Quotes from Early Childhood Education Professionals

This quote from Marian Wright Edelman is for both the education professionals and for us to remember as we educate the children.

“No person has the right to rain on your dreams.”

Other quotes attributed to Marian Wright Edelman (hard to choose just one or two!):

“Education is for improving the lives of others and for leaving your community and world better than you found it.”

“The future which we hold in trust for our own children will be shaped by our fairness to other people's children.”

“We do not have a money problem in America. We have a values and priorities problem.”

Dr. Rosa Milagros Santos, Dr. Angel Fettig, and Ms. LaShorage Shaffer wrote:

“Early childhood educators know that home is a child’s first learning environment...

By suggesting meaningful, fun, and engaging activities, early educators can play a critical role in supporting families as they support their children’s social-emotional development…

Strong parent involvement is linked to children’s school readiness – academically, socially, and emotionally…

The influence families and teachers have on children’s social-emotional development cannot be understated.”

Santos, R. M., Fettig, A., Shaffer, L. (2012). Helping families connect early literacy with social-emotional development. Young Children. 67(2) 88-93

“I see early childhood education, all education, really as a civil rights issue.”

-Renatta M. Cooper

Program Specialist, Office of Child Care

LA County Chief Administrative Office

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). The passion for early childhood. Baltimore: Author.

“Teachers have a tremendous influence on their self-identities.”

“The preschool years are critical; they are the first, most fundamental period where children are in fact noticing who they are and are noticing the attitudes and stereotypes and the discomforts.”

-Louise Derman-Sparks

Professor Emeritus, Pacific Oaks College, CA

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010). The passion for early childhood. Baltimore: Author.

Personal Childhood Web:

A mini-narrative about my childhood: I was born in 1955, and my mother stayed at home like most of the mothers from that time. Preschool was unheard of in my small hometown, La Porte, Indiana, although I know my oldest sister did attend a program at the local YMCA. And, so the people who nurtured and cared about me as a child were all family.

My father, Eugene John Hatrak

He had four daughters when it is common knowledge a father often wants at least one son. My father taught us sports and played with us whenever he was home from his factory job. He allowed me to help him do errands around the house. He was utterly patient with me when I wanted to help him. He explained stuff to me. He was so loving and had a great sense of humor. My father was loyal to a fault to Detroit Lions football team although the team was a terrible team. He told me, “I support Detroit Lions because they are underdogs.” That in itself speaks volumes about my father whom I love dearly and who still has influence over how I live my life today by being involved in community activism for the underprivileged Deaf children.

My grandma, Clarice Lorraine Herran (camera shy)

Because I am Deaf, I did not get to play much with neighborhood children who did not learn American Sign Language. When my mother or each of my three sisters were too busy for me who wanted to do something, I would then bike over to my grandmother’s house, unannounced. She was ALWAYS happy to see me and willing to stop whatever she was doing to be with me. We talked a lot, and talked about stuff.

Best part was when my father finished work, he would check to see if my bike was in Grandma’s front yard. If it were, he would stop by and pick me up. Seems insignificant a moment, but I remember those moments vividly.

Linda, Daphne, me, Kay

My Three Sisters:

Because of my enmeshed family, my three sisters are important in my childhood and still influence me in more than one way today.

Daphne: I learned how to cross cultures through my sister who is a hearing child of Deaf adults (CODA). I learned to dance from her. She would occasionally allow me to tag along with her!

Linda: she loved reading and telling stories, mostly to me. She also loved television although she couldn’t understand anything without captions that started in 1988. Never mind that, she used her imagination when telling me what the movie she was watching on TV was all about. On long and boring car trips, she would create oh so imaginative stories! She led me on many adventures as only the youngest sister would be game to.

Kay: we shared a double bed in an extremely small room. That would require a lot of love for her as an older sister to bear with a younger sister! She's always there for me when disaster struck me more than once!

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury

This is one of my favorite children’s books. Rich in vocabulary and family togetherness, the book provides the family with different kind of activities.  Typically, you can sign, read, and/or sing. You can act out the words. The book invites the family to go out and experience nature at its best – except for the bear! Something about the family cowering under the covers is so endearing! It always makes my family giggle at the end.

Artwork and Book Reading

This is my son with his artwork

This is my daughter with her artwork.

One year, Deaf children were invited to show their artwork at an art gallery in Rancho Santa Fe, California. It was a memorable evening for the families. 

In looking for the pictures of artwork to display for my class homework, I came across another picture I thought was relevant to our Early Childhood Studies. In photo below, my daughter signed the book, If You're Happy and You Know It at a Literacy Faire sponsored by Alliance for Language and Literacy for Deaf Children in San Diego.

"A child miseducated is a child lost."

“A child miseducated is a child lost.”

           - John F. Kennedy

That’s what frequently happens to our American Deaf students. The focus of their preschool experiences is too focused on hearing & speech or learning how to talk. Sadly, speech is not equal to language that would also be critically essential for their cognitive and executive function developments. Consequently, they have either delayed or deprived language development.

The classroom for Deaf preschoolers is ideologically driven. I learned from this video, The Passion for Early Childhood, that the child should be focus of our teaching. A good teacher works to accommodate the child's unique needs and strengths, and adapts accordingly if it is not effective.

So, we lose the Deaf child when the child is miseducated.

What a sad double whammy.

Reference:

Laureate Education, Inc. (2010) The passion for early childhood. Baltimore: Author

The Courage to Sign and Speak Up

Recently, I saw an exhibit called "The Courage to Remember." It is a traveling Holocaust exhibit, produced by the Museum of Tolerance, the educational arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, that features 200 exclusive photographs along with commentaries and quotes.

It was frightening to see the similarities of their resolution to do away with the Jewish population with the determination of certain parents & professionals in the United States who are determined to do away with ASL-Deaf People and the language they speak, American Sign Language.

All you need to do is read the quotes from Hitler himself and from some recognizable names such as Joseph Goebbels and insert the word “ASL-Deaf people” in those quotables.

Read on. The quotes are nothing short of chilling.

“The Jew (ASL-Deaf) is our greatest enemy.”
-propaganda on blackboard

“So I believe that I act in the spirit of Almighty God; by defending myself against the Jew (ASL-Deaf), I’m fighting for the work of the Lord.
-Adolf Hitler, 1924, Mein Kampf

“As to annihilate German Jewry (ASL-Deaf) …let no one doubt our resolution.”
-Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda, 1933

“…harshness is kindness toward the future…”
-Adolf Hitler, March 1941

“It is good that we are preceded by an aura of terrors for our plans to exterminate Jewry (ASL-Deaf).”
-Adolf Hitler, October 1941

“By reason of their birth and race, all Jews (ASL-Deaf) are part of an international conspiracy against National Socialist Germany (oral-deaf). The treatment we give them does them no wrong. They have more than deserved it.”
-Joseph Goebbels, November 1941

“The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw (ASL-Deaf) is no more.”
-S.S. General Jurgen Stroop, Warsaw Report 1943

Finally at Nuremberg Trials, 1945:

“They are living symbols of racial hatreds, of terrorism & violence, and of the arrogance & cruelty of power.”
-Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson
Nuremberg 1945

If you need evidence of the current propaganda against ASL-Deaf people, just start with the pseudo deaf-friendly website: thedeafcommunity.org. It was created by two parents in Florida who believe they are representing the Deaf Community.

Here are some examples from their website:

1. “…Here we represent the greater good of the entire deaf community…”
Questions: Who’s “we?” Who's the "entire community?" What's the "greater good?" (see quote #3 below where they contradict themselves)

2. “…The Deaf Community is organizing an army of individuals to join us in this mission...”
Questions: What are they organizing an army for? Who are the individuals they are asking to join them?

3. “…A small minority of deaf individuals do not believe in choice and are anti-oral. We do not represent them.
Question: Why would they exclude ASL-Deaf people if they claim to represent the Deaf Community? (see how this contradicts #1 quote)

4. “So we decided to take our name back! The truth is that no one speaks for the whole community.”

Those border on the outrageous like the quotes spewed by Hitler and Goebbels.

It is incredulous to me that those parents and professionals -- who are trying to make their deaf children “hearing” -- are taking the “Deaf community” from me who is ASL-Deaf and a member of 4 generations of ASL-Deaf people. I am fine with being a member of ASL-Deaf culture/community except that they told us there's no such thing.

Kind of reminds me of the quote:

“Rumors are carried by Haters spreaded by Fools and accepted by Idiots.”
-Unknown

My Favorite Library Experience

Note: in 2002, my local public library had a “My Favorite Library Experience” writing contest. I encouraged my two deaf children to write something because they offered cash prizes. They scoffed at my suggestion and told me to write it myself. I took their challenge, and won a second-prize of $75. Guess who then wanted me to take them to dinner!


I grew up in a small town in Indiana. It was an idyllic childhood where all we ever did all summer was to swim in the local swimming pool. Can’t say anything exciting ever happened in the years that I lived there. My deaf father was a factory worker, and my deaf mother a housewife who raised four children. I don’t remember much about the town that I was born in because I was sent away to a boarding school in Indianapolis. BUT I have a favorite library experience.

Every week during the summer months, my two deaf sisters and I would ride our bicycles to the library that’s on the edge of the town about two miles away. Once there, we would stay for hours. I would then become comfortable sitting on the library floor with books piled up around me. Eventually, my second oldest sister would come and let me know it was time to go home. I would pick books that I wanted to borrow. Each one of us would have a huge stack of books, but they would have to fit in the wire basket of our bikes. Now, during those days, backpacks were unheard of, and that was a very old-fashioned way of lugging books.

Anyhow, one summer day after putting books carefully in the wire basket, we raced to get home. I was riding behind my two sisters when I bumped into the sidewalk that was buckled. I remember vividly how my books went up in the air and scattered all over the ground. My sisters had to come back and helped me put the books back in the wire basket. The moment seems so insignificant, but somehow I thought of that moment rather quickly and fondly when I saw the announcement of the “My Favorite Library Experience.”

Indeed, my sisters and I continued going to the library when my second oldest sister got her driver’s license and started to drive us everywhere. Driving in the family car rather on our respective bikes with wire baskets only meant we could borrow bigger stacks of books.

Today, my children and I recall the really small branch library in Solana Beach Plaza on the other side of the freeway. I didn’t know how my mother allowed us to ride so far to the library because I wouldn’t allow my really young children ride their bikes on Lomas Santa Fe. A few years later, the library moved to new quarters a few blocks away from our home. Happily, we now walk down to the library. Hopefully, my children have their own favorite library story of walking down to the library and having their backpack spill their books.

As a postscript, I returned to my hometown for my grandmother’s funeral a few years ago. My sisters and I decided to drive around our small but idyllic town. I made sure to drive by the town’s library. It was still a beautiful building. The sidewalks were still buckled.