3's observations tied to sociology

       Reflecting on another day working in ECDC, this time in te 3's classroom, I noticed several developmental differences between the 3's and the 4's/5's children in these classrooms. I never actually realized the amount of learning that goes on and the basic skills of communicating that are developed that happened between the ages of 3-5, until today. The kids in the 3's class showed less control over their emotions having tantrums, showing frustration, and whining, without communicating in words/speech. After nap time we had two kids express extreme frustration and throw tantrums, unwilling to express in words to any of the teachers what they wanted or what was wrong. One child had to be removed from the classroom, and as the teacher tried to speak to her, explaining that it is important to communicate to the teachers what she was feeling, however, as the student refused, the head teacher told her that we couldn't help her until she was able to do this. I have never dealt with a situation where a child cannot verbalize why he/she was upset, and instead us crying, volume, tone of voice, and physical body language to express herself. As she showed lack of verbal/speech development, unable to express her feelings to her behavior, when it was time to color, she was very skilled. She perhaps was one of the best 3 year old artists I have ever seen, drawing inside all of the lines with control, clearly symbolizing people, and showing signs of awareness to proportion and size in the way she drew her people. I was surprised to see two such different levels of development in one child. Most of the other children had more self-control, and identified to me that they were making connections between letters in their name and the alphabet as well as identifying what verbs correlated with pictures of people doing specific actions. 

        Another idea that i would like to comment on is the idea of the socio ecological influence on kids though literacy. Sociology was one of my majors @ the undergrad level and therefore the importance of socio ecological influence on children's development is very interesting to me. I observed boys in the 4'3/5's as well as in the 3's classroom, playing in the kitchen, wearing nail polish, playing with dolls, and also "styling" my hair, however, in society, such behaviors, we associate with litttle girls, rather than little boys. As I realized this, I also realized that we used many devises to imprint our culture on our kids and that we use many devises to do so. One of these devises is print or books. As soon as we start reading to kids, without realizing it due to that fact we are so focused on teaching skills like reading, spelling, and verbal language, we forget that we are also teaching cultural norms through the stories we read to them, which help to mold cultural expectations such as gender role. I am not saying that certain traits of gender are nurture over nature, but I am saying that we reinforce cultural standards and practice through what we read. Eventually kids start to mold into what we are pushing them toward. Many books child read over and over again, and it is likely that a child will soon start to understand the story more and eventually the story's lesson. I can remember having friends in preschool who were boys who played Barbies and dolls with me as well as dress-up, until around the middle of kindergarten, when a few of them started ripping off my Barbie's heads, as my mom tells me. I am not sure if this is really in correlation with literature and what it teaches us about culture, but I think it is a possibility. After talking to my brother who is a teacher outside of DC and his wife (also a teacher), they started talking about the influence of books on kids. They also told me about gender roles and how they have tried raising both of their kids, who are now at the elementary level, equally in every way. This meant that if Allie had a girl doll, they had to buy Harrison a boy doll. Early childhood impacts a person's entire lifeline and so many jobs that used to be designated primarily to one gender, are now not. For example, there are many more male nurses, and additionally many more women doctors. It is also common for the husband to be the stay-at-home "mom", while the woman may be the "bread-winner". Anyways, my point, is just that we need to realize that not only the words on a page, the way we write, and the way we speak, are important parts of literacy, but also the cultural concepts we endorse through the context of literature.