Category Archives: 1.1 Social Justice

Don’t. Give. Up.

From the ages of pre-birth to three years old, a major part of the child’s emotional capacity is developed. Meaning that it is vital, from before the child is born to the day it turns three years old, that you maintain a positive attitude and positive behaviours when around the child. If this is not achieved then it can have a detrimental affect on the child’s mental wellbeing, which is almost impossible to reverse.

If a child is growing up in a violent household, experiencing violence, anger, insecurity and a constant unease, these acts and behaviours can rub off on them and allow them to think that such behaviours are normal and expected for every situation that they come across. This is frustrating for education professionals, from nursery, all the way through school.

The reason for the frustration is that these three years are vital and after which, virtually irreversible. That is why children, despite being objectified to a loving, caring environment that promotes healthy behaviours when they start school or nursery, they will still act out/behave badly/have a bad attitude towards the adults, children and school environment. The trauma that they have faced and witnessed growing up through their baby and toddler years have made an irreversible effect on their emotional and social wellbeing.

I know this from personal experience when working at Camp Starfish (see earlier post). I had a camper, aged 10, who had suffered form severe abuse and neglect as an infant, and even though he was taken away from the violent household at three years of age and adopted into a loving, caring family, he was still under the impression that everyone and everything was a threat. It was extremely vital, throughout his fortnight stay, that even though he would be acting out and being extremely violent to the staff members, that we kept a positive mindset towards his behaviours and try and understand WHY he was feeling the way he was. This child was, intact, the child that stabbed me during an art lesson out of pure frustration because I would not allow him to do the activity that he wanted to do. In the face of this major behaviour, I was still smiling and calmly talking to him in order to calm him down and prevent him from putting himself or anyone else in further danger. It was my unwillingness to give up on his behaviour and him that allowed him to calm down and regain a more realistic mindset; I was there to help and protect him, not hurt him.

The key is, that no matter how horrific or dangerously the child is behaving, never give up on them because it is that that they notice and react to, hopefully in a positive manner.

Take a walk in their shoes.

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The values workshop that we had last Tuesday afternoon was an eyeopener to say the least.

The room of twenty-odd people was split into four groups. Each group was given a large envelope with contents inside. Opening up the envelope my group found a pencil, blue tac, three paperclips and a rubber band. We were told to create something that we could give to new Education students to help them with their adjustment into university. My group decided to make a map of campus.

We used the large envelope as the map and we used the blue tac and paperclips to point out the most important buildings for Education students; Dalhousie building, Library, and the Union. We used the pencil to draw the map and the rubber band to indicate where a roundabout was. My group thoroughly enjoyed the task, we had a lot of fun in the making the map and we were quite chuffed with our end project.

When it got to each group showing off their project, we watched every group present something much better than what we created. However, the difference being was that every other group was given more materials to use than we were. Not only that, they were awarded higher points than my group were. We understood the higher marks as each of their projects were exceptionally more elaborate than ours but we didn’t understand why we weren’t as lucky as the other groups. Why didn’t we have as many materials and why were we discriminated considering we done our upmost best with what we had?

The moral of the project was to show you that not everyone will have the same opportunities as we do. Some families have next to nothing to live off of and other families have too much to live off of.

My group had fun (probably the most fun out of all the groups) because we knew that we had done our best and we didn’t know that we were missing out on more and better materials. Unfortunately, not noticing what you don’t have is a very unlikely case. In schools children will watch their classmates get everything they wanted for Christmas and Birthdays while they get very little compared. This also goes for homework projects, you can’t discriminate because you have no idea what any child is facing at home and what he/she has to offer.