REFLECTING ON LEARNING

It has been a thrilling journey discussing, sharing, and examining different aspects of diversity and anti-bias education. As indicated anti-bias work  is essentially optimistic work about the future of our children as teachers are committed to the principle that every child deserves to develop to his or her fullest potential (Derman -Sparks & Edwards, 2010). Through anti-bias education it has sort of given me everything in my life that I always thought was right  about equality and justice. It has thought me to become tolerant about people who are different from me in their sexual preferences and see them as unique individuals.

My passionate hope for the future as an early childhood professional is to see that all children can grow up fully nurtured and are able to blossom, thrive, succeed in school, work, and in life, and live in a world where all of them have equal opportunity to become all they could be; in a world with no barriers of prejudice, heterosexism, discrimination, poverty, war, micro-aggressions, stereotypes, racism, ableism and sexism. A peaceful world where all children are empowered and families and teachers work hand in hand to support children’s emotional, social, physical, and cognitive development.

I learned a lot reading your different perspectives which really reflected the theme for this course. Thanks to those who honestly shared how they felt about certain societal issues. When we collaborate and discuss authentically we learn a lot about ourselves. I hope each one of you is going out as determined as I am to embark upon social injustice, and be an advocate for children who are unfairly treated. I hope your students would be excited and proud to have one special awesome anti- bias educator. Be that educator who teaches by example the values of respect, love, and tolerance towards children and their families. My wish for each one of you would be that you cherish every family as they are, and support all children’s families and foster in each child fair and respectful treatment of others whose families are different from the child’s own family. As anti-bias educators let us be ready to deconstruct children’s misconception and focus on activities for critical thinking to enable children to make distinctions between inaccurate and untruthful images and messages; and accurate and truthful ones through open interactions.

Knowledge is power and the more we know the more we can act with confidence, as a result, we should not  relent our efforts to keep building our understanding of the many diversity and equity issues that affect children, in our early childhood field. Joining professional groups with similar ideologies; or forming an action support system would be a great idea to stay abreast with ideas on what others are doing in the field. Finally, attending conferences and workshops and sharing our perspectives on sensitive issues can make a big difference in the lives of children, as we have been sharing in this course. 

I wish you all a wonderful and exciting career as anti-bias educators.

References

 Derman-Sparks, L., & Edwards, J. O. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and

    ourselves.  Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children

    (NAEYC).