believed that they were inferior to other schools that had both more white people and people of higher economic class and they believed that they did not deserve to have new books or other educational resources.

What are we going to do about it?

My next question is:

What are we going to do to eliminate the biases around economic class and break through the institutional barriers put in place to prohibit certain individuals economic success?

I do not believe there is a straight answer to this question. However, I do believe there is a starting point. After reading the text I think a great place to start is with education. If educators are able to implement an anti-bias curriculum from an early age it can help eliminate the biases that young children develop from an early age about economic class. In return, we can expect the future to be brighter as the students that learned from an anti-bias curriculum can transfer their ideas about inclusion and equity into the world.

Although these thoughts may be idealistic, they are also very necessary for a brighter future.

April 8, 2021April 8, 2021 by jnw786 Categories: ECE 325, Third Year Leave a comment

How has play changed?

To address the topic of how play has changed, I began by asking my Mom a few questions about her play experiences. My Mom was born in 1983 and her sister was born in 1985 for context.

Listen to the Mini-Interview below:

What image of the child did the way my Mom play promote?

I would argue that the type of play experiences my Mom participated in promoted the image of the child that is competent and capable because of the freedom of play she was granted with. When my mom was a child, her play was not censored by my grandparents. She was allowed to make her own decisions about play even though she still had rules to follow that kept her safe.

The image of children as capable and competent is very different from other dominant images today. Currently a dominant image of the child is the innocent child. Parents and other adults believe that children are innocent and should remain innocent, as a result they are over-protective. Instead of offering children creative agency in their play, their play is censored and overly-structured by parents.

Reflecting on our Conversation

I have to agree with my mom that parents are too overprotective and structure the play of children too much. Nothing that my Mom said surprised me because our play experiences were fairly similar. I played similar games and had a similar amount of freedom as her. When talking about the differences of play we mostly compared her play experiences to those of my younger siblings.

The conversation I had with my Mom was fairly reminded me of Diane E. Levin’s 2012 article “Changing Times, Changing Play: Why Does It Matter?”. In Levin’s article, she discusses how play has changed. Some of the main points that Levin argues are:

1. That children are not allowed as much agency in their play as they used to.
2. That children do not play outside as much as they used to.
3. That children’s play is too highly structured by adults and the type of toys they are offered.

These three arguments came up in the conversation I had with my Mom as I used them to guide the questions that I asked her. In our conversation both my Mother and I agreed with the arguments of Levin.

February 27, 2021February 27, 2021 by jnw786 Categories: ECE 325, Third Year, Uncategorized Leave a comment