Job/Roles in the ECE Community: National/Federal Levels

The three organizations that I chose The National Association for the Education of Young Children, Zero to Three Infants and Voices for America’s Children

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), is one of the largest national non-profit organization that is improving the well-being of children from birth to eight years of age.  On NAEYC website there are many different job openings like a Director at a center, Lead teacher, or Assistant teacher and many more. The job I am really excited about is a Head Teacher position. As a head teacher the job duties is to Create an engaging atmosphere and develop meaningful activities and experiences for toddlers and twos Collaborate as a team to further help develop the center, be able to interact and play with the children at their physical level Be familiar with Creative Curriculum, High Scope, Responsive Classroom, Multiple Intelligences, Play –based learning, and/or Bloom’s Taxonomy Design activities that are child initiated, and cover physical, social/emotional, linguistic, and cognitive development Communicate with families Generate monthly lesson plans that are focused on the students’ interests. Education experience A State of Florida Child Care and Education Program Director Credential (Advanced Level); A Bachelor’s degree from an accredited four year college or university.

Zero to Three: National Center for Infants is an organization that provides information about infants and toddlers. Zero to Three is a national non-profit organization that trains, informs, supports professionals, policymakers, and parents in their efforts to improve the lives of infants and toddlers. At this time there are no job openings, but the organization offers vacation, sick, and holiday pay. Transportation subsidy, professional development opportunities in a friendly family orientated work environment.

Voices for America’s Children are one of the largest networks for multi-issue child advocacy efforts at the community, state and federal levels to improve the lives of all children. Voices for America’s Children have members in all states. Currently at this time there are no openings, but the jobs consist of inter opportunities, teacher, assistant teacher, and cooks. Job requirements for teachers are high school diploma, but a Bachelors degree is preferred, must meet state requirements for educational jobs.

Resources:

http://www.zerotothree.org

http://www.naeyc.org/

http://www.voices.org/

Exploring Roles in the ECE Community: State and Local Levels

when I think about how far I have come I never thought in my wildest dream that I would have made it this for in owning my own day care center and working at Head Start as a teacher. The three organizations Smart Beginnings, Head Start, and NAEYC because all three have one thing in common is to educate families by helping families become self sufficient in society, improve the quality and care of early childhood educational programs. According to "Economic research shows that investments in children age 5 and under improve school readiness and decrease young teen pregnancy, delinquency, substance abuse, and welfare dependency (Voices for America's Children, 2010)." As a Head Start teacher and business owner of my own center I am currently full filling my dream and helping mentoring young woman to know that knowledge is power and the key to success is education. I would like to continue working at Head Start and hoping one day to becoming an Educational Specialsit. Education is a field that is growing and have a need for qualified, educated, and a passion to teach to make a difference in young lives. Reference: Voices for America's Children, (2010). Http://www.voices.org/wpcontent/upload/2010/05/Impact

Reflecting on Learning

My most passionate hope for the future as an early childhood professional and for the children and families is for people to respect the rights of other people regardless of their gender, race, culture, social economic, sexual orientation, and varying abilities. I understand that anti-bias education is accepted and practiced so it is written. My personal goal as an early childhood professional is to help families, children, and educators to practice ant-bias more consciously, so that young children will be aware of acceptance, respect, and care for all people no matter what color, gender, sexual or religion you are. If their is more acceptance, respect, and compassion in the world for differences, this place we call home would be a world that accept and welcome diversity. To all my colleagues, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your comments, inspiration, and most important for your love and compassion for early childhood education. I wish you all much success and a bright future in early childhood education.

Impacts of Early Emotional Development in Jamaica

The area that I choose to investigate was the Jamaica.  Growing up I have always wanted to see the world and experience different cultures, so the first place I ever went to was Jamaica, but before I went to Jamaica I thought in my mind that this was a beautiful tropical Inland with pretty sand beaches and everyone who lived in Jamaica was so lucky to live in a place that was so beautiful. When I first got to Jamaica it was what I thought this place was suppose to look in mind beautiful and full of lots culture, which was a mixture of Jamaican culture, is defined as the origin of its entire population. The Jamaican culture is mixed as most of the society is ethnically diverse. There are several nations and peoples, the majority are African, then Indian and Chinese, then the minority being European.

Population and growth of Jamaica is Children, aged birth to 17 years, constituted about 35% of the population of approximately 2.65 million persons of Jamaica in 2005. Marginally more than a half of the population is urban. The average household had 3.3 persons, with rural households being a little larger – 3.6 persons on average – and female-headed rural households having 4.1 members on average.

Some of the challenges that children from the Jamaica are confronted with include sanitation, water, education and health. No data was collected on the deprivation of children with respect to food, shelter and deprivation. However, the study indicated that of the four (4) areas where data was collected, the highest frequency of “severe” deprivation was estimated for health, 9%, followed by water, 5%. No Jamaican children were reported to be severely deprived of education, and only a marginal 1% was severely deprived of sanitation. As with the headcount, children with a severe deprivation were more likely to be found in rural households, in large households, in households headed by persons with low levels of education, and in households composed with vulnerable and unemployed persons. Income inequality persists, poverty levels remain unacceptably high and there is a high probability that many who are only living just above the poverty line could fall back into poverty. Self-employment accounts for about a third of total employment, and the majority of it consists of very small scale low income petty trade and related activities. In addition to the threat of the return of traditional diseases, Jamaica is challenged by a high incidence of HIV/AIDS10, unacceptably high infant mortality rates, and high rates of cardiovascular diseases.

There is almost universal enrolment of children in pre-primary schools (ages 3-5 years) - 96.8 per cent in 2004 (Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions, JSLC, 2006), with an attendance rate of approximately 71.3 per cent. While enrolment of children in pre-schools remains high, the quality of services is often poor. According to official estimates, fewer than one out of three children entering grade one were ready for primary level, and some 30 per cent of primary school dropouts were illiterate.

Reading this week on Jamaica I learned that the governmental involvement, UNICEF, and RUFAMSO other programs can make a difference in the lives of children and their families.  The  government  and the program seeks to improve both children’s readiness for primary education and learning outcomes in selected curricular areas in primary education, such as child rights and life skills-based education

Resources: Witter, Hamil,& Spencer., (October 9, 2009). Child Poverty and Disparities in Jamaica

                                        

The Sexualization of Early Childhood

"So Sexy So Soon"

This week we read, "So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids. Reading this week article really made me more aware how young girls today are having self-esteem issues today, but I did not realize how big sexualization of early childhood is. Levin & Kilbourne (2009) shared that young kids are talking about “blow jobs.”

I can recall a few examples of how prevalent sexualization is in early childhood. I remember growing up and my best friend was very busty and sometimes the children would make fun of her. This started when she was in third grade, and it is to the point that my friend didn’t want to go to school. Looking at some of the tv shows like that show young beauty queens really shows how the people really glamorize little beauty queens. Watching this program you see how serious the program is. You see little girls crying on national tv when they don’t win or they think they’re not pretty enough that’s why they didn’t win. Last of all, in my classroom I seen little girls try to kiss the boys on the cheek and sometimes the boys would react and say, that’s my girlfriend four years old. I’m not sure where they learn this behavior from but with everything that goes on in children’s houses and in the media, children are bound to pick up this type of behavior.

Sexualization in early childhood is a big problem because children are still developing themselves (Levin & Kilbourne, 2009). Children are growing up too fast and missing out on their childhood because they are worrying about adult issues. As an early childhood professional we have to talk to our students but first making sure that what we talk about is ok with parents and the institution we work for to discussing age appropriate behavior that young children should be doing.

This topic of sexualization in early childhood has really opened my eyes. I think children today have it a lot harder than when we grew up. They have to worry about so many things. This discussion this week has made me aware that children are growing up to fast because of the bias environment they live in. As an advocate and as a family of early childhood professionals we can make a difference in the world by educating families and children about sexualization.

Reference:

Levin, D. E., & Kilbourne, J. (2009). [Introduction]. So sexy so soon: The new sexualized childhood and what parents can do to protect their kids (pp. 1–8). New York: Ballantine Books. Retrieved from: http://dianeelevin.com/sosexysosoon/introduction.pdf

Evaluating Impacts on Professional Practice

In the early childhood field you will come in contact with different types of people. During my first year at Head Start I had a student whom would say racist things to African Americans. For instance he would say, "He didn't have to listen because my dad said so," or" He would tell the teachers that black people are beneath me."In  listening to this student I really had an issue understanding why a parent would allow a child to speak in this manner. When I spoke to the parents about their son behavior in class the first thing the mom said was, "I don't know why he talks like that and the mom continues to tell the teacher that her husband is ADHD and whn he doesn't take his medicine sometime he can be a bit all over the place especially with watching violent movies and playing video games." Well the teachers and some of the staff expressed their concernes about this behavior in class because it was getting to the point were other students where going home and telling their mom what was being said and some parents called and expressed there concerns. Needless to say once we talked to the parents and also talked to the children about racism the children understood that we all are created equal and no one is superior to another race. Once this student started taking medicine for his behavior he calmed down a lot. He actually became one of my best students.

This experience really showed me that children learn from what they see, and hear and as educators we also have to becareful in what we say because every little word or thing could affect chiledren on how they speak and interact with other children and people. Parents are children first teachers but so is professionals in the field of early childhood education.

Creating Affirming Environment

Creating Affirming Environments

Children now more than ever are leaving in a diverse world. It is still essential for children to learn about cultures different from their own and our job as early childhood provider is to help children to be successful and empower them as they learn to appreciate differences. Diversity should not be a tourist approach like only celebrating holidays through celebrations and food only. The goal of my daycare is to create a multicultural program that will assist children with recognizing differences, as well similarities among all people. By allowing children to explore various cultures creates opportunities for them to see that even when people have unique, and different traditional customs we all still have much in common. In order to create a diverse environment you must have an environment that:

·         Encourage a sense of wellbeing for all children by removing stereotypical materials, art and books.

·         Create pictures and art that represent different families from a variety of ethnic backgrounds.

·         Have multicultural material properly displayed for children’s use.

·         Create learning activities and games that prompt positive discussion such as word games and language.  

Art should be:

·          Authentic materials for art activities that reflect rich colors and patterns   for children to use.

·          Magazines should be available that contain people from diverse groups and locations.

·         Have materials available for multicultural art activities such as skin-color crayons, markers and paint.

·         Choose cultural artwork of prominent people in different cultures to teach and empower young children.

Block Play and Building should include:

·          A variety of interconnecting blocks that represent buildings from other countries.

·          Blocks and small animals that are from the U. S. and other countries.

·          Blocks or interlocking toys that reflect children and families of a variety of ethnic groups.

Books should be:

·         Books that are sensitive to other cultures and include information about everyday life.

·         Books that represent the children who are in your class and other ethnic groups.

·         Books to arouse the children’s imagination and make them aware of human behavior and feelings of others.

·         Books about other cultures that tell an interesting story and give accurate information.

·         Remove books that have biased language or stereotypical pictures from the classroom. Add books about the benefits of culture.

Cooking or Food Activities should:

·         Encourage children to experiment with foods other than those with which they are familiar.

·         Give children the opportunity to prepare and eat a variety of foods from other cultures such as spaghetti, stir-fried rice and burritos.

·         Have children’s cookware, dishes and utensils available such as woks, chopsticks and kettles.

·         Use a wide variety of colorful fruit and vegetables from other cultures to teach and enjoy such as kiwifruit, mangos and plantains.

·         Bring spices to class from a variety of menus for children to smell and use for hands-on activities

Watching the video on educator Adriana Castillo home daycare shows the type of positive and diverse environment that is inviting to parents and also warm and loving for the children. Each room focused on setting the atmosphere for the children to engage in an Anti-Bias environment.

Resources:

A bulletin containing information about creating diversity in

Course Media: "Welcome to an Anti-Bias Learning Community"