Week 5

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Our lives have the many isms affecting everything we do daily and the one that is my biggest nemeses is “racism”, I say this because it affects all our interactions with the families and children we care for daily. Even though I have lived in many places and with many different families I know I still have issues with racism. I will be honest saying that the areas I need to continue working to improve are racism and classism. Even though I have lived around the world and interacted with many cultural differences I still have moments when I feel one group is getting something that another group is not.

When we let any of the isms interfere with our classrooms, it will affect the whole child because they will not feel safe, loved, included in the group, and they can feel agression from another child or group. Some consequences that can occur with the families that are cared for daily might be unequal treatment in the classroom, not wanting to help certain children with activities, not comforting a child because of their race or social class. A child that is from a different race might not get the same attention as another child that is the same race or has the same social economic status as the teacher, caregiver, or peers. Anyone that has lived the military life or moved often can understand how a child might feel because they are always coming across as different to the children in the new classroom. I can relate to children that come from another country or even when they are just different that the majority of the children in the class because I have been there and I know how affects children’s feelings and can make them act out or become withdrawn from the group. We need to find a way to help all children feel welcome and one way is to show them that it is a great thing for us all to be different because otherwise the world would be very boring with everyone doing the same things. I work to learn some of each language that my children know so that I can at least greet them and their parents daily and I can tell this means a lot to them and adds to their feeling of being part of the whole group.