Impacts on Early Emotional Development

I chose to look at Jamaica for my blog assignment this week.  My sister has traveled to Jamaica many times. When she first started traveling to Jamaica, it was for tourism and vacation purposes but as she talked to people from Jamaica living in the United States and realized that she would like to revisit Jamaica and stay in the residential areas instead of the popular vacation spots.  She found her experiences very different than the first visit she made and got to know and understand the people, culture and hardships of the Jamaican people.

The article that I read discussed the aftermath of the children's emotional states in West Kingston following the violence in West Kingston (UNICEF, 2010).  The amazing information in this article is that teachers, mostly early childhood educators, were trained in using music, art, dance, and play therapy to help the children when they came back to school to express their feelings and unrest about the violence (UNICEF, 2010).  The teachers also found it therapeutic for themselves to go through the training as they lost loved ones from the violence as well (UNICEF, 2010).  The teachers found this approach to be especially helpful for the children as children were able to be honest about their experiences and use the arts and play to express themselves (UNICEF, 2010).  The teachers were amazed at some of the drawings and paintings that the children made that portrayed the violence they had endured and seen (UNICEF, 2010).

As an early childhood educator, I have worked in many different places. One school came to mind when I was reading the article about the children in Jamaica.  One of my first jobs was as a kindergarten teacher in a school in Chicago.  The area was described as poverty and the children and families I served endured violence every day living close to gang warfare, drugs, and prostitution.  The children walked out of their living places every morning greeted by drug dealers and gang members.  So I always tried to make sure that school was their safe place and a place they could enjoy coming to on a daily basis.  One day, an intruder came into my classroom and mugged me in front of the children.  He threatened that he had a gun and would come back and kill me if I told anyone.  Thankfully he left without any physical harm to me or the children but emotional scarring had occurred.  As I tried to get help in my classroom which was difficult with no classroom phone and no way to contact other teachers, my children started to cry one by one until every child in the room was crying.  While trying to console the children, I pulled out a bingo game and started playing with the children just to get them to calm down and bring some normalcy back.  I listened to the children as they expressed their fears while we played. The game playing also helped me to stay calm and be there for my children.  When the principal asked the children what had happened after hearing my story, they were able to give her every detail about what happened.  What saddened me the most about this incident is that my kindergartners had to endure that violence every day outside of school in their neighborhood and should not have to experience it at school.  What helped me to get through my own experience of being mugged and threatened was the support of my family and the resilience I saw in the children I taught.

While children are resilient and can endure more than we can imagine, they are still our precious treasures that we should protect and nurture.  When something bad happens, we need to learn a lesson from the educators in Jamaica and allow children to express their honest feelings through avenues that are familiar to them.

References

UNICEF. (2010). After the violence, children in West Kingston heal with help from their

            teachers.  Retrieved from http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/jamaica_54208.html