Week 8 of Communication and Collaboration

I do not think I am alone when I say this class has been very eye opening for me.  I have learned so much about my own communication skills (or lack there of), the communication skills of those around me and the purposes of collaboration.  I feel so fortunate to have been able to take this class and I believe I will review the resources regularly as I continue on through my career.  Thank you to my colleagues for reading my discussion posts and my blog and for sharing your insights and experiences!

I appreciate you!!

I hope to see many of you in my next class but for those of you who are moving on to a different journey than mine, good luck and I hope you do well!  We are the future of this field and I am proud to share that responsibility with many of you!  See you soon!

Adjourning Week - 6

This week we have learned about being a part of a group and the 5 different stages that are involved in a group's development.  The last stage is the adjourning stage when a group's members dissipate and move on to the next group or project.  Right now I am about to leave the group of women I have worked with for the past two years.  An opportunity has surfaced for me to change jobs and I am going to take it!  I have enjoyed working where I have been but it also has been difficult at times and I am actually looking forward to leaving even though I love the women themselves.

Since we have been learning about groups this week, I have been thinking about the many groups I have been a part of.  I have played sports, worked for restaurants, had roommates in college, lived in a close knit family and now I have my own family who is my primary group.  The hardest group I ever had to leave was the family I grew up in.  My senior year of high school my older sisters both moved to Virginia and my younger sister and mom moved to Florida.  Saying goodbye was very difficult, not because I would never see them again, but because things would never be the same again.  This is not a bad thing all the time, but it can be hard.

I suppose that as we adjourn, we become enabled to learn from a new experience rather than staying in the same group.  I guess we may be able to say that it is our moving on, that helps us grow.

Conflict Resolution Wk 5

     This week was all about conflict and conflict resolution.  We were challenged to examine a conflict we have had at work or personally and to see if we would handle it differently now that we know what we know.  I think for me the answer is "YES!!"  I am currently involved in a long-term conflict with a family member and knowing what I do now, I definitely would have handled things differently if I could do it over again.
     Unfortunately, I am afraid the damage has been done and the relationship involved may be forever damaged.  If I could do it all over again, I would focus on common goals and needs and I would stop the conversation if communication turned to insults.  Unfortunately, many insults were made and many feelings were hurt and now, I do not even know if the work to fix the relationship would be worth the shadow of a relationship we used to have.  Maybe it is possible.  I believe it would take a miracle to heal the damage that has been done.

Evaluation Results WK 4

This week, I filled out three questionnaires about my personal communication style.  After I completed them, I asked my husband and my friend who is also a colleague to fill out the same questionnaires about me.  The results that I got were basically the same as my friend and husband.  What surprised me the most was that my husband actually got the exact same results as I did.  My friend got slightly different numbers but the same result as me.
What I realized as a result of this week was that I need to be careful to not trust too easily even though I think trust is very important for relationships.  I also learned that I apparently am able to identify my own communication abilities which I was not sure if I could do.  I really wanted my husband to fill out the surveys because I know he knows me best and to see that not only did we get the same group results but we actually got the exact same number as results, speaks to my one self-concept.  This was an interesting week.  Can't wait to see what comes next!

Communicating Across Cultures WK 3

     It is amazing how much my own concept of culture has changed over the course of getting my master's degree thus far.  I used to have the understanding of culture as being this general definition of who we are based on where we live or where our parents maybe lived.  What I see now is that culture is far deeper than just where you grew up or where your parents are from.  As we communicate with anyone who is not in our immediate family, we are communicating cross-culturally.  Today, I went to a family barbecue, held by my neighbors whom I had never spent any time with.  In my family we have family get-togethers that are normal for us.  This gathering was very different than the type of gathering I am used to.  We live literally five houses away from this family and our cultures are very different.
     What I have noticed is that the common bond that seems to form an instant foundation for communicating across cultures is kids.  When you ask about someone's child, and are truly interested in him/her the adult you are talking to will usually offer information and seem pleased to talk about their child with you.  Another thing I have learned is that people do not like to hear about your children when they do not ask.  I have watched people offer advice to people who have not asked for it and it seems not well received.
     Our assignment this week is to share how we speak to other culture differently and I guess my answer is, yes, I speak carefully.  I certainly do not talk about sensitive matters like religion or politics.  I simply stick with things like weather and kids.  We all have those two things in common it seems.  I am still learning but I will continue to practice and neighborhood parties that are out of my comfort zone might just be one of the best ways to learn.

Non-Verbal Communication (Week 2)

     For this week's assignment we were instructed to watch a television show that we were not familiar with while the volume was turned down to see what we could learn about the show, based on the non-verbal communication taking place.  I chose a show I had never watched called "Psych".  From what I could gather without the volume, this show is about a man, possibly a police officer, and his partner (I am assuming) and I think they were trying to solve a crime.  The two men were working with police officers who looked and acted more like police officers but they did not always look happy with the two men.  I got the feeling that they were tolerant of the men, but they did not necessarily enjoy their presence.  At one point in this episode, one of the men's parents were involved (I assume they were his parents based on the greeting they gave each other).  This show moved quickly from scene to scene and was not very entertaining to watch without the volume up.
     About halfway through the show, I turned the volume up and it seemed like I was basically right about most of my assumptions.  There was a lot of dialogue during the second half of the show and even though they did not introduce themselves, I am pretty sure most of my assumptions were correct.  I do believe that there are shows that O watch on a regular basis that I could probably know what is happening with no volume, based on the watching the characters.  I think being familiar with a person makes that person's body language familiar so much so that you do not need to hear what they are saying.
     A good example of this is how familiar I am with my own children's body language.  I can tell from across a playground, without hearing a word, if they are having a problem with each other or with another kid, just by their body language.  At the same time, I can know if they have made a friend or are tired or bored.  They are my kids and I make it my job to know what they want, even when they may not know it yet.
    I think what this assignment has taught me is that the non-verbal messages we send are equally important, in regards to communication, as the verbal messages.  Actually, I was having a conversation today with someone while I was trying to watch my kids at a pool and I was so aware that I was not giving my full attention to the conversation that I actually felt bad.  I would have never even thought of it had it not been for this class.  I would have considered it multitasking, not as being rude!  I am amazed at how my perception has changed in only two weeks.  I can't wait to see where I am six more from now.  I can't wait to see where we all are!!

Blog post - week 1 Communication and Collaboration

     Well, if I were going to choose someone who demonstrates competent communication in the context of family issues, it would be my basically "adopted mother" Donna.  We call her "Mom", "Auntie Donna" and sometimes "Mimi".  When I was in college, I would come home for breaks and vacations to Auntie Donna's house to live since my family moved away to another state and so she was like my adopted mom.  What was different about her kind of communication was that it was the first experience I had with unconditional love and acceptance and this influenced the kind of communication we had.  I will always remember having an argument with her and I must have looked terrified because as we were hashing things out, she looked at me and said, "Cari, I need you to know that even though we are having a fight, I still love you."  This was a very powerful statement for me at this time because my past had taught me that when I became too difficult, I was no longer worth the trouble.  To hear that regardless of my behavior or my attitude, she was going to love me  no matter what?  This was a life changing realization for me.
     When it comes to my own children, I use this same kind of philosophy.  My oldest just turned 12 and we have had this conversation already, that no matter how he behaves I love him regardless and I always will!!  I hope he feels the safety and the love that I felt when Auntie Donna said it to me.  It also made me feel important and I always want my kids to feel important enough to me that I will never walk away from them or forget about them and that I am always here for them.  They may not like what I have to say all the time but I will always be truthful and I will always have their best interest at heart,  This is the kind of communication I want to have with most people.  I want to be honest and open and loving because I believe the average person really appreciates it.  As do I.

Professional Hopes and Goals - week 8

     Over the past eight weeks we have learned about diversity and equity in the field of early childhood.  I have one major hope for myself as a result of this class and it is this:
     I hope to continue to learn about the issues related to diversity and equity for my whole career and to never stop!  The issues that come with diversity alone are so broad but also so important that it seems a little daunting to me to face them at all but I know they are so important for the future of our country and the future for our children.
     The goal I would set for the field of early childhood would be to make diversity training mandatory for all directors and assistant directors out there.  We need to have leaders that care about this issue and that have a passion and a vision for change so we can have a brighter future.
     Lastly, I would like to thank those of you who are reading this post for sharing your stories, life experiences and your questions with me.  If we all take the time to learn from each other, and truly listen to each other's perspective, I believe we can be part of the future of change.  Thank you so much for teaching me about your perspectives and for listening to my stories as well.  I wish you good luck in the next class, maybe I will see you there!?  Take care!

Welcoming a Family from Around the World Week 7

If I was going to have the time to welcome a new child to my class from another country (like Taiwan for example) in a way that would make the child and his/her family feel welcomed and important I would do the following:

1.  Before the family arrived, I would make a few of the pictures we use in the classroom and label with the written word, labeled with the words in their native language.
2.  Next I would try to have the child's name on his/her cubby, labeled both in English and Mandarin so the child's home culture could be recognized as being important as well as his new English speaking culture.
3.  I would try to research the country where the student was from like the geography of Taiwan and what the culture there is like in order to familiarize myself so I can help the child feel welcome.
4.  Another thing that I think would be important would be to be sure to read through the file carefully of the child entering.  Our entrance interview would be very informative about the child himself and it would help me learn about him personally not just the country he came from.
5.  Lastly, I would try to learn how to say a few phrases like "Good morning" and "Goodbye" in mandarin so I could great the parents every morning in their own language and say goodbye as well.  I think this would make them realize that they are important enough for me to do some research about and that I want to learn about them and connect with them.

Not only will these preparations benefit me by expanding my knowledge and making me more sensitive to cultural similarities, but they will also allow the family to see that I am trying.  This will be beneficial because it will create a foundation of trust and openness that I would want with all of the families in my class.

Bias, Prejudice and Oppression - Week - 6

This assignment is interesting to me because it made me think of a social experiment my middle school teachers conducted using my seventh grade class over twenty years ago.  We had been learning about discrimination and the teachers wanted to give us a small look at how it felt to be in the middle of a real situation where people were being discriminated against.  Now, keep in mind I went to a very small school with an average class size of about 15 students per grade and I was able to have a very unique schooling experience.  That being said, I have not even thought of this particular instance in many years but it definitely made a mark on me personally.

So one day when I went to school, something was very different than the day before.  As our morning began, certain kids were made to sit in the back of the classroom.  We found this odd but did not say anything as we were not suspecting anything strange was going on...yet.  As the day continued, the different treatment of those same students continued and escalated.  They went from being made to sit in the back of the classroom, to being made to stand.  From being asked to sit by themselves, away from the other students, to being asked to sit alone and not talk to anyone.  One of the students being discriminated against was a good friend of mine and I remember feeling so mad at the teachers for treating him unfairly.

By the end of the experiment, I was starting to just join my friend in whatever the alternate activity was, like I remember refusing the chair if my friend was denied a chair and refusing to speak if my friend was forbidden to speak.  I was so mad by the end of the experiment, as many of my classmates were, that they actually ended it early.  Apparently we were not being cooperative enough.  One of the best results from this activity was that we were able to have a very honest discussion about oppression and what we would do if we saw oppression in action, or what we would not do.

Obviously this experiment had a big impact on me.  I think the greatest outcome for me was it made me realize that even though I may have gotten in trouble for disobeying a teacher, I cared less about getting in trouble than I did about the poor treatment of my friends.  This is true for me to this day.  I would rather face consequences for standing up for what I know is right, than see someone being oppressed and not do anything about it.

Week 4 - Microaggressions

The topic of microaggressions was a new one to me.  I have experienced them but I never knew they had a name.  The best way to describe a microaggression is by saying that they are those small comments or acts that are insulting but not on purpose.  For example, imagine a woman discussing her diet with an acquaintance and during the conversation, she tells the acquaintance she is a vegan.  The other woman responds by saying, "Wow, I never would have guessed you were a vegetarian because you seem so well put together."  Now, "well put together" is not an insult but the hidden message in there is that most vegetarians are not well put together.

Please pardon the example, I hold nothing against vegetarians, I am simply trying to give an example of a microaggression.  Many times these statements are made with regards to people's race or sexual preference but personally, I have experienced them in normal everyday situations that I experience as a wife and mother.  Back when I was a stay at home mom, people used to ask me what I did for a living and after telling them I stayed home with my kids, I was often greeted with smiles and "Oh, that must be nice".  Now I remember at the time feeling not important because I couldn't share work stories or anything with my working friends and in this kind of situation, I always felt like the person asking would not be able to understand me at all so why try to explain.  BUT the reality of the situation was that staying home was nice, but it also required a lot of sacrifice.  There was a person kind of being condescending about me not having a job, while my husband and I were going without many things so I could stay with my kids and sow seeds into them as people.

My experiential reality was definitely invalidated during this time and now looking back, I realize why I felt caught and never knew what to say.  I did not want to be insulting back, but I also did not want the person I was talking with to completely misunderstand me.  This week was a very eye-opening week.  It changed my perspective and made me want to try to be very careful about what I say.

Week Three Diversity and Equity

We have been discussing culture and diversity in our third week of class and I asked some of my friends and family member to discuss the definition of both culture and diversity.  The answers surprised me and I felt everyone enjoyed the topic and we had some great conversations about culture as a result.  The three main people I asked were my brother in law who grew up outside the U.S., my friend who grew up in an Italian-American family and my husband who grew up in a French Canadian family mixed with an English family.  I chose these three because I knew their childhood were very different from my own and I respect their thinking and I wanted to see what they said.

Some of the answers I heard while defining culture were words like: race, ethnicity, traditions, food, mind sets, beliefs, geography, religion, social class, spending habits, language, occupation, gender, appearances and values.

Some of the answers given to define the word diversity were: "All of the above."  meaning everyone is included, someone said universality and also someone said, acceptance of the differing types of cultures we just spoke of. we learned, we

As far as what we have learned, I was fascinated to hear what my friends had to say given that they do not have any of the background or resources that I do as a grad student.  I was actually pretty impressed with their answers.  The biggest difference I found was how none of them really discussed the family culture.  No one talked about how your parents or the number of siblings you have can influence your culture.  Besides that, I was thoroughly impressed with their insight and their candor.

Wk 2 Diversity and Equality - Family Culture

     Hmmmm.  Three items to bring with me to my new home in who knows what country...  Only three?  Well, my bible is number one.  I have notes and memories and I do not want to get to a new country and be without a bible especially given the circumstances under which we would be leaving our home, possibly forever.  It also would be important for me to be able to teach my children from it and to ensure they have an understanding of it regardless of where we live.
     Item number two would be a photo album I put together with pictures of our entire family.  It includes four generations of family members and has writing in it describing who everyone is.  This would help my children to know what life was like before the catastrophic event that landed us in this new country and it would help us remember our life before as well.
     Lastly, I would bring a large tarp.  I know it sounds strange but wherever we are going, we could use a tarp if needed for help keeping cool or staying dry or staying warm.  It doesn't necessarily preserve our culture but it would help my family and the practical side of me can't help it.  (My husband wanted to bring three different kinds of weapons.)  Haha!  (My son says that's not funny Mom, that's smart!)
     If we arrived and we were told we could only keep one, I would probably take the tarp.  I have the word of the Lord in my heart and we could pass our family history down with stories and descriptions.  The tarp is the thing that would help my children and I would choose that.  As long as we were able to talk, I think we could convey the truth about our family and our history verbally with the best result.
     This assignment was interesting.  I shared it with my family and we all had very different ideas of what we would bring.  The boys were very concerned with survival tools and not as concerned with sentimental items and even I was concerned with keeping my family safe over bringing items for cultural preservation.  I am looking forward to reading my classmates to see if they are similar or different than mine.

Week 8 BRC - Final week

This class has taught me many things about research.  One of the most important things it has taught me is that I do not need to be intimidated by research.  When you look at research, piece by piece, for what it is, you CAN make sense of it.  The biggest change that has happened for me that I was not expecting was my attitude towards conducting research myself.  At the beginning of this class I really wanted nothing to do with research. I really was not at all looking forward to this class either.  But what I have discovered is that the data that is provided by research is so powerful and valuable and I really may want to be more involved in research in the EC field in the future.  I actually wish I could conduct my research simulation because I really want to know the results.

As I was putting my research simulation together, I realized how much attention to detail is needed in order to carry out a study that is valid for the field of early childhood or for any field.  It is amazing how many variables are present in every study that researchers need to pay attention to.  The biggest challenge for me during this course was having a lot of new terminology that I was not familiar with to learn and use.  The way I dealt with that was, I took the terms one at a time (just like research, piece by piece) and kept investigating each concept until they made sense.  Piece by piece, for what they are.

It is hard to believe it has already been eight weeks!  I hope the people who read this post will have a great week off!  Thank you for your encouraging words and support and good luck in your future classes!

Week 5 BRC

For this week's assignment, I chose to look into the website for Early Childhood Australia at www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au to look into what kinds of issues are current for the early childhood professionals in Australia.  There were many issues discussed on the website but as I was looking at the "Voice" which is the site's newsletter, I noticed that at the end of the publication for this past January, they showed a discussion that was posted on Facebook about how to celebrate Australia Day in the early childhood setting.  Apparently, the holiday they celebrate in Australia called Australia Day, is a source of pride for some residents of Australia but for the Aboriginal people it is a source of pain.  The discussion shown was about how to balance the celebration of the holiday while still being sensitive to the indigenous population at the same time.

This is a great example of a dilemma that we face regularly as early childhood professionals.  We often face the challenge of balancing priorities for our very culturally diverse classes.  This just happens to be a good example of how international issues can be different but the similar.

This website also contains articles published in the AJEC or the Australasian Journal of Early Childhood.  This journal contains articles that have subjects that seem very similar to articles here in the US.  I suppose the similarities in issues shows how even though our cultures are different and our upbringing may be different, young children are very similar, even the same for the most part.  Kids are kids, whether they are here in our country or in another.

BRC Week 3

After considering both assignments for this week, I chose the second one.  If I were able to conduct research about anything, I would choose the effects of a behavior modification program on young children diagnosed with Autism spectrum disorders.  Maybe ages 2-5.  I would want to test whether having a behavior program for these children, would improve the behaviors that result with them being diagnosed with Autism.  I have a nephew who has been diagnosed with an Autistic spectrum disorder but when he is with me and my family, he does not exhibit the kind of behaviors he does at home.  Now, being a preschool teacher of nine kids at a time, I tend to run a tight ship at home and do not tolerate much unnecessary crying or fussing and he does great at my house.

I feel like this is not a coincidence.  I am not saying I am the best and that is why he doesn't act up at my house, but I am wondering if as a preschool teacher, I have developed skills that encourage better choices for him and result in better behavior.  I am a behaviorist at heart and I would love to test this out on a large scale somehow.  Wouldn't it be great to be able to give parents of children with an autistic spectrum disorder a set of skills that may help that child regulate his own behavior?  I would love to see the results of research like that!!

Building Research Competencies wk2

This class is going to stretch me to learn about research.  I will learn about the steps that are taken to conduct quality research and the way to tell the difference between types of sources and different kinds of methodology when it comes to research.  I am excited to learn more because I know I will be a better resource for the families I work with if I knowledgeable about current, accurate research results.

As I continue with my journey to get this degree, I realize that I have a lot to learn.  Part of this course is to create my own research simulation about a topic of my choice.  In week one I expressed an interest in learning more about a parents interaction with infants and how that effects language development in those children.  I realize that this topic is too broad and in order to focus the topic more, I am choosing to focus specifically on the impact of prompting on a child's language development. I am not sure if this topic is suitable for research but it seems like it may be.

The reason I chose this topic was because it has always interested me how some two-year-olds talk a mile a minute, and others look at you like they have no idea what you are saying.  Is it natural for all children to begin to talk at different times?  Is it simply a result of their environment?  I have three children and they all spoke at about the same time.  By 9 months they were using one word at a time and by two they were little chatterboxes!  I always wonder if they would have talked at a different time if they did not grow up in my home.  I did prompt them a lot to speak and after a little while, I no longer accepted pointing or grunting :)

Please let me know what you all think.  I am really interested to hear from you as other professionals who work with children every day.  Thank you!

Final assignment - Reflection

Over the past eight weeks we have been learning about a few of the issues and trends that are a part of the early childhood field.  We have learned from international websites as well as websites of local organizations.  Since I never made contact with an early childhood professional from another country, I spent time listening to the pod-casts and the from that experience I would have to say that the first thing I gained was some perspective.

The issues and trends we have here in the US are very different from some of the issues other countries face.  We may worry about hungry or poor children in out country but our children do not have to sell themselves to get money for their families.  We may want every child to have a safe, high-quality environment for our children to learn in but we do not have ten year old girls, afraid to walk home by themselves for fear of being raped because it is rumored that their bodies will cure AIDS.  We have issues of our own and they are important because we want what is best for our children, but I am grateful for those issues after seeing the issues other places around the world face.

Perspective, appreciation for our own issues here in the US, and lastly I would say my understanding of using other professionals in the field as resources has been deepened and solidified more in me after this class.  Just this past week I was at a party for my son's new soccer team and I met a woman who was from China and I actually saw her as a resource to help me develop more cultural awareness for a little boy in my class.  Her English was really good and she was gracious enough to help me understand a little bit about the Chinese culture.  If I had not taken this class I am not sure I would have viewed her as a resource and even talked to her about her culture.

A goal I would set for myself, related to the field, is to continue to learn from the resources we have used through this course.  These blog assignments seem like busy work at times but I am grateful to have the links posted here forever even after I have finished this class.

Thank you to those of you who read my posts and for the comments.  I look forward to seeing some of you in the next class!  Keep up the good work and good luck!

UNESCO - Week 7

This week I explored the UNESCO website.  UNESCO stands for United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization and the link to their site is:
http://www.unesco.org
I learned many things from this website.  As I looked under Early Education, the tabs that are there are Access, Quality, Investment and Governance which are some of the issues we have been learning about in this course.  A few specific things this site taught me that I did not know:

1 - In the developing world, 10.5 million children under 5 die from preventable diseases every year. (UNESCO)

2 - UNESCO believes that everyone has the right to an education and that education should not be a privilege that is only for a few.
3 - 69 million children are out of school world-wide


One major insight I have gained this week is that the issues about the field of EC that baffle me, also seem to baffle other professionals, not only in the US, but worldwide.  I feel I have so much more to learn but I am grateful for the many things this class has taught me.

Children's Defense Fund - week 6

The Children's Defense Fund website has many useful links.  This week I followed the "Take Action" tab.  Under this tab was suggestions for how to take action from your home or in your community.  Under the subtitle "Advocacy that Works", there are suggestions for how to advocate for children's policies that work.  Under this tab there are links with instructions on how to e-mail, call or send a letter to our elected officials.  If you keep following those prompts, they allow you to choose an issue and then they give you a template for a letter that you can personalize and then send to your senator.  I also am signed up for the newsletters but I did not receive one this week.

As far as our topic for this week of availability, accessibility and affordability of care, I was able to find a section called Early Learning Challenge Fund which is one of the CDF's policy priorities.  This website continues to be very informative and interesting.  I enjoy spending the time getting to know more about specific topics.  I am still pleased with this site as a choice.  The more I learn about this organization the more I like it and would want to be a supporter of it in the future.

Here's the link:

http://www.childrensdefense.org/

International Issues in EC

Having not heard from any professionals over seas, I was back to web research for international issues pertaining to Early Childhood.  After looking through the Harvard website on the developing child, I was drawn to an article focusing on a member of their faculty named Gunther Fink.  He is a health economist who was interested in discovering how the use of anti-malaria nets over time, may effect child development in Zambia.  In order to track the children's development, they needed to create new instruments of measurement because the methods used for measurement were not helpful in providing the information needed to see a result.

What was interesting to me also is that Gunther said at the end of the article that with out good information, they can not prove that they need funding.  This sounds similar to us here in the states.  We also may need to create new instruments of measurement as we continue forward and as the field here in the US changes and we try to balance play and academics for children in school.  As we grow and change over the next however many years, we will have to change many things.  First we have to change our thinking.  Once we do that, we can make the changes needed to truly benefit the children involved.

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/faculty_and_partners/faculty/faculty_spotlights/faculty_spotlight_fink/

Children's Defense Fund Research

While looking through the website I chose, http://www.childrensdefense.org/about-us/ I found a section called Early Childhood Education and Care.  Under that section, there is a link called Advocate and Family Resources and in that page there is a list of links that they call Early Care and Education Resources.  Under that page there is a link called Child Trends and when you follow that link, you get to http://www.childtrends.org/ which is a website full of current research of trends in the field of early childhood.  Some of the topics there are things like poverty, child development,education, child welfare and fatherhood & parenting to name a few.

This part of the Children's Defense Fund website is a great area for us as we go through this course.  I was also able to review briefly a few of the articles by the Children's Defense Fund and I did not find anything I would consider controversial.  The amount of information is a bit overwhelming but I am pleased with the decision I made to research this website over the next few weeks.

In my time reviewing the site I did not find much about economists or neuroscience but there was plenty about politics, legislation and policies.  I read about full-day Kindergarten and how the trend is changing to full day Kindergarten for all Kindergartners.  At the center where I work now, we offer the only full day Kindergarten in our town but the children who attend, are those who need full day care because of parents being at work.  These children often transition from the full-day day care setting that is run in another part of the building so the long day is not much of an adjustment for them.  I had not realized that having a full day Kindergarten program was going to be the trend for the future and that having a full day is so beneficial for children.  My daughter will probably go to a full day Kindergarten next year and because she is at my center with me now, I believe she will adjust easily to Kindergarten.  We will see!

Poverty - A Global Issue

After e-mailing many people from other countries, I still have only heard back from a few and those I heard from are not willing to correspond about the issues that face children in their countries.  So, I spent some time on the podcast website this week and though I did not listen to anything specific about poverty, I learned about How children think about thinking from George Forman from UMASS.  I also learned about the orphaned children from Indonesia as a result of conflict and the tsunami from Meridas Eka Yora.  I also learned about how young girls in Africa live in fear of being raped because it is thought that having intercourse with a young girl will cure you of HIV/AIDS from Deevia Bhana.  This World Forum Radio seems like a fantastic resource and even though I am disappointed that I have not made contact with anyone from another country, I am excited to continue to broaden my view through the use of these tools.


I also have not made contact with anyone from the podcast, so I completed the alternate assignment to review a country on the website http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/ .  The country I chose was China.  I actually was talking to my brother-in-law about China recently and we were talking about how we assumed that the country must be very polarized between rich and poor.  The website says that the poverty rate there in 2000 was actually only 3.7% according to their own statistics.  It also says that the poverty level is low compared to global standards so I researched current data at another website.  I simply checked on Wikipedia to see what information there was there.  According to Wikipedia, the poverty level in 2005 was less than 15% but the actual poverty line for them is $1.25 A DAY!!!  Seriously?  I read it a few times to be sure.  That was a surprise to me. 


Maybe $1.25 in china is enough to live on but that would not go far here in the US.  This week I had the opportunity to research poverty in my own community and it was a very eye-opening experience for me.  Poverty is a global issue and it is one I do not know if there will ever be an answer to.  All we can do is help where we can and be sure to be aware that people in need are all around us and it might not take much to help them out.

CDF week 2

As I mentioned in my last post, I chose the Children's Defense Fund after reading the mission statements of this group and many more.  As I was looking around on their website, I decided to start on the left of the site and click through in order so I could remember where I had been :)  First tab is "About Us" and at the bottom of this page, is a you tube video that made me cry at the same time as it made me proud to be in this field.

This is the link:  http://www.childrensdefense.org/about-us/

The recurring theme of their focus seems to be the voice for the children who can not speak for themselves and I love that.  I can totally identify with that because I believe as a preschool teacher, I do the same thing.  Some of my three year olds can not speak for themselves yet but they have a right to be defended and protected if need be.  As adults, we feel free to speak up when something is not okay but children, especially young children (in my opinion), may not possess the skills for speaking for themselves.

I am excited to look more into this organization and I hope I am not disappointed!

As an update on last week's assignment, I did hear back from one place I e-mailed in England but only to hear that they are really too busy to correspond with me at this time and then the woman gave me another place to e-mail which I did (three different people) and so far I got 1 out of office reply and that's it.  Looks like I may be doing the alternate assignment after all.  I'm kind of bummed.  Maybe something unexpected will happen.  We will see!

Establishing Professional Contacts

The idea of regularly corresponding with early childhood professionals in another country sounded a bit daunting at first but the more I looked into it, the more excited I became.  I have a few e-mails out so far.  One to Haiti, one to the UK and one to Senegal.  I really hope I hear from people.  I am a little concerned that my e-mail will not end up in the right place though, but time will tell.  This is an interesting way to change our perspective and I am looking forward to the results for myself and for my colleagues.  


I also needed to choose an organization from the field, to research over the next 7 weeks and the way I am deciding from the list we were given, is to go to their websites and read their mission statements.  I am pretty sure I am going to be following the site for the Center for the Child Care Workforce or the CCW. Their link is below.  I chose them because I do not understand why there is no money in this field unless you work at Head Start, and I want to know more about that issue.  I hope to learn many new things and to gain a better understanding about the topic.


On a personal note, my grandma passed away this past Wednesday at the age of 95.  She was an educator for 65 years!!  She obtained her BA when most women did not, taught in the public school system for years and then in her early fifties she founded a small, private, Christian school that is still running today and has grown leaps and bounds over the past forty years.  She was an inspiration to me and I will miss her greatly.  I hope to make her proud as I continue my journey through this field.  Thank you.


Center for the Child Care Workforce:
http://www.ccw.org/