My Supports

Since I decided to enroll into this master, I have valued even more the supports I have in mi life; considering that support, to me, is what holds and gives me foundations to achieve my goals. I can get the support I need from people who are important to me or from objects.

Even though my parents, siblings, and best friends are in Mexico, with their blessings and words, they give me emotional support when we get in touch with them, but my husband has been the greatest emotional, practical, and physical support I have. He has been taking care of household chores that I was in charge of, so I can use that time doing my school assignments; he also is the shoulder I can cry on when I feel tired or frustrated, and at the same time, he encourages me to keep going, reminding me that I am a capable person. It is because all the support I get from him that, every time I get another grade, I tell him that those grades are OUR grades.

My friends, co-workers and supervisor are the supports I have at school when working with children; as well as when they listen to me talking about my assignments and help me to broaden and clarify my ideas.

Another support I have is my computer, because it gives me the information I need in order to achieve my professional goals, as well as information that helps me to improve my work with children and families in my job. Through my computer I stay in touch with my loved ones too, and at the same time we support each other.

If I had to face the challenge of having a deaf student in my classroom, I would need the practical support of his family while learning the best way to communicate with him, in order to establish a relationship between the practices at school and at home. I would get the physical support of survival phrases (Macrina, Hoover, & Becker, 2009), images, and hand language, which I can learn through the internet or by taking a course. The emotional support would come from getting in touch with professionals who have worked (or are working) with deaf children, and by making a research about it. Another support I would look for would be my supervisor’s, when asking her to let me have an extra person the first days this child is in my classroom, in order to know him better by establishing a close relationship.

For sure, this would be an amazing challenge, but looking for emotional, practical, and physical support, I am sure I would learn how to work with this child, and this challenge would give me more confidence because I would realize that I was capable of working with him.

Resource

Macrina, M., Hoover, D., & Becker, C. (2009). The challenges of working with dual-language learners: Three perspectives: Supervisor, mentor, and teacher. Young Children, 64(2), 27-38.