How we view youth

While reading Shalaby's piece "Sean on Being Willful" it brought me back to a time when I was young, and I was like Sean who would ask many questions. My mom's answer to almost every question I had was "because I said so" or "because I am a grown up, that's why". I was so curious, and my mind was always wanting to know more but I would always get shut down. In the reading, I love the way that Kate takes her time with Sean and provides him with reasoning and logic behind her answers. Children need us to be patient with them and truly listen to what they have to say rather than dismissing them. I will always be mindful of how I interact with you because of my past experiences as a young person and feeling like I was heard but the "authority" figures around me. 

While reading Shalaby's piece "A Letter to Teachers: On Teaching Love and Learning Freedom" I couldn't help but reflect on my past experiences dealing with challenging behaviors in a classroom setting. Classroom management can be very difficult at time especially when you do not have the support of administration. I was the lead teacher in a pre-K 4 classroom, I had this one student in particular who displayed many challenging behaviors throughout the day. This was a daycare setting where the day began at 7AM and would end at 5:30PM for some students. This student was always one of my first kiddos there in the morning and my last to leave at night. Some of his challenging behaviors included throwing objects both large and small, biting other children, screaming, dumping over the trash cans and a host of other things. At the time I did not know that I was doing exactly what Shalaby discussing when she talks about be love. I did not have any experience or education when it came to challenging or even managing behaviors, but something told me that this student needed empathy and specifically to be shown love. The "regular way" that Shalaby mentions is the way that my supervisors expected to me to handle this student's behaviors which was also challenging to navigate for me. This also had me thinking about one of the youth development anchors of care and how care and love go hand in hand. Instead of the "regular way" I would try to understand how the student was feeling by giving him space, asking questions and being someone he could trust. I always remained calm and would let him know that it was ok to have big feelings and emotions and once he would calm down a bit, we would also have productive conversations on how to handle our feelings and what we can do to tackle them in the future. I also believe that this student needed different outside supports that we did not offer or even care to offer to him. I think my supervisors did not know how to handle his behaviors and looked at him as more or a problem rather than working with his family to get him the correct support he needed. As this student moved on to kindergarten his behaviors improved tremendously but he still required additional supports. It makes my heart happy knowing that I did all I could have done with the empathy and compassion I have by showing him how to be love. I am happy I never gave up on him.

While reading" Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability" I think my jaw dropped a few times. The first quote I want to discuss is "Black and brown bodies were viewed as less developed than white bodies, more ‘primitive,’ and even considered sub-species of humans (Trent 1998)." This is so far from untrue and is just another way to "justify the slavery, segregation, unequal treatment, harassment, violence and even murder of black and brown bodies (Menchaca 1997; Valencia 1997)." As I continued to read through the text, I could not help but to think about the boy that I had mentioned in my story above. I bet by reading all of our text for this week as well as my story above you could guess this child's race. He was pushed to the side and discredited because if the color of his skin. I am at no will to diagnose anyone, but this child needed services to help with many sensory needs. This reading invoked feelings of disgust and regret. I wish I could have done more for that child and looking back now I believe I would have handled things quite differently.