My Reflections on Several Articles & Videos

This blog includes my thoughts about the articles "Raising Boys and Girls", and "Supporting Dual Language Learners." It also includes the video "Diversity: Contrasting Perspectives."

These three items covered three different ways in which children are different and help to point out to us the need to individualize learning as much as possible.

The "Raising Boys and Girls" article talked about the physical difference between how boys and girls develop. Most of these differences don't really start to show until the child is way beyond the preschool years. However, some of them, like girls being better at fine motor skills, do need to be considered. To me it's more of a "back of the mind" topic. Other things matter more. I also don't think we should use these differences to "let boys be boys."

The second article, about dual language learners, was interesting but overwhelming. Another study I read talked about how losing a language can have a negative effect on kids. I feel like that puts a lot of pressure on me to help all of my students. Every case study said to find out more about the child's language and background. How do you do that with 10 or more children? I did come up with some ideas based on the article. I could make signs for stations, objects, and activities that show a picture, the word in English, and also in all the languages of my students. I could also send home flash cards with a picture and the word in English on one side and just a picture on the other side. The child's parent could write in the word for that picture in the home language.

The video showed the same types of things that I learned about in the zero to 3 article. Different cultures have different expectations for all kinds of things. Some things, like eating, we just assume are the same for everybody. This video shows that is not the case.

Overall, the lesson that all of these brings home is that every child is different. They come to us from every kind of background and what we think of as strange may be totally normal for them in their family. We must recognize and work with these differences. However, it is also our duty to help prepare all of the students to be productive members of society. That means they must learn to understand the "American way."

My thoughts on the article "The Changing Face of the United States: The Influence of Culture on Early Child Development."

This article talked about a lot of studies on how culture effects child development. It also talked a little bit about the effects of ethnicity and wealth/social class. What I read pretty much reinforced what I already knew from my own observations. I watch and read a lot of books and programs that are made in other countries. I noticed a long time ago that some things are done very differently with/by children from those countries.

One thing that I found very interesting is that most studies seem to show that in families that are new to the US, cultural differences had a large effect on how children compared with typical middle class US children. However, the longer the families were in the US, the more their economic status became the more important influence.

I think that the main point of the article was to point out two things:

1. We need to be aware of the difference that culture make to how a child behaves and reacts.
2. We need to understand that we have cultural biases, too, and we must work to overcome them.

I liked the information about the cultural line of individualistic to interdependent. I was not surprised to find that the US is one of the most individualistic countries. You just have to look at how many people are voting for Donald Trump to see that! I suppose that Bernie Sanders would be at the interdependent end of the list of candidates.

I think we, as child care educators, should try to keep to the middle of the spectrum.