Role of teachers and parents in educating and raising emotionally healthy children in a society which children of color are devalued.

The requirement to fulfill the educational needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students is one of the key educational explosive topics of concern. There have been tendencies in which children of color, whether African-American, Asian, or Hispanic, have been discounted because of their skin color, and this element has played a significant role in their future economic and civic lives. Inequality caused by the devaluation of children based on their skin color has fostered societal instability and lowered the value of education. Due to devaluation, there is emotional instability in these children which can be reflected in their performance. According to the statistics of the National Assessment of Educational progress, (NAEP), children who have a low socioeconomic origin and other children of color, tend to have low performance in mathematics and language skills and in severe cases, their performance is below the national average and the trend depicted is that the gap seems to continue widening and unless an intervention is done, a community of emotionally unstable children is likely to be raised. One of the national gals is to foster great early childhood education and to achieve this goal, it is important to understand the differences in culture and language that affects children and then, one can be able to understand improvements that can be done to foster sound emotional environment for all children (Collins 283). Teachers have the most involving role in ensuring that emotional soundness is fostered for all children and establishing the factors that may devalue children of color.

The parents on the other hand, have to work hand in hand with teachers so as to ensure that they play a positive role in establishing an environment that promotes cultural diversity. This is because strife among the children may arise because the children were taught or heard something that devalues children or people of color from their parents which they reciprocate in school. It is therefore the role of parents to ensure they handle such issues carefully. They can do so by coming up with a development model that accounts for full understanding of culture and the role it plays with regard to development. This model should be able to incorporate the intrinsic cultural characteristics such as interpersonal relationships, ability to learn language, as well as ability to form object categories. It should be able to also cater for the cultural characteristics on which development potential is generated. It is through culture that objects are categorized such as the shape of the language o be used. Teachers and parents are also expected to work hand in hand to ensure all children are accepted and feel appreciated which will form the basis for educating and raising emotionally healthy children without devaluation based on color. Some of the other matters of concern that the teachers and parents should address when dealing with emotional stability in children should be factors that may contribute to their devaluation such as: Institutional racism, general racism, economic class, media, language and how it relates to Bingualism and Ebonics and white related privileges.

Curriculum Ideas

The preschool creative curriculum has been founded upon five fundamental principles that are key in ensuring proper guidance is given for the operation and setting up of the preschool programs. The curriculum also ensures creation of an environment that promotes healthy children relations. The principles in the curriculum provide for positive interactions and relationship formation especially for the adults which are essential for learning to be successful. It also states the socio- economic competence, the constructive essentials of learning including the purposeful play. It also states the teacher- family bonds that could be formed or partnerships which could promote development and learning and also the actual environment around the children that would affect the type and the quality of learning through interactions. The curriculum also provides for teacher child interactions and relationships. The age of the preschool children could range from two years to averagely six years for the older pre-school going children. It is therefore the role of the teacher to categorize these children depending on their ages and specific needs while interacting with them. The teachers are the main source of emotional support for these children while in school and before forming relationships or healthy interactions they need to carry out assessments of the children. Children learn best when they interact with an environment that is conducive for them since they attach emotional values to social meanings.

A classroom is therefore a community that is organized and in which learning is fostered through collaboration and interaction among themselves and with the teachers as well. It is essential for the children to talk about their problems in order to solve them an understanding should be developed. The curriculum also provides for social- emotional competence such that the cultural and the social concerns of development that depict and form a basis for people’s actions and relations through life are catered for. This caters for factors such as conflict cases among the children which may be attributed to by the color concerns (Gay 76). Research shows that children who are up to six years have conflict challenges due to mistrust and trust and some who are aged between one to three have shame and doubt issues while the ones who are between three to six tend to have guilt issues and initiatives while relating with each other and it is therefore the role of adults who are both the parents and the teaches to provide order in each stage for them to be able to confront their challenges. Constructive purposeful play has an important role to play especially in the development of logical thinking. Through play, children handle many different learning material, which they can be able to compare and sort through observation before drawing sequence or patterns which they may not be able to categorize. It is also through play that the children are able to exchange their feelings concerning each other which may foster or fail to foster healthy relations due to their identity developments.

Teaching strategies

Grade- school children develop differently depending on the environment in which they are cultured. Color children may fail to maximize their education and social performance due to devaluation in their school environment or the outer community as well. Depending on the relations that exist between themselves, they can also learn to appreciate, to devalue or to even analyze the traits that they have that differ between them. This therefore suggests the prime time for teachers and parents to shape the children’s attitudes’ and concerns on race and cultural diversity. The teaching strategies that can be employed to ensure education and raising of children who are emotionally healthy in a society where children of color are devalued are as discussed. The teacher should first be able to learn his or her own culture which will enable them to be aware of the possible influences that it contributes to the teaching culture, the language used, social interests, the educational goals and values so as to be able to know how to handle students culturally without any bias and linguistically due to the diverse backgrounds. They should also be able to learn the student’s culture and how it has effects on their individual self- esteem, their classroom behavior and their perceptions to learning (Guilford 123). In doing so, they will be able to make the students from all ethnical and cultural background feels welcomed, valued and respected. In order to understand the children’s linguistic traits, the teachers and other education providers should be able to learn the communication patterns and the various dialects that the children and other students use that affect their learning in classes and also the effect it has on their acquisition of literacy.

This knowledge can then be used to create an informative teaching which promotes sincere caring attitude for the students. In the cases where the education providers fail to have sufficient knowledge on how to handle children from diverse color backgrounds, they can use multicultural books and the necessary materials that may be provided to enhance an understanding for the cross-cultural. Multicultural children’s literature can be used by teachers to honor the different cultures and also to promote cross- culture understanding for children. Diverse instructional strategies on culture embracing and fostering should be used to ensure that the children are comfortable. Home- school relationships should also be analyzed so that parents and other care givers could contribute to the literacy development of the children. When handling the pre-school kids, teachers should not teach tolerance to them since most are born with natural justice and fairness which is essential for building healthy relationships among them (Farr 37). They should also be encouraged to ask questions on the issues that they don’t understand. The teachers and other education providers should then teach the kids in their early ages the value of racial and cultural diversity.

Working with parents

The teachers and the school administration should be able to involve parents in their children’s learning activities so as to create a healthy learning environment. The administration can involve parents through parent’s meetings to make decisions concerning race and challenges that their children may be encountering and then come up with ways to solve them, they can also advocate for school activities such as cultural days where parents can teach children from different ethnic groups of their cultures which the children may learn to appreciate and as a result promote diversity in culture.

Concerns and responsibilities of parents

Parents have a large responsibility in contributing to educating and raising of children that are emotionally healthy. Some school curriculums promote institutional racism and discrimination on the basis of economic class by excluding the diverse parents from being part of the child schooling decisions. These parents may encounter discrimination due to white privileges which they don’t have and their parental communication expectations or their important roles concerning their children’s experiences are therefore neglected. It is however important to note that parents are among the key foundational features in the ethnic identity and they also play a huge role in facilitation and in the transmission of cultural knowledge and therefore, to establish a conducive and healthy environment for the healthy learning, parents should be involved. They are the key elements that foster communication of cultural concepts since they transmit the awareness of their experiences to the children and collaborate with educational professionals on matters appertaining to race and ethnicity. They also talk to their children on their ethnicity factors which the children are therefore able to identify with while relating to other children that they associate with in school. Parents are therefore important since they conceptualize their roles and that of teachers in fostering a healthy environment and also are responsive to the diversity needs that are brought to them.

Works cited

Guilford, Conn. Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Fifth Edition, Dushkin Pub. Group, 1978. Print.

Collins, W A. Development During Middle Childhood: The Years from Six to Twelve. Washington, D.C: National Academy Press, 1984. Print.

Farr, Steven. Teaching As Leadership: The Highly Effective Teacher’s Guide to Closing the Achievement Gap. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2010. Internet resource.

Gay, Geneva. Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Teachers College, 2010. Print.