Isabel Blair: On Culture and Community

March 25, 2025
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Isabel is good at putting herself in other people’s shoes, an ability she picked up in her college days. “I studied cultural anthropology in Mexico,” she says, “and did a lot of field research on different communities and their cultures.” It was knowledge that came in handy when Isabel had to move out of her comfort zone and find a new professional path. The government funding for her research dried up, so she came to California, where she met her husband and became a first-time mom, a role for which she felt unprepared. “I didn’t have a book on how to be a parent,” she says, “so I took some child development classes at a community college with the aim of being a better mom.”

Those classes led to a career when Isabel’s instructor told her about the CDA®. After earning a bilingual credential, she and her family moved to Michigan where she went to work at a child care center called Brilliant Beginnings. Isabel brought her two children to work with her, but it was costly. Besides, Isabel’s children weren’t getting what she wanted for them since she didn’t want them to forget their background. “I wanted my children to learn more about my culture and first language, Spanish, big parts of who I am,” Isabel says. So, when she had her third child 18 years ago, she opened Mi Casa es su Casa Bilingual Family Daycare in Byron Center, Michigan, where she celebrates her culture every day.

“The program is half in Spanish and half in English,” as Isabel explains. “We do circle time, read books and play games in both languages. I cook Mexican food like enchiladas and tacos since this is another part of my culture that I can bring into the classroom. I have bilingual staff to assist me,” she says. “And the families come from a wide range of backgrounds and cultures, so they like the enrichment their children gain by being in a diverse program.”

The families also value the skills that Isabel and her staff bring to the program since Isabel believes in continued professional growth. She has gone on to earn her master’s degree in early childhood education and takes determined steps to help her staff earn a CDA. “I help them find scholarships from the state of Michigan,” she says, “and I give them some paid time off to do their CDA homework. I also spend time with my staff to guide them through the CDA process. So, I meet with them during nap time, for instance, to work on their portfolios, share ideas for resources they can include and make sure they’re gaining the competencies they need to earn a CDA.”

Isabel values her own CDA and has continued to renew her credential since earning it nearly 20 years ago. “Though I now have a master’s degree, the CDA has symbolic meaning for me since it started me on my career,” she says. She also understands that “earning a CDA gives you a solid grasp of how young children develop and what it means to provide quality care in an early childhood program.”

It can be challenging, as Isabel knows, since she has served children with behavioral and physical issues. “I had a little boy who screamed all the time and made himself throw up whenever he ate,” as Isabel recalls. “It turned out that he was on the autism spectrum, and working with him was hard at first. But we found a routine that helped him calm down and now he’s doing very well. So are two little boys who came from a home where there was domestic violence. They were yelling all the time, feeling low self-esteem and hurting other kids, but I didn’t give up on them. Instead, I tried to put myself in the boys’ shoes and realized how much they needed a place where people cared about them and made them feel safe.”

The key to serving children with challenges like these is paying attention to the cues they give you, as Isabel points out. And she draws inspiration to do this from her favorite book The Little Prince. In it, the prince tells a friendly fox that “grownups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them,” words Isabel understands well. “Children can’t always tell you how they feel,” she says. “But they’re trying to communicate something when they hit someone, hurl a toy or throw a fit. So, you have to search for signs of how they’re feeling by looking at their eyes, hands and body language. That’s how you can get to the root of any problems that the children might be having.”

Granted, it can sometimes be hard for educators to connect with children since they think like adults. So, it’s a good thing that Isabel shares her wisdom as a bilingual early childhood quality improvement consultant and trainer. “For the past 11 years,” she says, “I have been working for local and state early childhood organizations like Great Start to Quality, a Michigan program to bring excellence to the early learning field. In my work for them,” Isabel says, “I visit family child care providers, listen to their needs and guide them in how to cope with challenging behaviors among children. I also provide online and in-person trainings in Spanish on family policies and how to make child care settings safer for children, along with resources to help their programs succeed.”

And Isabel likes doing the training and listening to the providers’ stories, she explains. “We speak the same language and come from a similar place, so it’s easy for me to put myself in their shoes to build connections,” Isabel says. And she also builds bonds among the providers who she serves in her training sessions across the state. “Whenever I do a session,” she says, “I send an email to all the people who have ever taken my training. Once I complete my presentation, I provide a space where they can talk about their programs, share their experiences and build a sense of community,” something Isabel also works hard at in her family child care program.

Training providers, serving children and being a mom can require Isabel to fill several roles in the same day, as she explains. “Sometimes, I feel like Alice Wonderland when she says, ‘I knew who I was this morning, but I’ve changed a few times since then.’ When I’m with the adults, I act one way and when I’m with the children, I act a different way. But at heart, I stay the same. I’m someone who has a passion for serving others and striving to know where they’re coming from,” she says. And she first learned to do this while studying cultural anthropology during her college days.

Isabel’s experience since then has shown her more about how we can come together and what keeps us apart. “It’s not always the language barrier since we can speak the same language and not communicate,” she says. “Instead, the real challenge is getting to know other people, hearing their views and accepting them for who they are. That’s what I try to do with the families I serve. I work hard to support diversity in my classroom because we don’t want everyone to be the same. When we join as a community, our differences make us stronger.”

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