Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

As an early childhood professional, I need to consider any “isms” that may impact my personal life because they can affect my work with young children and their families.  In preparing for this blog, I reflected on the many “isms” that surround both my personal and professional life such as sexism, classism, ableism, and ageism. These “isms” along with the other “isms” such as heterosexism, racism and religion-ism, make maneuvering through society harm-free quite difficult due to the “biases that are built into the system” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 3) that provide either advantages or disadvantages depending on where you fit in. The dominant culture in the U.S. that is mostly depicted in the classroom, as well as public policy/laws, is “middle-class, White, suburban, able-bodied, English-speaking, nuclear family” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p.3).

When I assessed myself based on the “My Social Identities Portrait” (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, p. 31), I discovered that I identified with half of the groups that experience discrimination and institutional prejudice. The one “ism” from my social identities that I am most passionate and conflicted about is ableism. Ableism classifies a person with any form of disability-physical, mental, emotional stability; learning; behavior controls as being less advantaged than able-bodied, healthy individuals (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 31). I am passionate about this “ism” because I am labeled/classified as a disabled veteran and because of my work with people with varying abilities. Because I do not appear to have a physical disability, some people feel comfortable stating their negative, biased views about people with disabilities in front of me which further drives my compassion as well as my feelings of conflict. I am conflicted for two reasons: I did not always openly identify as a disabled veteran or openly admit I have a slight physical limitation and the gap between inclusion and placement of children with varying abilities in the education setting.

My passion and conflict around the fair treatment and inclusion of all children, especially children of varying abilities, directly impact my work with young children and their families. While I fully believe in the inclusion of all children and their families in my classroom, I feel conflicted in my capacity to help them and what is expected through policy. While I am willing to and do accept all children in the classroom, policy directs me to assess the child, inform the parents, and possibly have the child placed in a special needs classroom and that is where the conflict arises. How can I teach inclusion, acceptance, and social justice when the institutional bias/policy outweighs these concepts? My solution is to keep these children in my classroom as long as possible, to openly and compassionately communicate with families about their children, and to work together on a plan to ensure the success of all children in the classroom. As cited in Ballard (2007) “research strongly suggests that being part of ordinary classrooms and schools results in disabled children showing more academic and social learning and more integration into school and community contexts than disabled children placed in segregated special education classrooms and schools” (Crawford & Porter, 2004; MacArthur, Kelly, Higgins, Phillips, McDonald, Morton & Jackman, 2005; UNESCO, 2005). I hope to see policy change to reflect the findings of this research so others like me who feel the conflict of addressing ableism in the classroom can work towards the social justice of all children we so desire.

References

Ballard, K. (2007). Education and imagination: Strategies for social justice. The Herbison Lecture presented to the National Conference of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education, University of Canterbury, 4-7 December 2007. Retrieved from: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.511.3922&rep=rep1&type=pdf

     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).