Tiaja's Blog

 One notion that is more prominent today than it was before is identity. Who we are, who we claim to be and who we want to be. For this weeks video, Ms. Akeia reads a children's alphabet story that corresponds with the letters. This is a fun way to get young children to understand their identity and also the identity of others around them. It highlights the idea of being who you are and not who society believes you to be. As an individual who wants to further her experience in early childhood education, It is crucial for me to become aware of the changes society displays. When I was a child, the pronouns were he and she, genders were boy and girl and that was decided at birth. There wasn't too much thought on making bathroom signs and addressing students by what they wanted to be. If teachers wanted to grab your attention, they would either do it by name, nickname (depending on the relationship), or Ms./Mr. (insert last name here). As we do our research and deep dives into gend...

 For this weeks reading, one key point that I took from it was to include disability as part of the schools diversity efforts. As young children, there is so much that we don't understand even though we believe we have it all figured out. Case in point, growing up, I would sit in the classroom and solely observe this one classmate of mine who at the time I deemed socially awkward. He would do things such as play with his hands while he made space noises, eat raw macaroni, make the most awkward topics the topic of his conversation and attempt to feel up on some of the other students. Students would laugh, talk about him and even form their own opinions based on the behaviors they noticed. The whispers only got worse when they had seen that during tests and quizzes, he always had a support with him that would take him out of the class to complete these assignments. To us, it was unfair. We were twelve year old students who were challenged in the same way he was, yet he was getting th...