Impacts on Early Emotional Development

This week we discussed working with children of varying abilities and their families, as well as the way to utilize anti-bias education practices with children of this diverse background. There are a wide variety of physical, mental, and social-emotional disorders and disabilities prevalent in the world today. Learning about and truly understanding each disability or disorder is important as an educator in order to provide the appropriate educational opportunities and environment for each child.

Additionally, we had to examine the UNICEF website and choose a country/region to focus on. Once we have chosen a region and country, we needed to share why we had chosen this region, the challenges children in this region are facing and confronting, how these experiences effect children's wellbeing and development, and a personal reflection.

I decided to choose the region Central and Eastern Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States. More specifically, I focused on the country of Turkey. I chose to focus on this region and this country, more specifically, because in my experiences teaching in Bellmawr, many of our children come from this region from Turkey, Pakistan, and others within this and the bordering region. With everything taking place in the Middle East and Europe today I thought this would be an interesting area to focus on, as well. I felt compelled to learn more about this region since so many of my students over the past three years have come from this region or have family from this region.

When researching the Unicef website in regards to Turkey, I found that many Syrian refugees had fled to Turkey due to all of the war and destruction taking place in their homes. Schools, homes, hospitals have all been destroyed. Families have fled and children are now taking refuge attending schools in Turkey. I cannot imagine the terror, fear, and stress the children and families are experiencing from the war and destruction, as well as the sudden change of uprooting their lives to start over in a new land. These sudden and serious changes could potentially have a serious detrimental impact on a child's well being, development, and perception of others. Children may begin to experience stress and anxiety, even to the extreme of having post traumatic stress disorder. Families could be facing issues of poverty due to the drastic losses, as well. All of these issues could potentially lead to long term impacts on a child's self-identity, ability to thrive and grow in a learning environment, health concerns, and more.
As it may be evident, children are suffering detrimental impacts to their developmental stages of life in tremendous ways due to the tragic loss and change they are being forced to confront on a daily basis. Being in a new place also allows for trouble in terms of bias and prejudice, too.

Both personally and professionally this knowledge has helped me to understand the life circumstances and challenges being faced by these and many children throughout the world under similar circumstances. This insight has made me realize that it is truly imperative for educators to understand where a child is coming from in more than just the physical manner, more so in regards to the experiences they have been through, the things they have seen, the obstacles they have faced, the ways in which they have acted. Each of these things makes the child face more obstacles and challenges when they enter the classroom as they are struggling to overcome challenges in this new setting, as well. On a personal level, this has also touched my heart in such a way which makes me want to help those children and families in need. A few courses back, I began to follow an organization called Save the Children which is heavily involved in helping children around the world, such as the refugee children and families from Syria residing in Turkey for peace. Since researching the organization in this course, I have continued to follow it and partake in spreading the word of their great cause, as well as donating from time to time to help the children and families in need. This information this week has reignited this fire within me to help others and I have once again revisited the organization's website to find some way to help. If you have not heard of this organization, I highly recommend checking it out. :)