Final Blog Assignment

One consequence of learning about the international early childhood field is it has brought awareness to me personally and professionally that they are having the same issues we are having in the early childhood field. Knowing this has inspired me to continue receiving the newsletters to stay abreast of what they are doing to correct their issues.

A second consequence is learning about their issues have broadened my understanding about the different issues and trends in the early childhood field. All the information I’ve read, although it comes from another Country, has been helpful in my understanding of issues and trends in the field of early childhood.

A third consequence is, it is enlightening to know there are organizations who are working together to address these issue in the early childhood field. There are some organizations working together to address the needs of children and families.

One goal for the early childhood field is to ensure every child has access to a high-quality early childhood program. Participating countries teamed up to expand and improve comprehensive early childhood care and education for the poorer children who did not have access to these quality programs.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 3

After exploring UNESCO’s Early Childhood Care and Education website, I came across some information about the region of Arab. They are working on providing a stable learning environment that provides good quality education for all in society. This relates to my professional goals because I want all children to have access to a good quality education. It is their right regardless of their income level.

In Africa they have workshops on ways to improve teacher development in Early Childhood Care and Education. This applies to my professional goals because I want to be a high-quality Early Childhood Care teacher. It is important to know how to educate our young children. Early Childhood is the starting point for their learning development. When they leave my class I want to have inspired them to want to continue learning.

In Latin America and the Caribbean they are addressing the needs of education and cultural diversity. Issues addressed are how they can communicate educational policies that promote respect for cultural diversity, how education can bind the richness characteristic to cultural diversity to improve the teaching learning process and add to a more broader human development, and how they can turn cultural diversity into a foundation of understanding, multiplicity, and social structure. This relates to my professional goals because I want to learn ways to educate children and families of cultural diversity. As more families from other countries move into the United States it is important to know how to communicate with them in ways they understand.

These are not my only professional goals, but they are three important ones. I never had an idea that other countries were dealing with cultural diversity issues. This was surprising to me. It is enlightening to know that other countries are working to address issues related to education, especially early education. It is all about the children.

Sharing Web Resources

As I explored other links on the Pre-K Now: A Campaign of the Pew Center on the States website I discovered information under issues. I chose the link on families.

 The link on families addresses how The Obama administration is trying to expand a voluntary home visiting program. This program will match parents with professionals who are trained to provide information and support to them while they are pregnant and throughout the child’s first three years of life.

Children have to be healthy to learn and enjoy everyday activities. Dental care is the highest unmet need among children. Pre-K Now has a dental care program that helps low-income families have access to high-quality dental care. This program has expanded the number of professionals providing this care.

There wasn’t any information that added to my understanding of equity and excellence in early child care education.

An insight I’ve gained is about the home visiting program. When the Pre-K Now center did research on the program, they found that when this program is done when the child is an infant or toddler there is better child development in pre-k. There were also better child outcomes when the child was in fifth grade, and there were more inspiring and nurturing home environments in pre-k and fifth grade. This is good to know. Family involvement is healthy for the well-being of the child. When a child starts school they should be prepared to learn.

 

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

I explored the Global Children’s Initiative website, http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative,  and three insights I gained were their work on children’s mental health, early childhood development, and children in crisis and conflict situations.

Mental health issues in children has been an under addressed issue with major implications for the bigger health and development of children and societies. To help with this issue they are developing an intensive agenda in education, research, and public engagement to address major gaps in knowledge and delivery of service. They are assessing mental health services for children in China, to prevent mental health issues in children affected by HIV/Aids in Rwanda, they are developing and evaluating family-based approaches, and in Barbados, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname, they are addressing child maltreatment and mental health outcomes.

Their work on early childhood development in other countries is, in diverse global environments they assess the quality in early childhood settings and programs, conduct assessments in Zambia to measure child development results related to malaria, and expanding effective interventions to improve preschool quality in Chile.

To address children in crisis and conflict they are working with the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. Together they are using a science-based developmental view point into the assessment and management of the well-being of the children during man-made and natural crisis. Their focus is on immediate situations and long-term change.

As far as equity and excellence, they have a program called Education and Leadership Development (ELD). This program is to educate future leaders about health, behavior, and life-long impacts of the early years of life, support advanced and multidisciplinary research that will build the knowledge base for application of policy and practice, and provide professional development opportunities.

What a good program to ready our future leaders to help children and families have better lives.

Sharing Web Resources

The website I've been studying Save The Children, has some relevant information about education. They train teachers to involve their students through more active teaching practices. They teach the parents and caregivers how to assist their child's learning early before school starts. This organization also has a program that offers parents and community volunteers ways they can get children to read and do math when not in school.

I looked at the issue on hunger  and livelihood in a new way. Save the Children does not only try to prevent hunger, they also teach parents how important it is to provide their children with the correct variety of foods to stop malnutrition. They train smaller farms how to prevent losing crops or livestock because of floods, drought, or disease. I think this is important because we all, especially the children, need this food for survival. They teach family farmers how to grow foods that are nutritional and how to raise animals to produce eggs, meat or milk.

There  is a section on the website that addresses two senators who says that five areas are not being met when it comes to children's policy and the programs. These areas are early childhood education, economic security, K-12 education, health and safety, and permanence and stability. It goes on to say vote for these candidates who will support investments in children. This tells me again it all goes back to money and wanting the votes. They only want to be elected and the children will be forgotten about.


I admire the fact that they have programs to teach children who been abandoned or institutionalized by their parents because of a disability. The program is called Ensuring Children Have Quality Care. This program helps children get into and stay into school. They also ensure children who cannot attend regular classes will continue to learn through quality non-formal education programs. This is just one of the programs under Ensuring Children Have Quality Care. This is something great they are doing to include everyone. Every child deserves an education and one of quality.