Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

Imagining that I am an early childhood professional who is experiencing one or more of the “-isms” in my personal life, such experiences might affect my own emotional, cognitive, and physical well-being, but I don’t believe it would impact my work with young children and their families.  I am an elderly female person of color, who grew up in the Mississippi Delta during a period when I personally experienced almost all of the “-Ism(s)”.  I have come to realize that the fact that I had horrible experiences growing up poor in a bias, segregated community does not justify me treating people unfairly because of how I had been treated.  I feel a sense of duty to want to educate children and help them and other adults to think about their identity and specifically to talk about bias and how bias impacts them and to stand up against bias. The consequences I might expect for the children and families with whom I work while I experience specific “-ism(s)” in my own life would be based on my personal experiences that racism and other biases are part of our society and part of what children have to learn to deal with.  I would be determined to prepare the children for the future and giving them what they need to be successful in life, including a critical perspective and appropriate tools to navigate the complex issues of identity, diversity, prejudice, and power in their daily lives so that they may learn, thrive, and succeed.  To sum it all up, the consequences I might expect for the children and families with whom I work while I experience specific “-ism(s)” in my own life include their lives being enriched as a result of them benefiting from the four anti-bias education goals I will implement in my professional practice.