Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

My father was born in Iran and my mother was born in Iowa. I identify as half Persian and half American, which has caused some racist people to act hateful towards me due to my Persian heritage. While I do not experience racism on a daily basis, I know there can be consequences with a personal battle of racism when working with other children and families.

A positive consequence is that I treat all people with respect and compassion because I know how it feels to be discriminated against. My last name represents my Iranian heritage, and it has always been something I’ve been proud of. However, I have been questioned at airports multiple times because of my name and had comments said about how different/weird my name is. In my classroom, I have children with diverse and beautiful names, which to some people may seem weird or abnormal because they’ve never heard it before. Since I have had experience with being judged based on my name, I try to instill positivity and anti-bias in my children when they question someone’s name. I tell them that all names are different and no name is better or worse than another. Since this type of racism/exclusion can extend to other forms of cultural identity as well, I try my best to influence acceptance and anti-bias perspectives because of my personal experience (Derman-Sparks & Olsen Edwards, 2010).

A negative consequence that can occur from experiencing racism is constantly being defensive or negative towards children and families. While this is not the case for me, others who experience racism may start discriminating against other people because of how they’ve personally been treated. A person who does this is no better than the people who have treated them poorly, but they use it as a defense mechanism to avoid getting hurt. It’s also possible that an educator who has been discriminated against based on race may be more sensitive towards certain topics that a family or child brings up. For example, I had a parent tell me that they did not want their child playing with another child. I was able to approach the parent’s statement with an open mind and ask questions to figure out what the underlying issue was. However, if someone who experiences racism often were to hear the same comment, they may have automatically attributed the parent’s negative comment towards race and gotten offended. This can cloud judgment and cause unjust rationalizations towards other individuals because of a personal battle with racism.

Unfortunately many individuals experience the hardships of racism, and to varying degrees. It’s important to remember that our actions as educators affect children and families, and we have to take our personal battles out of the picture, even if that poses challenges. If you have a strong self-identity, and battle the consequences of isms, then you can be a role model for many children to do the same.  This would pave the way for building strong relationships with children and “increase social and academic development” within them (Rudasill & Rimm-Kaufmann, 2009, p. 108). While my experiences with racism have not been as severe as others, I understand where consequences may come into play when working with children and families.

References

Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J. (2010). Anti-bias education for young children and ourselves. Washington, D.C.: National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)

Rudasill, K., & Rimm-Kaufmann, S. (2009). Teacher-child relationship quality: The roles of child temperament and teacher-child interactions. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 24(2), 107–120.