My Supports

What is support? Is it knowing that someone is there to catch you when you have fallen? It is having someone who you trust to listen to you when you have had a bad day? Or is it team work? Support is all of the things I just listed and many more. Support is need in every day especially in my classroom setting.

There are several factors that I view within my daily environment that are supportive to me. Here are just a few factors I feel are a great deal of importance:

• Effective communication. I need to be able to have meaningful conversations with others. Without effective communication, my life would seem meaningless. I enjoy talking to others. Especially my students and their parents. It would kill me knowing that nothing worthy is coming out of my communication.
• My family. Family means everything to me. I do not know who I would be without my family. I talk to my mom and my sister every day. Blood is thicker than water and I feel that if it was not for my family, I would not be where I am today. There were times when I had to ask my mom for help with my children and she was always there to watch them for me. My life would be a wreck without my family and that is a fact.
• My calendar. I have every appointment to every event that my children are in on my calendar. It also helps me to know what day it is. I feel a calendar is a support for everybody. If I did not have my calendar, how would I know what are the plans for that day? My calendar is very important to me.
• My car. Now I think I can speak for everybody who has a job how important it is to have a car. Gas prices have gone down a tad but still not enough to see people smiling when they have to put $40-$60 worth of gas in their cars. My car supports me to get to wherever I need to go. Without my car, I would have to walk to work and that is not a good thing.
• Team work. I work with my students' parents to reach a common goal: to ensure that every child reaches their full potential in my classroom. There is no "I" in "team." Nobody can achieve anything alone. We always need to lend a hand to others.
• My cell phone. All my contacts are in my cell phone. I think everybody has a cell phone and to some extent that cell phone is ALWAYS with them. Technology has taken a toll on today's generations but cell phones holds a great importance in not only my life but in others' as well. Without my cell phone, to be honest, I might go half crazy.

These are just a few of the many factors that supports me in my daily life. As one can see, many of the factors I had ranged from emotional to physical support. Either way it goes, support is support. I was asked to imagine myself with a specific challenge, one that I do not currently have. The challenge I chose is the inability to speak. How would I communicate with others effectively? How would I support this challenge that I have? These are the questions that sticks in my mind. When I think about what kind of supports I would want and need emotionally, practically, and physically, the first thing that comes to mind is that I would not want people to look at or treat me differently. I would just not have the ability to talk and I know how quick people are to approach those with disabilities. That is basically what this whole blog is about. To show how important support is not only for those without disabilities but those with disabilities as well.

Here are just a few factors I feel that will support me with my new found challenge:

• Patience. I would appreciate it greatly if everybody were to take the time to communicate with me (in this case, ASL (American Sign Language) would be used). One thing I dislike is when people are impatient. That is why I take the time with my students' families to build relationships with them. Without patience, I feel that nothing can be accomplished.
• Languge acquisition. In this case, I would have to learn along with my friends and loved ones sign language. I wouldn't necessarily look at this as a downfall though. Acquiring a new language is always a plus. I feel it would strengthen me as an individual and support me in a tramatic way.

Support comes in all shapes and sizes. Support is getting what you need on a daily basis. In the words of Muhammad, "Four things support the world: the learning of the wise, the justice of the great, the prayers of the good, and the valor of the brave."

My Connections To Play

"It is better to play than do nothing." -Confucius

"You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." -Plato

These are just two of the many quotes that I feel summarizes what play represented for me in childhood. There was not a day where you did not catch me outside playing with my cousins. Play is the best way to discover a lot about a person. Confucius and Plato could not have said it better. It has been said that play is children's work. Children work hard at their play because they can make it up themselves. The best part about children's play is that they learn a great deal while having fun. I can recall a few of the play items I used to play with as a child.

I can remember it as if it was yesterday. I used to LOVE to jump rope. I cannot even remember why I stopped jump roping but it sure made my childhood a whole lot of fun!



My Big Wheel! I'm a big kid now! I used to think I was so cool riding down the street in my Big Wheel. Nobody could tell me anything and I was in control. I had fun racing with actual cars. I even had some scars from falling off my Big Wheel. This was my baby.

Franny was what I named her. My baby doll. I carried her everywhere with me. The store, the mall, when I took a bath, you name it. Franny was there.

It is so funny how easily I forgot about all the play items I admired as a child. My mom was always supporting play when I was younger. She prepared me to be road safe. She prepared me for walking and cycling independently by telling me and showing me from an early age how I can keep myself safe on and around roads. She also familiarized me with the neighborhood. We walked and cycled in the local area and she helped me to identify safer routes to play spaces and other places I needed to access independently in our community. There was not moment where my mom was not actively supporting play in my childhood. I thank her for that. The role of play in my childhood was huge. I do not I would be as sociable as I am without the chance to play with fellow peers of mine. Play gave me the opportunity to conquer my fears and to have fun. I would not trade that in for the world.

Play today is very different from the play in which I engaged as a child. Play is of central importance in a child’s life. Despite its central importance in children’s healthy development, play—in the creative, open-ended sense in which I use the term—is now seriously endangered in the United States and many other countries. It is being pushed out of children’s lives for a number of reasons. For one, children have become dependent on electronic entertainment: television, videos, and computers. Secondly, kindergarten programs in the U.S. focus so strongly on teaching literacy, numeracy, and other academic subjects that many children no longer have time to play in kindergarten. Thirdly, this academic approach to early learning is shifting downward. Three- and four-year-olds are now expected to engage in far more early writing and reading activities than ever before. This should not be a requirement for young children. Lastly, the amount of time spent in sports and other organized activities for young children has increased greatly in the past thirty years, beginning with pre-schoolers, so that children have little time for their own play activities. I hope that by some miracle we as educators can involve play into children's lives again. Depriving play from them is just going to affect them academically, socially, mentally, and emotionally. We do not want this to happen. We want to see the sparkle in children's eyes because they are having fun and learning.

I had such a great childhood mainly due to the fact that I was given the chance to be a kid. I did not have responsibilities or had to worry about school standards at such a young age. I was given the opportunity to have fun without any consequences. I just feel the U.S. along with several other countries has lost sight of what play represents in children's lives. No child should have to bear the thought of not having recess. That is just cruel and unusual punishment. I believe that even has we enter adulthood, play still has a significant role in our lives, especially if we have children of our own. We are all a kid at heart.

Relationship Reflection

It's funny to even think about how some of the relationships I have gotten myself into have even started! But, out of all of the relationships I have developed and maintained, one thing remains evident in my mind: importance. In order for me to have a "relationship" with another person, they have to mean a great deal of importance to me. Relationships/partnerships are important to me because I can learn about the interests people have, form a connection, and develop life-long friendships.



With equal importance is my favorite cousin, Charlisa. My relationship with her is important because I practically watched her as a baby. I've had the pleasure of watching her grow up from a baby to a beautiful young lady. I enjoy the fact that she calls me from time to time to check up on me and my children. I am always there for her when she needs me and she is there for me when I need a babysitter (ha ha).



Shelbie is my oldest child. She is my life and my heart. My relationship with her is positive because I continue to be involved in her life. I make her feel love and let her know that I love her as I do my youngest child, Braylon. They are both my pride and joy and gets and deserves nothing but the best from me.

Besides my children and Charlisa, I have positive relationships with several people. They include my mother, my older sister, Shawndrae, my cousins, my aunts, my co-workers, my children' fathers, and God.

Of course, every relationship I have is different. With my sister, it's on a bonding level. Most siblings don't get along as adults. Well, it was the opposite for my sister and I. We didn't get along as children and now she's like the best friend I've always wanted. We talk almost everyday and always give and ask each other for advice on anything. With my childrens' father, however, it's on parenting level. I have to have a positive relationship with them for the sake of my children. Factors that contribute to developing and maintaining each relationship are patience, work, communication, strength, compromising, acceptance, and time. It takes time and work to develop relationships and it take times and work to maintain them. I didn't expect to not end up with the father of my children but I had to adjust to that. My relationship with them is specifically about the children.

As I have mentioned, it takes patience and communication to develop and maintain relationships. Over the years, I have learned that often my patience is very limited and my communication is not very thorough. I had to discover that with my children' fathers. We may disagree on things but in the end, communication and patience is the best way to go. I learned that in order to move forward, effective communication is needed and that may take practice. That's okay. Nobody's perfect and we're only human. The good thing is that I learned from my mistakes and so have my children' fathers and we can now discuss anything without emotions getting in the way.

My experiences with relationships/partnerships, including my ability to be an active, reflective contributor, impacts my work as an effective early childhood professional by revealing that every relationship I am in is what I make of it. I have to form positive relationships with families and their children in order to understand what the child's needs are and then using them in the class setting. Sure, I might get frustrated with separating my personal relationships from school relationships but that is what being an effective early childhood professional is all about. Finding a balance in it all. You can find out so much about a person by simply forming relationships with them. That's the approach that educators like myself need to involve in a class setting. Relationships are what you make them.