Morgan Edwards

A50172803

Essay 2: How I look at Children

Children are so miraculously unique. They grow and learn and have personalities unlike

anyone else. Furthermore, every childhood is uniquely full of many different experiences. The

part of childhood I will impactthe eight or so hours that young children spend in my

classroomI will do everything that I can to make sure that it is a comfortable, rich learning

experience for all children.

I believe that childhood is a time of exploration. Children should be given the freedom

and opportunity to learn about the world around them using their own senses, and their own

experiences. Childhood should be a safe time, where mistakes are ways to learn and grow.

Every child should have a soft place to land, physically and metaphorically, in their

environments. Sometimes, these soft places are the arms of a caregiver after a painful fall or a

warm bath after a day of playing in the mud.

There are numerous benefits to assessing young childrens development. Assessment is

used by educators in order to promote childrens growth and development as a tool to gauge

whether childrens development and growth are on track. If a childs assessment scores indicate

that he or she is developing at a notably slower rate than peers, then the educators involved now

knows that this child requires intervention. Assessment is also used as a tool for instructors to

plan their teaching. Informal formative assessments given to students during the school year

measure students collective progress and areas where more support is necessary. As a future

educator of young children, my goal is to use a variety of assessments in a variety of different

ways in order to inform my own instruction and to ensure that each student is learning and

growing appropriately. With this being said, there are some risks of assessment that must be

addressed.

I firmly believe that each child is a unique individual. Furthermore, each child will grow

at a pace that fits them. Children are humans, and are as different from one another as one can

be. A child develops his or her own completely unique personality all their own. As an

educator, I must be cautious when assessing a group of very diverse children in the same way.

For example, I work with a toddler who has muscular dystrophy. He has more struggles than

most children, and is extremely delayed when it comes to walking and standing independently.

Though this child cannot move the way he sees his peers move, he has found his own way of

moving where he scoots on alternating knees to get around the room. If I were to do a motor

skills assessment with my students and one of the skills that I measured was walking; then this

child would fail at that task, even though this assessment is clearly not appropriate for this child

in the first place. As an educator I must be extremely careful to balance objectivity and

subjectivity in my assessments of children. They are all unique individuals, and I cannot

implement an assessment with a round holewhen the children I teach are pegs of all different

shapes and sizes.

As an educator, my duty is provide support not just for the child, but for the childs entire

family. In fact, I believe that in doing this, I am providing optimal support to the child.

Furthermore, the childs parents and family members are undoubtedly the ones that know that

child best, and they are a valuable resource for teachers. In the text Assessing Young Children

by Mindes and Jung, it is stated that Families can contribute information regarding their

childrens strengths, challenges, preferences, motivators, personalities and educational needs

(Mindes & Jung, 2015). This personal knowledge is what every teacher hopes to glean, and

having the insight of the childs family will help immeasurably. Furthermore, families must be

seen as a partner in the assessment process. Decisions made about the child based on assessment

results have a profound impact on the entire family, and this is something that may be unseen

from the teachers point of view.

If I am going to be the teacher that my future students need and deserve, then I must

utilize assessment as a tool to improve my classroom and myself. I must keep track of students

development and growth to make sure that it is on track. I must also be sure not to employ any

one size fits all mentalities to my students and the curriculum that I plan. With assessment and

instruction, I will strive to meet the unique and individual needs of each of my students to

support them in their learning and development.

 References

Mindes, G., & Jung, L. A. (2015). Assessing Young Children. United States: Pearson.