How does one teach death?

The day my mother died everyone came to the house to apologize and bring food.   It was very different. No one taught me how to handle death (especially a parents death), let alone talking about it with other people. I was 19 but still not old enough to understand care vs social appropriateness. I still remember a time someone failing at making small talk asked me how my day was and I said blankly "ok, my mom died today" it was flat and awkward. I apologized for being so awkward and awkwardly walked away. HA. I can laugh at it because that scare has healed.   But for children who are not 19 and able to see how they are handling the situation is awkward or inappropriate, How do we teach them? I remember at 9 years old and 10 years me grandfather and grandmother passed away respectively. The person who took it the hardest was my 4 year old special needs  cousin. Always asking why are they gone, where did they go, can I see them, when can I see them, where and what and why over and over and over again. I can imagine if he was not a special needs child the answer could be talked about and reasoned with. But my cousin was special needs and his questions just seem to drive the knife deeper that her parents were and are gone. How do you teach him? Hope he forgets his grandparents and he will stop asking? Repeat yourself a 100+ times until you are blue in the face (probably crying by then)? As a child my father always told me whatever I am crying about "it doesn't matter" "stop crying, there are other things to cry about". As I get older and the other things come he now says "these are the things we cry about". How do you present that to a four year old hopped-up on an emotional roller coaster for personal needs? A lot of books talk about having pets in the classroom and when they die... they die. Some even suggest having funerals and keeping pictures of that pet around for memory/conversation starter. But really how do you teach one about death unless they view the way I did. Up close and through a couple years of reflection. Do four year olds really need to be "exposed" the full effect of death or just say "they are gone and we miss them" and move on?

nature vs nurture?

Nature vs. Nurture?

A long thought about question. Is it where you were raised or how you were raised? Most of the parenting sites I get emails from think it is a balance of both. I agree with that, but for the sake of the blog I will view only Nature. I was born in San Antonio, TX and moved to Wilmington North Carolina when I was about 2 years old. I lived there until about two months after my 18^th birthday. The first 10 years of my life in Wilmington, we lived in a one story, 3-bedroom house, which was about 20 minutes from the any accessible shoreline. I explored creeks and streams, dared a patch of quick sand once, picked up pinecones for money, had a huge yard with it’s own mini forest, and once owned a lemonade stand. It sounds simple and it was. My mother got a promotion with a heavy pay increase. We moved to a three story, 4-bedroom house, which was walking distance to the ocean. This house was also on a man-made island and 20 minutes from any major stores (i.e. Wal-Mart). My “nature” changed significantly. Our yard was only big enough for one dog, we no longer had pinecones (which made my dad happy), and creeks and streams were traded for an entire ocean. My family and I took up bike riding and tried surfing. Though my location and life style changed a bit the culture around me did not. Fried food, being tan, big trucks/suv, accents, fishing, boobs, and Jesus were still large and everywhere. Then I moved from there to here. “Island life” in NC is far different than “Island life” in Hawaii. I was affected hugely by a culture shock. I latched on to country music, starting making my own sweet tea, ate fried chicken and cheeseburgers anytime I could, I was the tannest I had ever been, and overall I missed home. I was connected to the south, to North Carolina. I missed the “world” I was use to.  It is a part of me that will never leave me.

Can we create the same sense of connection in preschool? Can we teach children the local “nature” for them to feel rooted? Are preschool children old enough to grasp the deep message? Does it take a culture shock to realize how connected you were to a place   

Did I pass the test?

As a child with ADHD growing up with testing was difficult. My was an educator and new the effects ADHD had on a classroom. The day they said "We think your daughter has ADHD and we can treat her...." My mother chose medication for me. I could talk about how the medicine effected me and social experiment I was for the doctors, ect. But, what I always feared were test! In North Carolina, the test start counting in the Third Grade. If you do not pass the big bad test at 8 years old you can not move on to the next grade. There was a grading scale of 1-4. 1 was not passing and 2 was barely passing, 3 was average and 4 was above average. My family and I made sure I had the medication, full nights rest, good breakfast, "brainfood" snack. I was coached about taking my time, reading over every question, reading every answer, skipping and coming back to questions I didn't know, the whole nine yards!   Take the test and wait a month. BITING NAILS!! Results came in and most time it was:
Math - 3 Reading - 3 Writing -2.  Then a bunch of statistic were complied and I came out average/ boarder line below. Like Lang, I had to go home and show my mom the State of North Carolina Testing Board thought I was average/ boarder line below average. My mom would always give a pep talk about uniquiness and tesing can be hard....
          Just like lang's teacher said, how many people has this happened to? Can graphite and circle's really tell the ability of one's intelligenence? I read a quote in the last few months about being a genius, " Everybody is a genius.  But, if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  ~Albert Einstein " I remind myself of this quote often when dealing with children and assessments.  Telling myself each child has their strength and weakness in all areas.  As a child the testes stressed me out and made me worry about what will happen to my future. I can imagine the stress and anticpation a child going to public school is going through, though I think by now it is just second nature to sit down and take a test for them. Will they ever stop? probably not! How can we change them for the future children not to feel defeated?   

Where is my recess?

Where is my recess? After reading about the condition in the parents 4 year old class, I was taken back a bit. Most of the preschool, in the local area, focus on play and social building. There is a preschool in Hilo that I know has the same type of goals the preschool this child went to. I had an employee tell me how other preschool were not preparing children for Kindergarten and how the children would not be "Kindergarten ready." Ah, Why do you have to know everything to start Kindergarten? Wasn't Kindergarten the place for starting and building? I do notice in Hilo children are getting shorter and shorter out doors time? I know a big reason is the rain.  I have been at places who give their children an hour fifteen outside and others give their children twenty minutes. At least their children are getting outside, right? I believe if these children were allowed to play longer outside they would have less behavior issues in the classroom. But really, Where is the recess going?

Why can't boys play with dolls?

As I read through the chapters, I thought back to my trips to "Toys' R' Us, KB toys and Wal-mart." The Hilo Wal-mart's girl section is a pepto bismol pink color and with dolls and tiny puppies. The boys section is full of guns, trucks, manly man toys. Though I realized and noticed the sexism in the aisles, I did not look into the detail as the author did. In preschool, I have seen some of the same segregation of genders as in the Toy Stores.  I currently have a child who enjoys role playing the opposite sex and doing "girly" things. He is a middle child of three boys, his mother is raising them on her own, and he father has a TRO and won't be around anytime soon. He is often found in the dress up area, create head bands for himself and other children, he likes to play the dad and mom during dramatic play. When the mom comes to pick him up and see these behaviors, she scolds him very quickly. You can see his soul crush and his happiness goes. What is so wrong with boys playing with dolls? For my own child, one of her favorite toys is a football. It worries her father. She is 15 months. I am not worried. Sex is set by anatomy and gender is set by society. As a preschool teacher, are we suppose to teach society rules or let the children find their own rules for what they would like to be in society. Our job is guide, right? Should we just focus on general behavior and let society teach the rules? 

What if white was black and black was white?

What does a color mean? What if apples were oranges and oranges were apples? What if white was black and black was white? What if Africans discovered the world and drew Africa in the Northern Hemisphere instead of the Southern Hemisphere. As growing up in the South, I understand the tension of race and how it can effect a classroom. Even as a child, it affected me. I was sent to the principles office in kindergarten for calling a classmate "black" and not wanting to play with her because she was "black." I DID NOT do this.  As a child, I had a complex about black people being called black when they were actually brown.  It turned out she was jealous I was playing with another child that day and made up this lie. At six years old, she knew the power of that sentence and the power behind being different. Since moving to Hawaii, I have not experienced anything like that. I understand because of my skin color, I am on the bottom the ladder of "superiority". I do not mind that.  I loved in the section it talked about why people think race and difference should not be brought up. I loved the explanation of bringing attention to difference and appreciating it. Not just talk about how each child is different but build a respect for each child's difference. I feel the tension will only be resolved through time and generations after generations building respect for other cultures and races.   

Week One blog.

We must learn to be vulnerable enough to allow our world to turn upside down in order to allow the realities of others to edge themselves into our consciousness.




This statement rings very true with me. I grew up in North Carolina where the world can be a little different. Sometimes I think I grew up on a different plant. Once moving to Hawaii, I was able to see a whole new world. I hated it. Life was not as I had known it to be. It was different.  People in Hawaii could openly talked to different races without a sense of tension. People could make jokes about other races without thinking twice about it. People are just people here. They are not only described as black, white, mexican, or asian. They are people with personalities, interesting names, cultures each their own, and minds. Once I realized the whole world did not describe people by the color of the skin, my world was turned up side down.  A person could be so much more than the skin color and the stereotype that goes with it. I did not have an easy transition into this thinking. My first two years here in Hawaii were VERY difficult. I am glad that I was able to see past my own nose and experience a different side to life. I am grateful Hawaii has given me that opportunity. I would change it for anything.