Blog Assignment: Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

~Week 5~ CD 6358-6 ~ Strategies for with Working with Diverse Families~


African Girl

 
Describe in detail the consequences you might expect for the children and families with whom you work while you experience specific "–ism(s)" in your own life. Include specific examples either those you have and/or are experiencing or ones you would anticipate.

 

The “ism” that I have experienced for over twenty years has been “able-ism”. I am presently a mother to an adult son with Autism. I would take him to the mall in his stroller and he would be so quiet and look at all the lights. That was very short lived when he began to walk at three years old. I had him on a rope tied to his pants suspenders.

 

People would look and stare and laugh. If I let him go he would run to the elevator stairs and then I could not find him. One day, I had it up to my ears with his running in the mall so I went to the toy store and let him play with cars. I was in the back of the store shopping and about fifteen minutes later, I came back to the front of the store and he had knocked down the “Mattel hot wheels” rake and lined all his cars up like this: =========================== all the way from the store to the center of the mall.  My mouth dropped and I was at “aw” that a three year old could line cars up so perfect. Later, I learned that the cars on the freeway where in the same formation. I was teased as a preschool teacher that I had only visited Wal-Mart and Target only once or twice in my life. The teachers called me “weird”, they did not know that I was harboring a little secret: “Autism”.

 

We tried a new adventure, the Park. At this time he was verbal: “babbling loud”. He would run to the swing and go as fast as he could. He would run to tables and take food or make a gesture with his body that he had to do the “number two” in his pants. I went to a meeting for children with Autism and asked why when we go to the park (even today) people leave. One lady told me it is called: “Clearing the Park”. When a special needs child comes to the park, people leave.

 

Present: Two years ago, I took my son, then age 23 to the park. He ran to the swing and again went as fast/high as he could swing. He slowed down and some Mexican girls came up to him. They looked and were very curious, they even tried to talk to him, and he stared and said nothing. They gave him flowers. Some Black children came up to him and they laughed and started calling him names and bullying him. They tossed sand in his face. They make remarks that he smelled and sounded funny. Later, some white children came with their parents and they pushed him on the swing and blended in with my son. They said nothing and later just sat and looked at him.

 

 I stood far away as an observer. What I observed was a bit of classism, culture, language separation, classism and social bias. The white children treated my son fair; the Mexican children were extremely curious and giving; the Black children, his own race, were cruel and mean. Why? To this day, I still do not know why Black children treat “able-ism” with fear; white children with curiosity and Mexican children with acceptance. Maybe it is culture, Mexican children experience more resiliency; white children, tolerance and Black children, fear of the unknown and the unwillingness to accept change.

 

My plans are to work with infants and school aged children that have special needs, from Down Syndrome to Autism. I believe, we can relate with our special stories. We will share differences and well as similarities that is unknown to any other culture-the culture of “able-ism”.

 

 

"I want these in my classroom"

Reference

 

Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves.
 
          Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).