Week 8

I want to thank everyone for all the great discussions.  It is wonderful to learn from so many great people.  Everyone has interesting comments and it helped to have real life examples.

I wish everyone the best of luck and hopefully I will see some of you in my next class!!!

week 6 class 7

I think the hardest groups to leave are the ones were you accomplished the most.  These are usually the groups that work together the best and probably have similar goals.  The one group that I wished I could have continued with was on the focus group for our school.  I felt the board should have continued some sort of parent group that could have helped disseminate information into the community. 

My colleagues in this program have been great because they have had very insightful comments.  I feel we have had great discussions on the discussion board.  I wish everyone the best of luck with the rest of their classes and everything they do in the future!

class 7 week 5

At work there has been a disagreement between my program and another program.  It has caused problems because there are many times we both visit homes and disagree on what should be allowed when it comes to health and safety.  I think I could use strategies in the win-win approach as well as the 3R’s.  I need to make sure to look at it from their end.  They have a checklist they go by but I am looking at it from an early childhood point of view.  I have an early childhood background and they do not.

Week 4- communicator

This weeks application assignment was interesting.  It showed that my listening style is people oriented.  It also showed that I have mild communication anxiety and have low verbal aggression.

I feel these tests were very accurate.  I am a people person and am always willing to help and listen.  Both people I had take the test on me came up with the same scores.  So I see myself as others do when it comes to communicating.

class 7 week 3

I work with child care providers and legally exempt child care providers.  I have and am currently working with refugee families.  One family is from Somalia.  Her oldest son translates for us.  When I work with someone who translates for me I never know if I should look at the translator or the person. 

Another family I worked with was from Bosnia.  I created and got paperwork translated for this family.  I also bought an English/Bosnian dictionary.

Three strategies I will use:

1.  Learn about the culture and traditions of the family
2.  Active listening
3.  Pay attention to non verbal cues

Communication - Class 7 - week 1

I have a friend and former co-worker who I feel has excellent communication skills.  She is able to get her point across effectively and without upsetting anyone.  I have seen her talk with parents and she has a wonderful way of putting "bad news".  She makes people feel comfortable.  She is a good listener. 
This person is also excellent at written communication.  She has a way with words that I wish I was able to do.  I wish I could write as well as she can.

Class 6 - week 8

My area has a large refugee population so there are times that I work with a number of families from a very diverse background.  This class has taught me that I need to look beyond surface culture and look deeper into who people are.    I hope to be able to learn from the people I work with and I hope to find ways to include the families and the children. 

My goal is to teach child care providers the importance of diversity.  Also I want to develop training on the anti-bias curriculum.  I believe that child care providers tend to ignore where children's backgrounds.  They do not integrate it their program.

I want to thank everyone who has visited my page and left me great comments!!  It has been a wonderful class and I have learned so much.

Week 6 - class 6

I have a friend, who is also a co-worker, who last year came out as a lesbian.  She started out tell a few people because she was worried how people would react.  As more people found out, there were some who treated her differently.  She is out stationed in another office and works around people who are not part of our office.  She had a very hard time because she was treated horribly.  People made insulting and very discriminating remarks.  It made her very uncomfortable.

She went to her supervisor had was told to “deal with it”.  She was needed in the other office and to ignore them.  She hates going to that other office because she feels so uncomfortable.  They made her feel like she wasn’t normal and they treated her like she was not an equal.

I felt so bad for her because she was so hurt.  I was also upset because everyone deserves to work in a safe environment and she was in an unsafe place.  She was trying to deal with these new feelings she had plus dealing with the hateful remarks.

I believe that the Human Resources departments in both buildings should have been involved in order to make this a safe work environment.  I also believe that all people involved she have been made to participate in a class on diversity.

week 4- microaggressions

After watching the video segment by Dr. Sue, I remembered an incident that happened a few months ago at work.  One of my co-workers is stationed within another agency.  She had become friends with a woman who is a lesbian.  Other people working there started making comments about them and being very unprofessional.  My co-worker was very upset and it made it very hard for her to work in that office.  She went to our director to explain how uncomfortable she was and really didn’t want to be in that office anymore.  My director told her to not be so sensitive. My co-worker is still in that office but she still feels uncomfortable.

I now know that my co-worker was a victim of microinvalidation.  I don’t believe my director meant to invalid her feelings.  I felt bad for my co-worker because she was very upset.  I could listen to her but I couldn’t identify with how she was feeling. 

The video segment has made me more aware of comments being said around me.  It is amazing how many things are said and people don’t realize how they make others feel.    I would love to take this video segment to work and show it at a staff meeting.  I believe a lot of people would learn a lot from it. 

Reference

Laureate Education, Inc. (2011). “Microaggressions in Everyday Life” with Dr. Sue

Class 6 - week 3

I asked 3 co-workers their definitions of culture and diversity.  The following are their definitions:

1.        Culture – it means a person’s religion or their way of life.  The way that they were raised by their family and their values and beliefs.

Diversity – it means a variety of people or things.  It also could mean a various amount of opinions or genders/social/economic backgrounds.

2.        Culture – traditions, beliefs and expectations of a people.  People could be defined as a race, a nation, a family, or even a business.

Diversity - the comingling of different cultures, race, nationalities, traditions, beliefs.

3.        Culture-learned ways of acting, thinking.

Diversity – it is made up of non-stereotypical roles (non gender roles), a variety of socio-economical backgrounds, many types of employment, and many types of family composition and cultures

      
I think a lot of what I have been learning so far in this course is in the definitions I received from my co-workers.  For example, that culture is about their families as well as their values and beliefs.   I think anything has been omitted from what we are currently studying in this class. After seeing my co-workers definitions and thinking about mine, I realized our definitions are very similar.  I find it very interesting because we are from different backgrounds but we are all in the early childhood field.

Week 2 class 6 -My Family Culture

My family and I are being sent to another country and I can only bring 3 small items.  The items I would bring are a small picture album of my family, my mother’s wedding ring, and a letter my mom wrote to me when I was about 14 years old.

The album has pictures of my mom, dad, baby pictures of my children, and pictures from my wedding day.  My mom has passed away so those pictures are very important to me.  Also, baby pictures of my children because I would not be able to replace them.

I would bring my mom’s wedding ring.  It is the ring I wear because I lost my wedding ring in the Atlantic Ocean a few years ago.  The ring is very special to me because it had belonged to my mother and she wore it till the day she died.

The third thing I would bring is a letter that my mom wrote while she was in the hospital.  I was about 14 years old and my mom had been in the hospital for about 2 years.  I would go see her several times a week when possible but  there were times because of my dad’s work schedule and other factors that I might not have seen her for a week or so.  She sent this letter home with my dad.  It was about a upcoming concert that I had and how she was sorry she couldn’t be there.

I would explain to others that all of these things are important to me because they represent my family.  Family is the most important thing in my life and they represent very special moments in my life.  Two of the items represent my mom who passed away in 1999.  It would be important for me to have these if I was not ever going to be able to come back to my home country again.

If when I arrived to my new country as a refugee, I was told I had to give up 2 items I would be devastated.  I would do everything possible to keep them.  I would probably try to sneak them into something or hid them so I could come back someday to get them.

This assignment gave me a better understanding of how refugees feel when they are sent to another country.  Sometimes they are not given an option to bring anything with them and that makes me feel very sad for them.  I had a very hard time deciding on what I would bring!

Week 8

I have learned a lot about research in this course.  I never realized the number of steps that needed to be followed in order to collect reliable data.  It makes me appreciate the time researchers take to come up with their papers.

This course has been difficult for me.  I have not done anything with research in a long time so the readings as well as understanding how to apply the information has been difficult.   I have taken the comments from the professor and tried learning from my mistakes. 

I wouldn’t say my perception of an early childhood professional has changed from what I have learned in this class.  I still believe it is a hard but worthwhile professional that unfortunately many people don’t take seriously.  So because of this reason, it is important for researchers to continue to investigate the early childhood field.

Week 5 - Looking at an International Website

The website I looked at was Early Childhood Australia, http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/.  Their mission statement is the Early Childhood Australia will advocate to ensure quality, social justice and equity in all issues relating to the education and care of children from birth to eight years. Some of the current research is on respecting diversity, learning and teaching through play, bullying, and portfolios.  It is amazing that the United States and Australia have similar research topics.  Early childhood across the world have many common areas. 

                         

As you look over the website, you might think you are looking at a website from the United States.  Most of the issues are the same as here.  I really found it interesting that even in Australia they are doing a Quality Assurance (QA) for the child care programs.  Right now, NYS is in the process of all the Child Care Resources and Referral becoming QUALITY ASSURED.

Resources

www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au

Week 3

I would study how play affects children as they get older.  I would like to study children who are in an early childhood program that values the importance of play.  Then follow those children in a study until they graduate high school.  Some of the children would attend an elementary school that includes play into their curriculum.

I feel that children would love going to child care and as they grow older they would continue to enjoy school.  The children’s creativity levels would be higher in the school with a play curriculum.  I also see the children having better grades. 

It would be interesting to follow the children throughout the years.  I believe it would show amazing results and maybe the schools would put play back into the day.

Class 5 Blog Assignment week 2

The topic I have picked is to look at how having a sick mother can affect preschool age children. This topic is very close to my heart as I grow up with a mom who had a rare disease and was hospitalized most of my  childhood.  I find it very interesting how my brother and I grew up in the same environment and were affected differently.

I would love to hear from anyone else that might have some experience with this topic.  Have you worked with children whose mother was hospitalized or maybe they lost their mom when they were in preschool?  Thanks in advance!

Week 8

Looking at the Early Childhood field in other countries has made me realize that so many parts of the world have a long way to go.  Some of the consequences are:

1.  There are so many poor countries that do not have the resources to provide quality child care.  Resources  are used for food and housing.

2.  In some countries children are not able to get an education because their family needs them to work to help out the family.  There are 75 million children excluded from education (http://www.unesco.org/).

3.  There are many world wide organizations to help developing countries but without the support from the public there won't be enough funds to continue to support them.

One goal I want to work towards  is helping children in poverty in this country and learning more about what I can do to help across the world.

Resource

UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/),

Week 7

The world has never been as rich as it is today, yet over one billion people suffer from extreme poverty. (www.unesco.org).   UNESCO is committed to raising awareness to the fact that freedom from poverty is a fundamental human right.  (www.unesco.org)

Today, 75 million children are excluded from education. 60% of them are girls living in Arab States and 66% in South and West Asia. The main reasons for exclusion are poverty, gender inequity, disability, child labor, speaking a minority language, belonging to an indigenous people, and living a nomadic or rural lifestyle (http://www.unesco.org/).

I also thought this was interesting.  There are 2 ethics Teacher Training Courses being held at the beginning of this summer.  One of the courses will take place at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Belgrade (Serbia) from 27 June to 1 July 2011. The other course will be hosted by the Inter-University Center in Dubrovnik (Croatia), from 4 to 8 July 2011. The courses have been designed to provide training to ethics teachers with the purpose to enhance their skills and abilities (www.unesco.org).

Resource

UNESCO’s “Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/),

Learn about the Zero To Three website

On the Zero to Three Website you can look up information on how to support school readiness:

- School Readiness Interactive Birth to 3 -

- Information on Early Learning for Your Baby or Toddler’s Child Care Provider

- Getting Ready for School Begins at Birth

- Everyday Ways to Support Your Baby's and Toddler's Early Learning -

- Learning to Write and Draw Developing Early Math Skills


You can also learn about Toddlers and Challenging Behavior:  Why They Do It and How to Respond


You can also sign up for an e-newsletter
It is an e-newsletter that showcases how children learn and grow each month from birth to 3 years.

Reference

http://www.zerotothree.org/

Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative"

The Center has a commitment to working around the globe for children.  These are some of the projects they are working on:

Un Buen Comienzo (UBC), “A Good Start,” is a collaborative project in Santiago, Chile, to improve early childhood education through teacher professional development. The idea is to improve the quality of educational offerings for four-to-six-year-olds, particularly in the area of language development. This project is also designed to intervene in critical health areas that improve school attendance as well as socio-emotional development, and it seeks to involve the children's families in their education. (www.developingchild.harvard.edu)

The following three initial projects have been selected to launch this effort, subject to funding:

1.   Assessing the state of child mental health services in China;

2.   Developing and evaluating family-based strategies to prevent mental health problems in children affected by HIV/AIDS in Rwanda; and

3.   Addressing child maltreatment and mental health outcomes in three Caribbean nations (Barbados, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname). (http://www.developingchild.harvard.edu/)

This is a wonderful program.  It helps so many children around the world.

References:

www.developingchild.harvard.edu

NAEYC website

The website I chose was www.naeyc.org.  It is the National Association for the Education of Young Children.  The entire website is relevant to y job.  I work in a Child Care Resource and Referral Agency.  There are resources and up-to-date policies.  Also NAEYC advocates for early childhood programs and knows the importance of high quality child care.

There is a link to public policy on the website.  This is very important for people to look at to see what policies are being introduced.  It is important for everyone to ask question if they do not understand what the policies mean.

There isn’t anything on the website I find controversial.  I find all the information very pertinent,  There are some things you can get for free (newsletters) and if you become a member you can get a deal on their other resources.

Poverty in China

China's poverty rate has declined in recent years due to their economy except in Western China.  Western China has higher poverty rates because the econmic growth has been much slower.  In 1998, people in the West were 6 times more likely to be poor (http://www.childpoverty.org/). There are not enough new jobs in the West so many are without a full-time job (http://www.childpoverty.org/).

In 1999, the national mortality rate for children was 32 per thousand but 47.9 in the West (http://www.childpoverty.org/).


In 2001, China had a popoulation of 1.27 billion.  4.2 million Chinese children live in absolute poverty and 8.7 million live in disadvantaged conditions (http://www.childpoverty.org/).

Resource

http://www.childpoverty.org/

Web Resources

I subscribed to a newsletter through the www.zerotothree.org website.  It is a website that is researched based about infant and toddler development.  It works to make sure policies are based on best practices and current research.

I like that the web site because it has a link for all the most recent policies.  Also that it offers tips on finding child care.  Another great tool on the web site is an interactive tool for parents and caregivers to encourage early learning.

One of the policy recommendations is to support educators in addressing diversity of the families they serve.  It also suggests colleges diversify their staff and increase diversity issues in class work.  I really like the fact that they are addressing diversity at the college level.  I think this is important.

I also subcribed to www.naeyc.org.  It is another great website for early childhood information.  I am also a member.

Contacts

I have had a contact with the Family Day Care Association in Australia!  There are 2 women interested in talking with me.  I made the contact through Facebook.  I found their page and posted on their wall what I was looking for.  I will let you know how it goes!!

My Supports - What would life be like if..............

What would life be like if I could not read?  This would require me to rely on everyone else to help.  I would not be able to have the job that I have so I wouldn't have the support of my current co-workers.  I would need my husband to read everything for me.  It would be difficult in finding a job because you need to be able to read to do many jobs. 

I would need my family to help in every day things like going grocery shopping, doing banking, paying bills, and so many more things.  It would be difficult on my family because I would need them to do everything for me.

My Supports

My supports are my family.  This includes my husband, 2 children and my dad.  I also consider my supports to be my friends and co-workers.  These are people who help when I need it or just listen when needed.  I consider my children part of my supports also because they make me smile every day.  I cannot imagine my life without all of these people.   At some point everyday, someone is there to offer advice, help out on a project, or  they are just there to give a hug.  I feel very lucky to have these people in my life.

When I was little I was encouraged to go outside and play.  I was outside as soon as I got up until it was dark outside.  When we couldn't go outside we played inside.  I remember we played school, restraurant, and played  with my dolls.  My dad would play games outside with us.

The problem today is children are not playing outside   Sometimes it is because of safety reasons other times the children are glued to the television or computer.  It is so important for children to be outside and get the chance to run around and use their imaginations.  In schools, recess is being taken away because the children are having to sit and learn more.  I believe this creates problems in children.  Most children are not able to sit for long periods of time.

It is important to play in childhood and in adulthood.  As adults, we have so many responsibilities but it is important to take the time to play with our children to show them we value them and their ideas.

Another place I placed a lot as a child was in our sand "box".  We had an area of sand we played in.  We had buckets, shovels, trucks, cars and whatever else we dragged in there to play with.

My brother and I spent a lot of time playing outside and one of our favorite places to play was in the woods.

Childhood Immunizations

Childhood immunizations are very important for children all over the world.  Every country has different requirements for what immunizations children should have when they are born.  Immunizations can help protect children from many common infections. These infections can lead to serious and even life threatening complications.

I believe immunizations are very important to keep children healthy.  Most immunizations have been around for years and have been through many years of research.  Research continues today to develop new immunizations. 

I work with child care providers.  It is required for providers to have up-to-date immunization records on each of the children in their care.  We make sure they have the most recent immunization information.

In Bolivia and Brazil it is required to be immunized for yellow fever, typhoid and rabies.  These are immunizations that are not required in the United States.