Isabella Oyer Autobiography Project by

Siblings!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:04:06 UTC

Family!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:13:04 UTC

Church!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:17:59 UTC

Friends!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:21:41 UTC

Houston!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:24:39 UTC

School!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:28:11 UTC

Parents!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:32:26 UTC

Growing up!

IsabellaOyer — 2025-08-28 16:36:38 UTC

Agency

IsabellaOyer — 2025-09-25 15:48:48 UTC

I would say I had a lot of agency growing up. My family always gave me the freedom to be who I wanted to be and do the things that I wanted to do. My parents were always very supportive of who I was growing up and always supported my interests. They encouraged me to be myself but also provided me with a lot of structure.

Culture and Development

IsabellaOyer — 2025-09-25 16:36:43 UTC

I would say culture and community impacted a lot of who I was growing up. I went to a small private school from Kindergarten all the way to my senior year so it was really easy to know everyone and have a close community. Having a small community definitely impacted my development and who I am now. The small community culture I grew up with is still something I find comforting today and I am glad I had that experience during my developmental years.

Control and Bias

IsabellaOyer — 2025-10-04 15:49:23 UTC

I would say that growing up my classroom was always a welcoming and interactive experience. I had a lot of agency in my classrooms growing up. It was always an inclusive environment and although we did follow the curriculum most of the time we were also able to think freely and everyone was treated equally from what I saw.

Ableism

IsabellaOyer — 2025-10-04 16:18:54 UTC

Ableism in any setting can limit a child's agency and their ability to be independent. The ability to use agency can be supported by adults giving children the space to learn and explore for themselves without a lot of intervention. Sometimes be can be ableist without really thinking about it just because we assume some children look like they need more help than others. I think that all children should have the ability to be independent and use their agency

Community/Civic Action

IsabellaOyer — 2025-10-24 00:23:10 UTC

While I was in school I was encouraged to be an active member in my community even at a young age. My school would volunteer and we would participate in parades in the community. My school was a place where they wanted everyone to feel welcome and connected. In kindergarten you were able to sign up for a buddy system and I was paired with a high school student. For the rest of the school year we would have social events where we got to hang out with the person we were assigned and get to know them.

Impact of monolingualism

IsabellaOyer — 2025-11-06 19:34:25 UTC

Growing up I took 8 years of Spanish and my grandparents were both fluent in Spanish. I remember them speaking in Spanish with each other and on the phone but I never really learned any Spanish. My grandparents never taught my mom Spanish so she was not able to teach me. I am still only fluent in English and it is the only language I can speak. I think this impacted me a bit when I was growing up since I couldn't connect with my grandparents fully in both languages. I found it a little hard to connect with the language and culture that I am but I still have other ways that I feel connected.

Outdoors

IsabellaOyer — 2025-11-07 05:23:18 UTC

I loved being outside when I was a kid. I would play in the sprinklers with my siblings and we would also ride our bikes together. Growing up I also really enjoyed my recess time at school. We had a large field where we would go out and play random things and make up games. We liked to explore the outside area after eating lunch and I think that was an important part of the day. I think it was important because we got to go outside and have a lot of agency during this time. Teachers would only interrupt if they saw something that should not be happening. I think having this time to go outside and play/ explore in the middle of the day was a good way to kind of get a reset in between doing school work.

Gender

IsabellaOyer — 2025-11-07 05:41:30 UTC

I would say that gender played a big role in my life growing up. When I would play when I was younger it was always pretty separated. The boys had the games that they enjoyed doing and the girls would also do their own thing. During this play when I was younger I think that it was always sort of expected that girls would be doing "girly" things like playing with dolls or doing each others hair at recess(things I remember from my childhood) and the boys were expected to be playing rough and running around everywhere. I would say that this impacted how I viewed play because for a while growing up I would see how separated we were and that was normal at the time . As I got older the gender roles in play sort of went away and we all started to play the same things at recess and started interacting more during play time.

Trauma

IsabellaOyer — 2025-11-13 19:07:31 UTC

Something that stood out to me from this week's lessons about trauma was how we cannot really see that children have experienced trauma. We are able to see children reacting to things and maybe acting out but we also don't know why they are acting out sometimes. I think in the future this will help me not to just jump to conclusions and immediately punish a student for having big feelings and they don't know how to express or regulate them. Being sensitive to how the child feels and letting them know that you see what they are going through and that you are there for them is important and something I will try to do in the future.