Week 8- Issues and Trends: Change, Contexts, Consequences, and Constraints Revisited

Three consequences of learning about the international early childhood field:
1) Programs and practices- discovering about other countries run their programs can help us, in the United States, evaluate our programs.  It can help with changing and implementing new ideas and it can allow us to see where we have done a good job.  
2) Policy making- other countries that might have good policies for early childhood we can model our policies after it or we can know what we do not want to do.
3) Greater understanding- it is good to learn about other countries early childhood education programs because it allows all people a greater understanding of education.  We are able to examine similarities and differences and be problem solvers together.  Therefore, there is a greater chance of spreading quality early childhood education to all. 


My goal is to keep up with communication for early childhood educators.  I hope that through communication we can help more children that has ever been reached before.  I hope that through education not only for children but their families that we can begin to build a stronger voice for children who are experiencing adversity. 

Week 7- International Contact

I did recieve a bit on information from a friend who is living in Japan working at an international school. Here are two conversations we had, first I asked:

Okay, this week we are studying poverty. What do you see in the country you are in? And what do you see in your professional workplace?

Also, how does Japan value education and more specifically early childhood education (ages birth to 9)? If you know... for example are their many daycare or preschools/kindergartens, do you know if they are private or public (tuition based)?

How are young children valued in Japan? Do you see different classes or gender differences?


"- In our FIS (Fukuoka Internation School) community most of the families are wealthy. It is about 15,000$ a year per student. A lot of important families in the city have the students come here. In the workplace the school provides us withing a housing allowance, along with daily stipends such as transportation. This allows all the teachers to live a similar lifestyle.
- Our community values early childhood education, but i don't believe the culture does. our prek and k classes tend to be our biggest ones because there is no public k or prek. They do have nursery school, but it isn't very academic centered. Once the student gets to first grade about half will transfer to Japanese schools.
- Children are highly valued here. There are a lot of stay at home moms or dads. The students typically go to school until 6pm or so. The parents really value there child's education. I don't really see different classes or gender differences in our community."




I thought that it was interesting her comments that in the international community early childhood education is valued but in the culture it is not. 



I also asked her this weeks questions...

* What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed where you live and work? What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

"In my contract I get a stipend for professional development. We are becoming a IB (International Baccalaureate) school so there are some training's we need to take. These are most often in different countries so it is expensive to go to these. That being said I think that there is much less professional development in international schools. It felt like last year I could go to tons of training's and such, but I'm lucky if i get to go to one this year." (Last year my professional contact taught in the United States)

* What are some of your professional goals?
"My professional goals for this year are creating kindergarten benchmarks that align with our school standards. I am also working on assessments that align with the benchmarks. Lastly, we are creating our 6 PYP (Primary Year Programing) unit maps."

* What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges?
"Something that is still a challenge to me is my age. This year I feel like i had to start over proving to the staff that I deserve to be at this school. My hopes are to stay at this school long enough to help the school grow. There is a lot of work to be done to get them up to par with US schools. I also hope to stay here long enough to get a good recommendation and get a new job at an international school in Germany."
 
Like Alex, a challenge of mine is my age.  I am young, I know it, but I am very dedicated to the profession of education.  Sometimes I sit in meetings and everyone parents, my team members are 20 years older than me. I have had some parents flat out ask me "How long have you been teaching?, I also tell them this is my 3rd year teaching, but I have been working with children with special needs since I was little.  Luckily, I have created some amazing relationships! :)  I thought it was interesting that Alex mentioned this because when I taught in China, it was the opposite.  In China they valued that I was a young teacher.

Sharing web resources- week 6

I followed a link that was called The Early Head Start National Resource Center.  The first topic I noticed was about infants and toddlers and biting.  My students are not infants and toddlers but I have three biters.  This particular area took me to an online lesson that provided information regarding biting and what to do about it.   

The newsletter I received this week,  from zero to three,  focused on little kids and big questions and gave a link to online parenting podcasts. I decided to listen to one about the influence of media on young children.  I struggle with the amount of TV or computer time children are exposed to.  Ellen Wartella talks about that there is educational media and that babies are engaged with media.  She stresses how you can pick media that is appropriate for all age groups and how to be cautious about selecting media. 

https://s3.amazonaws.com/zttpodcastseries/podcast/Ellen%20Wartella%20FINAL.mp3?s_src=podcast&s_subsrc=media 

New insights that I learned from the newsletter is that zero to three has made a contract with the National Center on Professional Development Systems and Workforce Initiatives.  Their goal is to help develop comprehensive professional development system. I think this falls into place with equity and excellence because early childhood programs that use zero to three may look to this as an important part of the staff development of early childhood educators.





 

Part 2... Podcast and Harvard's "Global Children's Initiative"

After looking over several podcast from the World Forum website I came across TJ Skalski, who the principal of the Mother Earth's Children's Charter School in Alberta, Canada, which is the only Charter school that has a focus on the indigenous people. It was interesting to listen to her speak about how the MECCS has evolved over the last several years.  When Skalski became principal she was the 5th one who had come in 5 years.  She discusses that when she arrived that children were missing strong work ethic, they were damaged, wounded, hungry, depressed and were feeling like they had no worth.  Her goal was to give them hope, build their dreams and inspire them to do something with their lives. 

Skalski, T. (Performer). (2010, April 16). Tj skalski [Audio podcast]. World Forum Radio. Retrieved from http://worldforumfoundation.org/wf/wp/current-work/world-forum-radio


Reviewing the "Global Children's Initiative Fact Sheet" was very interesting.  Three insights:
1) Mental health is under-addressed.  There are significant implications for the broader heath and development of children and societies urgent need to identify how big this issue really is getting.  Their goal is to identify the problem and develop appropriate ways to meet the needs of children and their diverse cultures they come from.
2) Another goal of the "Global Children's Initiative" is to use science-based and a developmental perspective to work with children who are in crisis and conflict situations. 
3) Lastly, there is a push to educate people in leadership positions internationally about the investments of the earliest years in life.

Global children's initiative. (2011). Retrieved from http://developingchild.harvard.edu/index.php/activities/global_initiative/