National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI)

Happy Saturday loves!

I am headed to the beach later this afternoon but headed to a prayer vigil for the 4 year old that was shot earlier this week from more Chicago gun violence. Pray for my city, loves. When you are aware of the issues but arent equipped with how the resolve them, you grow frustrated.

On a lighter note, this week we are unpacking our websites into further detail. I won't make this post as long as my others but as previously stated in prior entries, I selected The National Black Child Development Institute as my focal point resource.

I chose this due to its commitment to focusing solely on how policy, education, health, and economics affect African- Americans. I genuinely dislike using the term "POC" because it has lost its power for what it is and categorizes the struggles of each minority group into signal agendas.

I like how NBCDI zeros in the issues that SOLELY affect Black children and families. Our community is crippled from effects of post taumatic slave disorder, economic oppression, gun violence, domestic fragility, and mental oppression. These are unique traits that are solely identified predominately to the Black community that needs to be addressed in its own separate fashion and tactic.

Which is why.....*drum roll* I nearly fell out and lost all my edges when I saw that NBCDI had a Chicago chapter. I was so excited to see that the same mission of NBCDI was put into motion for the Chicago chapter but had revised it to reflect the unique culture of Chicago urban poverty and the families within it.

Recently, a program was implemented to instill a positive message about Black youth than the deficits of Black you and it snatched my edges. Too often we are socially engrained with negativity towards a group of people. I have traveled the world, lived and worked in 3 countries and 29 cities in the USA, and not one group of people are demonized as Black people are.

In Ecuador there is a resturant Menuestro De Negro with the mascot as a stereotypical Black child with overdramatic feature, pitch black skin, and a bone in their hair. In China, on my first day my students rhbbed my skin and asked why my dirt doesnt come off.

The common narrative about Black people in any country is that we are violent, aggressive, less intelligent, and primitive. -____-

NBCDI wants to change that narrative through instillibg self-love and pride in Black children to love themselves, their culture, and their African ancestry as nit a hinderence but a badge of honor. I greatly support this because self-hate is real. Colorism is real. Depression within the Black community is real. These things go hand-in-hand with one another and overall affect how a child sees themselves based off how society sees them as a whole.

I can see criticism against NBCDI due to ita primary focus on Black issues but this discussion is not open to everyone and not every space requires the prescense of others. These issues affect our community in a way that ia unique and crippling that doesn't have the same detrimental effects on other communities. This is not a space or discussion to dilute our issues to appease the general public.

"Ain't nobody come to see you, Otis!"

As an educator, a Black, female educator, this assists in my professional development as it reinstills patience and ubderstanding in my teaching practices. Often my most difficult students are the ones that look just like me and it is easy to sweep them under the rug and write them off like everyone else. However, THAT is the problem. They know society has written them off so they act accordingly. Being cognizant how my attitude, teaching methodology, and exhibiting A LOT of patience is what I remain conscious of throughout the day to best serve my kids.

Also, NBCDI has ooenings for their Chicago chapter. Guess who is submitting her resume :) Wish me luck!

Poverty: An Open Discussion

Happy Friday lovelies!

Hope everyone is having a good week and excited for the weekend ahead.

This week's topic is one personal and close to my heart through anetodal experience as well as through academic and professional awareness.

Poverty is a controversial subject that is extreme conditions of financial hardship and lack of econonic opportunity and/or resources. I decided to take a microscopic look at my hometown of Chicago, Illinois.

With Chicago gaining national noteriety for its increased influx of gun violence ( a seperate topic of itself), there have been many questions asked about my city- both indirectly and directly- concerning to the bug WHY; WHY DOES CHICAGO HAVE INCREASED GUN VIOLENCE?

As much as many "professionals" and experts try to give a clear cut answer, its nit simple to explain or understand. The one size fits all theory does not apply to describing the concentrated amounts of gun violence in the city's south and west sides.

Fun facts that are an prologue to the discussion is that roughly 10% of the city's families live in extreme cases of poverty- half the national poverty level with the largest concentrations being that of African-Americans. *Gasp*

Its no surprise, at least to me, that the highest concentrations if poverty happen to be in my own backyard because not onky did I personally experience this narrative, but poverty and race have become almost synonymous due to defacto segregation and political infrastructure.

I can go on and on about how Chicago was literally built and designed to benefit affluent, white migrants over black laborers that migrated to Chicago during the industrial revolution but I won't go there today. (MY undergrad degree is ALL about Urban  Politics so I can go on and on) However, poverty disproportionately affects African-American communities due to the lack of economical and social resources that allow families to get and stay ahead.

"What do you mean Chanel?"

Outside of disproportionate property taxes that fund local schools that are built like prisons, the hiring of unqualified white teachers from surrounding suburbs that lack cultural sensitivity and understanding, and the limited economic opportunity due to the inability to own land and create ownership without being bombarded with debt or high interest loans that can never be paid off.....

It ALSO breeds.....*drum roll* VIOLENCE. And with Indiana and its lax gun laws next door and Trump sending FBI agents to the south and west side to FURTHER the distrust and turf war with even more semi-automatic weaponry, you would think people would stop asking stupid questions. -____-

My mentor and esteemed colleague, Natalie Chadwell, MPH, sat down and spoke with me concerning the poverty and its affects on the Black community. Chadwell is the accreditation specialist for The University of Illinois Hospital while formally serving  on the board of directors for their subsidized, health care division.

For twenty plus years, Chadwell hss dealt with poverty on a first-hand basis through her work in public health. Poverty is a public health issue that not only affects the physical but the mental and emotional conditions of a community that perpetuates a toxic mentality through a lack of understanding, compassion, and access to resources.

Chadwell enlightened me that poverty within Chicago was not by accident but designed due to the creation of ghettos that mimicked those in WWII, redlining, and illegal political and economic practices that kept African-Americans from ownership and integrated spaces.

The poverty that bred violence began with the public housing projects-the notorious Cabrini Green that gained national head lines for Girl X- and how they were systematically designed to keep the males out of the household; leaving female-led homes that ran on limited income. Once those public housing sites were demolished, the issues that were once concentrated to a confined space from a set group of people within that area became disbursed into the general population.

Chicago then morphed into "factions" based on blocks or neighborhoods and gave birth to the current enviornment as it stands.

The effects of poverty literally shorten a lifespan by creating a constant physical reaponse towards stress and anxiety to where the body does not recognize how to regulate itself. Poverty also delays ckgnitive maturation due to the prefrontal cortex being under developed from the lack of emotional regulation; increasing the amount of emotionally charged responses. Health and nutrition in poverty affects the physical and psychosocial due to  limited nutritional value in the affordable foods that are available from local gricers that inflate prices due to the food dessert enviornment.

Many public school students get the bulk of their daily nutrition from school lunches while programs such as safe passage ( a city sponsored initiative puts neighbors of a community on "hot spots" to keep kids safe during thier walk to school) exist to keep children from getting inducted or affected by gang violence.

Children can focus in a school that has chicago police in every classroom, metal detectors, and teachers that are only present to have federal loans forgiven and be expected to succeed. Not only are they biologically wired to have more emotionally charged responses and are immersed in an enviornment that is literally killing them because of stress, they are placed with expectations that they are aware they are not believed they can meet.

These issues of poverty have allowed me on my journey to educate and be a role model to the most vulnerabe children in black and brown communities due to a lack of opportunity and resources. Poverty gies beyond the financial hardship and burden of a family and extends to the social, emotional, and cognitive maturation of Children that grow to be incomptent adults that literally do not know better.

National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI)

Happy Friday!

This week is all about organizations that take to the forefront if issues that affect students within our local communities.

I have chose last week's organization, The National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI) to further gather information on their distinct mission and how they help families within our communities.

First and foremost, I LOVE how this organization specifically cater to the develooment of Black youth. I am not a fan of the political blanket term "POC" and how it is used as an umbrella to encompass issues people of color face as a universal thing. Absolutely not. My community's stuggle of oppression and raciaim differ and vary from the issues of language barriers and immigration to the Latino community and issues if the "model minority" complex of Asian-Americans.

Furthermore, Black youth lag behind in local, state, and national data concerning academic achievement and overall socioeconomic success behind their peers. Organizations such as NBCDI are utilized to nit only close those achievment gaps but are also used to meet the special and unique needs of young black children.

NBCDI uses both policy and local grassroots, community involvement to better serve Black students through partnerships with local, state, and federal policy makers to ensure adequate funding goes towards high-risk schools, a well-qualified, diverse workforce is a constant within the learning enviornment, while efforts to retain and train a more qualified work force is implemented. NBDCI knows that young Black children are often educated by less qualified, experienced educators that inadvertently stunt and/or delay growth and maturation.

Health/ Wellness is another huge investment NBCDI is at the forefront of tackling when it comes to their families and students. Through their affiliate networks and partnerships with organizations and business like Wal-Mart, health and wellness is addressed through an implementation of healthy eating habits and nurtrional curriculum that is demonstrated in a variety of mediums through their affiliate network. Food demonstrations in a local community grocer to promote healthier eating options while literature and material for a better quality of health through a more conscious mind at a local community event are just a few of the ways that NBCDI get involved.

These are just a few of the ways NBCDI gets involved into assisting African-American families into becoming healthier and more prosperous while creating better developing outcomes for their students.

NBCDI acknowledges that the ever-changing demographic is becoming more reflective of a time where cultures blend and create blended families and mixed-race children. However, what I appreciate is the fact that the issues and controversies unique to each individual ethnic group- in this case, African-Americans, are not swept under the rug or pushed into a generalized POC category. NBCDI acknowledges the unique challenges of the average Black family and uses its platform to better serve those students and families directly as opposed to indirectly.

https://www.nbcdi.org/who-we-are

Exploring Issues in Early Childhood

Good Morning

This week we are exploring issues and controversies in early childhood education and child development. Currently I am in Latin America and have gained the opportunity to expand my horizons within learning about different cultures, communities, and issues that accompany children from various socioeconomic backgrounds throughout the world.

Unfortunately, internet here is not the best so streaming a podcast this week was not an option. However, upon researching Save The Children- an organization that helps children in The United States and abroad as well as National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI), I have come across a plethora of information that has expanded my knowledge on childhood development while raising questions.

Firstly, Save The Children is an international organization that helps children in The United States and abroad grow up happy and healthy through means of assisting in poverty alleviation, health and nutrition, and education. 1 in 5 U.S. children grow up in poverty with 90% of them in rural communities. That BLOWS my mind seeing as we are the world's leading super power and a first-world developed, industrialized country.

In a country run by capitalism and the global economy, HOW can we have 1 in 5 children in poverty? Resturants and chain stores like Whole Foods and MCDonalds literally throw money away when they toss hundreds of pounds of fresh food that goes unsold at the end of the night. Immigrants literally flock to our country to study at the leading universities because of our quality education system yet some of our own citizens go without educational foundations like pre-school.  Health care is LITERALLY a monopoloized market that puts people in precarious situations where they have to decide between their health and livelihood.

HOW!?

I teach ESL to rural students in Ecuador and every last one of them idolize The United States. They literally dream of going to give themselves and their familt a better life and live the "American Dream". It baffles me how The United States- my country- can be the world's leading super power and an international influence while still maintaining third world country conditions to its nations less affluent citizens.

This discussion lead me to look into the NBCDI because I have NEVER heard if it before. As a Black woman, firstly, I am PROUD that this organization was created by BLACK WOMEN in support if how the American Education System treated Black children. #BlackGirlMagic

As an African-American, I grew up in this disparities that are often normalized in my community as the status quo. It wasn't until high-school and college where thise disparities came to light through my lack of education in simple subjects like The Cold War (Which I still don't get) and WWI that made me realize I was grade levels behind my peers and had to work twice as hard just to get the same grades.

What I enjoy about the NBCDI is that that center the whole-child through their methods through reaching and engaging policy-leaders, communuty officials, professionals, and parents to ensure Black children are allowed a quality foundation in their education. Programs, trainings, and advocacy are just some of the limited resources available to educators, professionals, and parents of Black families that assist in the development of cultural knowledge of Black children as well as educational tools to better serve our youth.

I enjoy how this is exclusively fit to serve the demographic of Black children because we as a community have our own issues that cannot be coupled into the "POC" umbrella. Programs that are available to educators and ECE professionals that help enlighten and inform on best practices to serve the serve these vulnerable populations of children allow The United States to increase our stance and dedication towards early childhood education and assisitng in decreasing the amount of children that lack access to quality education.