Stop and Think: How does your individual culture affect your teaching?

     My beliefs from my own cultural background about working with children include that children should always feel comfortable in a classroom setting, children should always be heard and payed attention to by an adult or other children around them, and that children should be able to respect their elders and learn to follow the guidelines that are set.  I think the principles that I just stated are very important to me in terms of early childhood education.  I also believe that children should be able to discover things on their own and be very involved in the learning process by doing things independently as much as they are able to (within their zone of proximal development). 
     Some practices that are "bottom line" for me are making sure the children have respect for adults that are working with them as well as their fellow classmates and friends.  I think it is very important for children to understand that they have to have a level of respect and learn to behave and listen when they are asked.  It is extremely important that a child is willing to behave and be polite in an environment such as a classroom, not just for the teacher, but also for the other students.  I would especially reinforce the habits of being kind to others, helping each other out, and learning and accepting each others differences.  I am pretty flexible when it comes to adapting practices or beliefs that I am accustomed to, or listening to other's opinions,  but I think the practices and beliefs that I have mentioned are very important to instill in a child at an early age, no matter what.

Classroom Setting

     At first sight of my first grade classroom, I would consider it developmentally appropriate because of the physical arrangement of the room.  During the 2 hours that I observed on Wednesday, the class was mostly doing whole group activities on a large carpet in the front of the room.  This carpet was actually a large map of the United States, which I thought was pretty neat because it incorporates learning about geography even while they are only sitting on it working on other activities.  The class has a smart board which they use to do a lot of their literacy activities.  Their desks are set up in groups of 4-5 students in each group, which supports group work and is developmentally appropriate for 1st graders because students need their own personal work space (individual desks) but also this age also still benefits from working in small groups.  There was also a computer station that included 4 computers off to the side of one classroom where students would constantly be going to when it was their turn to work on the classroom's computer learning program.  These computers were still in the classroom, but they were off the one wall so computer activity did not disrupt the rest of the class. 
     The classroom's theme was "under the sea", so the teacher had many decorations around the room of things that related to the ocean and underwater life, which even included a small "swimming pool" in the reading corner.  I thought this encouraged student learning, because classrooms need to have a theme and many decorations to make it an exciting and comfortable environment for students to come into and learn.  There was also a wall of student work of an assignment that the entire class had just worked on, which is important because students need to see their work displayed around the room.  The only thing that I found I would change is that the teacher had the entire schedule for the day written on the white board, but it was written on the write board that was off to the side of the room and next to the door.  I would change the location of the schedule to the very front of the room, because the students should be able to see the schedule easily so they know what they will be doing that day in class.

Bilingualism for children whose home language is English

     In chapter 5 of Anti-Bias Education, it states that "In most industrialized countries other than the United States, children become at least bilingual, and many speak three or four languages.  There is no reason why children in the United States shouldn't have this same advantage."  I completely agree with this statement and strongly believe that bilingualism should be taught as early as the early childhood grades in public schools in the United States.  I have had experience studying and volunteering abroad this past semester and summer and have realized that there are many advantages to knowing more than one language.  Knowing more than one language will help you relate to other cultures, help you develop cognitively, and open up to new experiences and possibilities. 
     I volunteered in a kindergarten classroom in an American International school in Quito, Ecuador this past summer and many of the students were from countries all over the world.  Most of these students were fluent in their home language, Spanish, and becoming fluent speakers and readers in English, and they were only 5 years old.  Even here in a preschool in Charleston, I have noticed 3 and 4 year-olds being able to speak both English and another language that their parents speak. 
     The easiest time to acquire a new language in a person's life is in their beginning years of life, so I think as early childhood educators, we should take advantage of this and implement a bilingual program in today's schools.  As mentioned in the book, it has been found that learning to become bilingual will not hinder a child's English language development, but rather foster their academic progress.  The United States is a growing to become a culturally aware country and I think it would be a huge advantage for our children to have the skills and knowledge of being bilingual or even multi-lingual. 

Stop and Think: What have you experienced about institutional inequity?

     An example of an institutional ism is the stereotypical view on women not being able to do certain things as well as men or not being able to fill certain roles as well as men can. The most common ism that I know concerning men and women and the family is that the husband is the breadwinner of the family and the family stays home and takes care of the house and the children. When my parents were first married, they both had careers, but when my sisters and I were born, my other was the one to give up her job for a few years and take care of the children. 
     Coming from a white, middle-class family growing up, I saw my family reflected in books and other classroom materials often. I feel that this race and socioeconomic status was often depicted in books and materials often in early childhood classrooms, because it is often considered the "norm."
     When I get learning materials for my future classroom, I will make sure to have materials that reflect all of the materials in my class. I will have books that have characters that include many different races, genders, socioeconomic statuses, disabilities and ethnicities. I will do my best to incorporate all these different materials into my classroom, even if the administration of the school does not give me the means to do so. I will make sure to use the children's own home lives as resources and materials as well. I could have the chilren come in with their favorite things from home to share with the class and have them make posters of their families and hobbies to display around the room.