Final Blog Assignment

The experience that I gained from learning about the international early childhood field showed me that we have a lot of similarities and also many differences. The three consequences I gained from this assignment have been:  Teachers everywhere are lifelong learners, we are always learning from others to help improve our success to our classroom. Having the compassion for the children and wanting to see them to learn, grow and succeed in education and life. This is something all educators in the world want to see happen. It has also helped me appreciate how they are able to teach their children in unreasonable conditions.

The one goal that I have would be to stay knowledgeable of international awareness.  I would join an international organization that keeps me informed about countries and their early childhood education schools. I would want to be an advocate to help globally by sending them supplies they need to help the teachers to be able to succeed in educating the children.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

I have not heard from my international contacts so I decided to read the article.

While reading the UNESCO’s web page I discovered that there is a massive shortage of teachers in sub-Saharan Africa. With the shortage of well trained and motivated teachers is of particular concern in Africa, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa where 902 000 additional teachers are needed to reach the target (source: UNESCO’s Institute for Statistics, 2013). We know that every child in the world has the right to a quality education and with the shortage of qualified and motivated teachers is a major hurdle to this right. For too many children, more schooling has not resulted in more knowledge and skills.

The present programs of teacher’s education and training have unsuccessfully to provide the new teachers with the necessary skills and knowledge to teach effectively. One thing that happens is quality and equity are sacrificed to deliver some type of schooling. We all know that there is no short cut to quality education and learning. So with this in mind UNESCO Dakar is leading capacity-building projects for teachers in the neighboring areas which will improve the different countries’ institutional and organizational capacities.

They plan to outline and execute training programs, develop and review teacher-related policies, and contribute to knowledge production and sharing on teaching. Presently, there is a need for one million new teachers in sub-Saharan Africa.
 
Another important focus is the development of national and regional qualification structures for teachers in West African states. They wish to enable the definition of professional standards and clear professional pathways as key elements for the identification of teaching as a genuine profession and teachers’ mobility across countries.

The way this relates to my professional goals are because I believe in professional development to help educate teachers. With the help of UNESCO, teachers in Africa will have the same opportunities to provide quality education to all children through training and professional standards.

 

 

 

 

Sharing Web Resources

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The web resource that I decided to check out was Zero to Three, I had done a little research and reading on it awhile back for a class. I thought this would be a good time to check it out again. Checking it out I seen several links to different spots, I seen one that caught my eye and it was some letters MIECHV TACC. So curiosity caught the best of me, they stood for Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting. What this program is for they visit the home of families to safeguard the health and safety of women, infants, and children. We have a program like that and it is called Healthy Families.

Another site I looked at was Early Head Start and looked over the cultural and linguistic responsiveness. The thing that I thought was they have a Head Start Bilingual Glossary which is a list of the most common terms used in the Head Start program. This is a glossary created to promote accurate and reliable translations from English to Spanish. With the Spanish language being rich and diverse, it is always a challenge to find common terms that most Spanish speakers in the U.S. will understand so in some cases multiple translations are provided to accommodate regional differences in usage.  Here are just a few examples:

school bus autobús escolar   Temporary Assistance to Needy Families Programa de Ayuda Temporal a Familias role play dramatización, juego de roles
sensory and motor skills destrezas o habilidades sensoriales y motoras sensory disorders trastornos sensoriales sensory screening prueba de detección de trastornos sensoriales, cribado de trastornos sensoriales
snack refrigerio, merienda Social and Emotional Development Desarrollo Social y Emocional social services servicios sociales social skills habilidades sociales software software

When I looked up the equity and excellence I found a few things that they are trying to do. They found some barriers and came up some changes. They were to empower and support communities; shift from family involvement to culturally competent family engagement; reduce language barriers by providing materials in native language. Another thing is they want to do is expand the supply of qualified, bilingual, and bicultural birth-to-three professionals.  Another change that they had want to make was to make available information and empower parents by helping them understand child development, ways to advocate for learning, and how to become their child's advocate whom I think is very important to help children succeed.

http://zerotothree.org/

 

 

 

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

I have not heard from any of my contacts so for this blog so I am using information from the Harvard website. Reading about several different countries I have learned quite a few new things. One thing that I found interesting is this program called Saving Brains that is being develop to improve the results of children who live in poverty.  What they are doing is using several different interventions to nurture and protect the early brain development in the first 1,000 days of a child's life The great  thing about this program is working around the world to help save and protect all children.  I love the idea of this program because it is looking out for the children. In Brazil, they are forming several partnerships in order to create a science-driver early childhood program.  They are training Brazilian policy makers on how to apply developmental science to inform programs and policies.  In Canada they have a program called Alberta Family Wellness Initiative which believes in the science of child development to educate public policy.  What they are working on is researching early brain and biological development, mental health, as well as addiction.  They are also educating the policy makers, healthcare communities, and the public about the information that they find.

What all these countries are doing is very important for the welfare and education of all children. They are helping them to develop a better life for them and for their children too. Children are special and a gift from God and we need to take care of them all. The earlier we start with the education the better it is.

http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/

 

 

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1

During this course, we have had to contact different Early Educators from different parts of the world. I have not heard from any of my contacts so for this blog, I have read UNICEF’s article about childhood poverty in Indonesia. From reading this article I learned many things. Some of the things I learned are deficiencies, such as poor nutrition, are permanent by the age of 24 months and have lifelong cognitive, physical and reproductive repercussions for children.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child promises every child the right to

a suitable living for their physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development and the right to the highest possible standard of health. It also advocates children’s right to access information and for their views to be heard. The impact of climate change is already and will continue to affect how well those rights are fulfilled.

Without accounting for the climate change, Indonesia has almost always struggled with high levels of malnutrition among children and women of reproductive age, and it has among the highest out-migration rates in South-East Asia. Nutrition and migration describe the essence of a child’s health status and the degree of their social protection. They are determinants of a child’s survival, of their physical, cognitive and social development and of the foundations for realizing.

For Indonesia, poor maternal and child care and feeding practices are the main cause of undernutrition in children and women. Recent data have shown declining rates of exclusive breastfeeding (from 40 to 32 per cent between2003 and 2007), poor complementary feeding (only 41 per cent of children aged 6–23 months are fed as per the World Health Organization

recommendations) and caring practices as well as poor maternal nutrition (BPS, 2008). There is also little access to health services, safe water and sanitation. This is compounded by high absolute poverty levels.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Establishing Professional Contacts

This is the website that I chose for this assignment it is a community of many organizations in other

countries that are for the education of young children. One of those that I e-mailed to ask to communicate with me about their education for the young. I have always had an interest in the Netherlands.

NetherlandsInternational Step by Step Association
Sarah Klaus
Email: sklaus@issa.nl

The second one I chose was from Croatia not sure why just sounded great.

Croatia
Open Academy "Step by Step", "Korak po Korak"
Nives Milinovic
Email: nives@korakpokorak.hr

Expanded Resources

Pre[K]Now: A Campaign of the Pew Center on the States
http://www.pewstates.org/projects/pre-k-now28067
(Newsletter: http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_alerts.aspx )

 
 

 

 

My Support

 

When it comes to support I have my family and co-workers. My strongest supporter was my husband until he passed away four years ago. He was the one who encourage me to take the step into getting my BA. I guess you could say he still supports me because I thought if he believed in me then I can go all the way and get my Masters. I also have my son and his wife encouraging me to do my best and telling me I will succeed. My co-workers are there showing me how to do things in the classroom and will help me to figure out things on my own and with them I am learning and they are learning from me. We work has a team and this helps me to be a team player and it helps me to never give up on a dream.

My one challenge is that for the first time I am going to be in charge of the class for one week. I am going to make lessons plans and set up groups, this is something I watched the teacher do and he thought it would be helpful to me to understand what it is like to teach a Special Ed class. I am nervous but I know that they will support and help me to feel comfortable. It is great that I know the children because I worked with them last year.

If I did not have the support of all these wonderful people I would not be where I am today. We all need a little help and support sometime in our life. I also have my faith which helps me each and every day.