Who Will Care For Our Children?

My Child Is Sick And I Have To Go To Work, Who Will Care For Her?

I was a single mom working as an assistance in a pre-school. There were times when my daughter was running a high fever and throwing up and I couldn’t afford a baby sister for her. The irony was I had to leave my own sick child by herself at home with no one to care for her while I had to go to work and care for someone’s child. It was 30 years ago. But does our government since then has provided more parental leave for our single and both parents family? When my children were young, I have never heard of Open Doors and Child Care Connections. Child caring for my own children were only among me, myself and I. Nowadays, the low-income working or going to school parents can qualify for our state’s subsidiary in the child care cost. But I know since April of this year in our program for the full-day full-year program, our families had a substantial cut in their assistance from our state government. Some of our families had lost their jobs due to the down turn of the economy. They had to settle with lower paying jobs and yet they have to pay a higher child care cost for their children. Hawaii has the second highest cost of living in the U.S. The average all-day child care in Hawaii is approximately $650 to $850 a month. I am saying this is $650 to $850 take home money that goes only for one child’s day care. If you are in a large extended family, you may have family members to help you in caring for your children. But not every one is so lucky. Sometimes caring for our children fall solely on the family’s shoulders.

In “It’s All Of Our Business”, I was furious to find out before 1978 it was perfectly legal to lay off a mother due to her pregnancy. If you ask any mother who had just given birth to a new baby, what is the most precious time of their motherhood? I am sure the first bonding with their new baby is one of the most memorable time of their motherhood. Hawaii is one of the six states in America that provides T.D.I. for our pregnant mothers. We live in a state that value our pregnant moms.

“Parents can’t afford to pay and teachers can’t afford to stay-there has got to be a better way”. How can we find the better ways to improve our childcare providers’ pay? It is really depressed that some of the childcare workers are making below poverty. It is sad that we live in a country that do not value the important teaching of early childhood education. But I know in our program and some of the private high quality preschools, the teacher’s pay is link to their education. In Head Start, all staff have the access to free higher education. We even have three to four hours a week of education leave to attend classes. There are some non-profit and for profit preschools in Hawaii. They may not be as fortunate as us. How can we help other preschools administrators to realize that in order to have a successful preschool program, they need to provide the funding and the time for their teaching staff to further their education?

Gay and lesbian families

Do Gay And Lesbian People Make Good Parent?

I work in a community (I am not exaggerating) that may be 90% of my families in my classroom belong to the same “ward” of their church. The majority of the family structures are mom and dad and children. One year at the beginning of the school year, I have invited all the families to come to our Orientation day. The purpose of the get together were to have families get acquainted with the teaching staff and the other families as well. Malie came with her mom, Maria, her older brother and her mom’s partner, Stevie. Maria is a Mexican from California and Stevie is a local Hawaiian. On the Orientation day I asked all the family members to wear a name tag. I had also asked them to put their child’s name under their name in parenthesis. I started a game to encourage the families to get to know one another. Stevie went around and introduced herself as Maria’ partner in their family. But I could tell Maria wasn’t that comfortable with the social gathering. She sat down on a chair with Malie on her lap. She did not get up and walked around to talk to other people. At the end of the orientation, there were two moms left to help me to clean up the classroom. I overheard one of the moms was talking to another one. One mom commented, “Oh! Poor Malie! She must be so confused. Which one is her mom? And how come her mom has a girl partner instead of a dad? Who is going to be the head of the family? Poor child! Just look at her! She is raised in a two-lesbians family. Who is going to discipline her? Mom or Stevie? Ha! Ha! In my family my husband is the head of the family and with my kids! Oh! They are so scared of their dad. He only looks at them and they are so afraid of him.” I was very up-set of this mom’s bias conception of a lesbian family. I have seen children that are raised in a nurturing lesbian family. I think the children themself accepted the fact of being raised in a lesbian or gay family. They seem to adjust it well. But sometimes it is the other people who have difficulties accepting the reality that there are non-traditional families. They live the normal daily lives as we do and have a loving and caring family relationship. But are those children confused of the gender roles of a father or a mother? Do traditional mom and dad’s family is the only ideal one to raise a happy family? Are children raised in a gay and lesbian family less respectful as they don’t have a “male” household figure?

Anti-Bias Curriculum

How Can We Help Our Children To Develop Positive Attitudes Toward An Anti-Bias Learning Environment?

“Hey! Come here! Look I Caught a lady bug!” Jeremy yells to his peer as he finds a red lady bug with black dots on her back. As more children find more lady bugs on the tree, they start to cross-examined them. They identify that some are smaller and some are bigger. Bob said, “Hey! My mom said you have to put them back. Otherwise, they will miss their mommy.” So some of the children put the lady bugs back to the tree. Mary suddenly yells from the other side of the tree, “Hey guys! Come quick! Look at this one! He is bad!” I walk over and am curious to find out the “bad” one. It is a brown lady bug with a some black dots. I asked Mary, “Why this one is bad?” Mary replies, “Cause it is not the same color like the red and black one.” I continued to find out what is consider “bad”. Mary’s answer is: “ It is different. It does not look the same like the others.” She tells her peers not to touch it. It may bite them. I explain to the children that the brown lady bug is just different and it is not “bad”. So after we play in the outdoor area, we all go inside the classroom. I choose to play the song by Uncle Wayne: “Fishy Fish.” We sing together: “Is she crazy? Is she lazy? No! No! Is she a weirdo? No! No! She is different and being different is cool.”

After reading Why An Anti-Bias Curriculum? I realized that we are so accustomed to use the tourist curriculum on our calendar that we do not see the backgrounds and the experiences that they brought from their own countries.

Who Is Better?

Jasmin says, “Juliet, I want to have curly hair like you. My mommy uses the curling iron every morning to have her hair curly before she goes to work. I have straight hair and I want to have curly hair too.” I ask Jasmin, “Why do you want curly hair? You have beautiful black hair.” Jasmin replies “Cause curly hair is better, my mom says she looks more pretty with curly hair.” Are we as adults teaching our children the bias conception? Do we brain wash our children and set the standard of what is considered being desirable? Just as the spotless snow white swan in “The Ugly Ducking”.

Anti-Bias Curriculum

Fun-filled Childhood or Know All Your ABC's

Fun-filled childhood or know all your ABC‘s?

After reading the Scripted Prescription A Cure for Childhood, I found myself just as guilty as Vivian’s kindergarten teacher. In my school, three times a years I have to do the observations and then make the evaluation of my children in my classroom. I have to turn in the levels where they are at in fifty different area. My job is to help them to reach another higher level of developments. Well, it is ironic even some of my children had just turned four years old. I have to write down the upper and lower cases of Alphabets that they are able to recognize, know how to write and the letters-sound connections. Needless to say, the academic part of the daily curricula takes up a sizable portion of our day. I have to constantly struggle to balance a fun filled and yet academic schedule for our children. We do parents’ survey every year. After I have collected all the surveys, I was disappointed when I read the results of what we can do to improve our program. A few parents wrote: Give my child homework to take home daily. Isn’t early childhood years are the time to learn how to play, to socialize and to develop competency? As an early childhood educator, are we sometimes so pressure to do what our school officials expect us to do or we let our kids be kids and enjoy their fun-filled childhoods?

After reading What About Play? I want to know why the United States early childhood educators are not adopting the success recipe as in Finland? Starting the children to read until they are seven years old seems too late for me. I know some children know how to read at an earlier age. But the question is do they comprehend and really savor early childhood literacy?

Block area is one of my popular corner in my classroom. I also enjoy observing the interactions in this space. My children exhibit their creativity, imaginations, compromising and negotiating skills in this constant visited area. These oldest geometric wooden pieces are still the most popular toys for our children of different ages.

Social Equity In Our Classroom

“It’s Mine! I Don’t Want To Share It!” How do we teach our children equity?

Among all of us, I am sure one of the biggest problem in our classroom is to teach our young children to share their toys. I have half of my class four-year-old and the other half three-year-old children. The older children tend to build with the classroom materials either the Lego pieces or any manipulative toys in some degree of higher complexity. Just like the Hilltop Elementary School children, I experience everyday of “Power, Ownership and Equity” in my classroom. Sometimes I suggest some sort of rules and regulations to ensure the fairness to children all ages. But sometimes nothing seems to work. Then the last resort: Take the toys away. Ha! Peace at last! Problem solved! But after I read “Why We Banned Lego” by Ann Pelo and Kendra PeloJoaquin, I realized the importance of helping our young children to put the true meaning of power and ownership under the magnifying glasses. In our everyday life, we experience inequality everywhere. Whether it is our gender, our race, our age or our religion, we see inequity prevalent. Should we just silently accepted that this is just the way how it is or should we stand up for the injustice? Sometime we are so afraid of “Rock the boat” and we hesitate to fight what is being just. Our upbringing and our past experiences manifested our definition of equity. But if we are aware of them then we will instill in our young children what is just and how we would like to be treated justly. I read somewhere of this saying: When the power of love overcome the love of power, that is when the world sees peace.

“Pono” Doing the right thing.

I can’t believe all the negative criticism Ann Pelo and Kendra PeloJoiquin got from all the angry parents and even the Fox news. We understand that we are living in an unjustifiable world. But should we encourage our children to continue this social injustice? It may seems to be a small issue of teaching our children to share the Lego toys. But what we are teaching our next generation is the awareness of social injustice and how to become fair to all.

What do you mean you are not doing “This” way?

We are a culture that we think only our American way is the only right way and there is no other way. Other cultures may think that: Why your American way is better than our way? Because other countries do things differently that does not make them less important. As an educator, I always remind myself to have an open mind to accept other cultures different ways and learn from them.

How Do We Define Gender?

How Can We Be Gender Neutral And Not Gender Bias?

In Miles Of Aisles Of Sexism, Sudie Hofmann clearly demonstrated how the toys manufacturing companies produce the products to deepen the segregation of their young females and males consumers. The toys for the boys focus on “patriotism and superiority” p.30. Boys’ toys are war toys, 3-D dino adventure, word games and board games. Even at a very young age, the girls are brainwashed that they have to play with the trendy toys; Barbies and of course Kent, make-up, vanity and mirrors, hair brushes and products, and nails kits as well.

I remember when I was growing up, the toys that among my siblings and my friends play with were: jump ropes, Hop Scots, bikes, bean bags, Chinese Jacks, and Chess. We didn’t have Barbie or Kent. I do not recall my brothers had any of the double-shooter water guns or machine guns. We played a lot Hide-and-Seek and Duck-Duck-Goose.

In my classroom, I set up a lot of gender neutral toys and activities for my boys and girls. I have girls’ dresses and I have boys and girls Aloha shirts. I have cooking aprons for the chefs and either gender is welcome to make the meals for his/her friends. In the Block area, I always invite anyone to join us to make a house for the zoo animals or farm animals. And at the outdoor area, all the equipments are suitable for all the gender to have fun and to explore. All the activities are gender neutral to everyone. But I do have to say that the girls are less fond of throwing, catching or kicking the balls.

As an educator, we need to be aware of the toys gender bias and we need to educate our families. The toys companies create this gigantic gender segregation and it is up to us and our families to make the gender neutral choices for our children and the next generation.

In “Where Are The Game Girls?” Ann Pelo did a survey of what boys like to play and what girls like to play. Again the article concludes boys and girls have a lot of common interests. It seemed the outdoor activities are more gender neutral. Why can the games manufacturing companies do more research on the children’s interests and create a game that is more like game kids? Is it because there are more male consumers than females consumers when purchasing the electronic games? Will the toys companies listen to the consumers’ wants and create more toys that both genders can enjoy?

After I read “Playing With Gender”, I want to know: How many of us when doing our observations of our children in regarding to gender bias that our interpretations are fogged up by our own social and political contexts? I was amazed that how our upbringing and our past experiences had such great influence on our way to define gender identity. I was labeled as a Tom-boy as I never liked to play dolls and in fact I had never own one. I enjoyed all the active so called boys’ games. But after I read this eye-opening article, I tell myself: I was just different and I was just an athletic child.