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I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri, but have lived in a small town outside of Fort Worth, TX for the past 8 years. Growing up in Kansas City allowed me to be surrounded by so much diversity and many different perspectives and versions of play, but moving to Fort Worth kind of constricted my development due to everyone raising their kids and explaining play to them in the same traditional ways. I attended private school when I lived in Kansas City but transitioned to public school when I moved to Texas. Private school was a smaller environment with less opportunities for play and diversity but public school was much more diverse and allowed for a lot of new perspectives. I have always been connected with my female gender due to growing up in a house full of women. I feel lucky to have been taught many different perspectives throughout my childhood because of their gender and have been taught to always stay true to my feminine power. The rest of my life has been very "cookie cutter": my race is white, I am middle class, I only speak English, and I am a Christian, but I feel lucky to have gotten to know many different cultures in my life and have my development and play practices continue to be diverse.

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This is Justin, Texas, the city that I have lived in for 8 years that is right outside of Fort Worth.

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This is Kansas City, Missouri, the city that I was born and raised in.

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This is Saint Thomas More School, the private Catholic school that I attended for my elementary years.

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This is Northwest High School, the high school that I attended for all 4 years and graduated from.

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This is Open Worship, the church that I attend at home that greatly affects my religious beliefs.

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These are my parents, they definitely allowed me to be confident in my gender and helped with my development.

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Growing up my favorite way to play was with Barbies- I would always play teacher, play house, play doctor, etc.

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This is a cross, which is a sign of the Christian faith.

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Agency had a huge role in my life growing up and I believe that I actually had too much agency as a child. I had a single mom and a twin brother so my mom was not focused too much on keeping us super structured, we had a lot of free reign. Agency to me meant making science experiments with my brother, reading books to each other, and playing house. We always tried to be super cordial and productive with our agency and were never super crazy, always pretty well behaved.

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Racism and white supremacy did not directly affect me during my childhood or life growing up, but I saw it everywhere around me. I grew up going to a small Catholic private school where there was only one person in my grade that was not white. I remember becoming friends with her and her telling me how people would make fun of her hair and lips. When I moved to Texas, I lived in a small town where a large amount of people were white as well as there were a high amount of Hispanic people as well, but still very few African Americans. Everyone there had lived there the majority of their lives and had not been in a more diverse setting, so they constantly alienized any other races/ethnicities. White supremacy has benefitted me because while sad to say, I feel like it has allowed me to have more opportunities. I was able to walk into school feeling safe and like I was not looked at weird.

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I would say gender affected my play as a child, but not as much as others. I think that I had a lot of times where I would share clothes or toys with my brother and so I never viewed my childhood as being stereotyped "girly". I did love playing with all gender stereotyped toys for sure. I do not think race had any impact on my play growing up either- all of my friends that i would play with were all different races and I never thought twice about it. my toys were also of all different races so I was taught from a young age that it was accepted.

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Language and monolingualism has not affected my home life or family life directly as all of my family speaks English only and nobody is bilingual. It has however affected my school life as a large portion of my schools have had bilingual/monolingual students, as well as foreign exchange students. Lots of school assignments were available in both English or Spanish and I loved being in a school that was diverse when it came to languages. My community was the same way as many people spoke other languages, mostly Spanish. The community did not always welcome others that did not speak English that moved to our community though as my area was more "traditional thinkers".

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Our discussion on ableism impacted how I see myself as a person with different abilities because it showed me that every person is human and we all have different strengths and different weaknesses. I saw that a child with a disability or a child with no disabilities can both complete assignments together, be in harmony together, and a child with a disability can thrive in an inclusion classroom if only given the chance. Conditions that allowed me to express my agency/influence decisions were the opportunity for me to be in an inclusion classroom and be granted individual freedoms/choices.

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I have noticed culture impact my life through the holidays I celebrate and through my friends telling me all about their cultures and cultural experiences. It has impacted my life my allowing me to have a more open mind and be more interested in the cultural aspects of peoples' lives around me. Dominant culture impacted me and the people around me because it has caused me and others to not want to open up about my/our own culture due to it being seen as too different or too outlandish. Dominant culture has been enacted into my life unconsciously because I have picked up the dominant culture aspects of my community without even realizing or trying.

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My family and I have lived in Fort Worth, TX since 2017, but before that we all lived in Kansas City, MO. I do not currently have any relationships with the indigenous people that are from my two areas, but I would love to get involved and learn more. My relationships with land, earth, and the outdoors have impacted how I think about play because they have shown me that nature and animals affect a child's development and understanding of the world around them.

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Growing up, technology had very little hold on my life. My brother and I never were tablet kids and did not get a Kindle until we were 10 or get a phone until we were 12. We often played with traditional toys, and would occasionally watch TV if anything. I have seen the role of technology become more prominent in my life because of school, work, etc. all relying heavily on computers, phones, tablets, scanners, etc. I definitely am on technology much more now than I was on it during my childhood, but there is really no choice not to be as everything I do circles around technology.

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Reflecting on everything we have learned and discussed this semester, I see my role as an adult with young children in a much more important way than I viewed it as before the class. As a future teacher, I am much more aware now on how my actions can impact a child in my classroom's life and how I have the power to change their lives. A student could be dealing with trauma/a bad home environment and my class could be their only escape from reality. A student could be experiencing racism, homophobia, sexism, etc. in a different area of their lives and your class could be the only area where they are safe from that. Our role as teachers in students' lives is so much more important than we think!