Getting Started—Establishing Professional Contacts

Establishing Professional Contacts

After reading the Blog assignment for this week, I figured it was going to be a bit difficult to connect with someone from another county to share information with, so I decided to e-mail several individuals and organizations. On Monday, I e-mailed 17 individuals only to receive 13 undeliverable e-mails, 1 read receipt, and 1 response.  I was excited to see that I had received a response from at least one individual, that is until I read the response Buzov (personal communication, March 8, 2011) noted Dear Brenda, This is very good news but are you sure that this e-mail is for me!?! Regards Prof. Emil Buzov.  I replied by explaining to her how I obtained her e-mail information from The Global Alliance of NAEYC.  On Tuesday I decided to e-mail some of the organizations from UNICEF.  I e-mailed 11 organizations and received a response on Wednesday from EGY-Cairo UNICEF (personal communication, March 9, 2011) stating Thank you for your interest in UNICEF, your email will be forwarded to the concerned staff.   When I checked my e-mail on Thursday, the following e-mail was in my box; Rios (personal communication, March 10, 2011) noted it’s our honor to be part of your coursework just send us the details. Needless to say, I was ecstatic!

Expanding Resources

I looked at a few websites to see what their concerns and issues were.  I subscribed to several other sites, but Save the Children were the first to respond with an Enewsletter.  I decided to subscribe to Save the Children website because it focuses on the betterment of children in over 100 countries globally. The organization focus is on empowering the health, education, and opportunities for at risk children as well as provides assistance to children who fall victims to war and natural disasters.   This touched home for me, because I work with military families and I want to ensure that I’m well informed about trends and issues they are experiencing so that I am better equipped to meet their needs.

http://www.savethechildren.org/site/c.8rKLIXGIpI4E/b.6115947/k.8D6E/Official_Site.htm
(Newsletter

My Support

My husband gives me daily emotional support.  He is my sounding board whom I can share anything with.  He listens to me and gives me advice when needed.  I like the fact that he can be unbiased and is brave enough to tell me when I’m wrong (even when I don’t want to hear it).  He helps me to transform from my culture biases and see things from a different perspective.  I respect and value his opinion and honesty.  I rely on his insight to keep me grounded and I hope that I never have to find out what my life would be like, without his valued contribution.

My daughter provides emotional support as well.  She helps start my day with a phone call to say “I love you” and “Have a nice day!”  After hearing this, I am ready to tackle the many challenges I may face throughout the day.  My daughter makes me smile and gives me a sense of empowerment and I hope that I do the same for her.  Sometimes I need this call for encouragement and reassurance and other times, just to widen my smile.  It would be extremely difficult if I no longer received this daily call before I go to work. 

My Staff provides daily report, by showing up to work and doing their job.  My staff ensures that the program continues to run as smoothly as possible whether I’m there or not.  This support lessons my stress level and provides a sense of pride and honor, because I know that I have a team of professionals working for me and with me.  It would be very difficult to run a high quality program without the support of my team.  I would not be able to meet the needs of the families in my community without their support.

Technology is crucially supportive to me.  I am able to retrieve and forward information in a matter of seconds.  Even when I am away from my desk, I am still able to conduct business just as easily.  Without this support, business will take longer to conduct and we will continue to destroy nature by cutting down more trees to make paper.  Without technology, my blood pressure would be elevated along with my stress levels. I would have tons of files and nowhere to store them; thus causing clutter and lack of organizational skills.  Time management would be blown out the window.

Challenge

Scenario:  I have a meeting with my supervisor concerning an irate parent in 15 minutes; a child had an allergic reaction to something he ate, so 911 had to be called. Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is on the way and a teacher called out sick at the last minute and there is no one to cover her classroom.

For starters, I would need the support of my clerk, so that she could call 911 and the child’s parents.  Once she has made contact with EMS and the parents, I will need her to contact a substitute to cover the classroom.  I would also need the support of my assistant to cover the classroom until a substitute arrives to teach the class.  I would also need the support of my cell phone to contact my supervisor to inform her that I will be running late because of what is going on with the child and the classroom.  I would stay with the child until EMS and the parents arrived and then I would contact my supervisor to let her know the status of the child and that I was on the way.  I would need the support of my computer to write-up an official report of the child’s incident once I returned to the office.  The potential benefits of these supports are having them available to me.  Thanks to the support of government funding, I can afford to have a desk clerk and an assistant.  Due to the fact that the program is located on a military base, EMS is a part of the base community and is only five minutes away.  Without these supports in place, a child could have died, a classroom could have been out of ratio and full of chaos, and I could have gotten reprimanded for being late to my meeting with my supervisor.  Thank heaven for such an awesome supportive team!

My Connection to Play

The essence of childhood, of course, is play, which my friends and I did endlessly on streets that we reluctantly shared with traffic.

~ Bill Cosby

 It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.

                                                                                                                                ~Leo Buscaglia

Play Items

   

       My friends

When I was growing up, I played mostly with my siblings and cousins.  We would play marbles, make rings and bracelets out of wire, draw the game Hopscotch in the sand and throw a rock in the blocks as we hopped on one leg.   I remember playing Red Rover, Ring Around the Roses, and Hide-and-Seek.   We spent a lot of time outside playing when I was growing up, because this was during the time adults used the term “Children should be seen and not heard.”  If we were not doing chores, we were outside playing.    

Compared to my upbringing, play is much different today.  According to Almon (2002), "Children no longer have the freedom to explore woods and fields and find their own special places.  Informal neighborhood ball games are a thing of the past, as children are herded into athletic leagues at increasingly younger ages. Add to this mixture the hours spent sitting still in front of screens - television, video game, and computer - absorbing other people’s stories and imaginations, and the result is a steady decline in children’s play" (p. 1).  Play has taken on a whole new meaning today than it had during my era.  For starters the economy is better now so families can afford to buy their child almost anything they want.  We on the other hand had to make up games to play and make do with what we had.  We also didn’t have the luxury of cable television, Wii games, cell phones, IPods, computers, etc during my time.  Children today have so many choices to choose from that little time is spent outside.  A lot of children today become what we consider couch potatoes; thus displaying health issues such as childhood obesity.   I wish that every child could experience the childhood that I did, because I appreciated and cherished this time with my family.   We didn’t take things for granted like children and families do today.   I remember one year, my dad bought me the biggest red bicycle you would ever want to see (at least that is how I saw it) and I remember feeling as if he had just bought me a brand new car.  I feel that the pure essence of play is something all children should be given the opportunity to experience, because without it, they risk the chance of missing out on a world of valuable information that otherwise may not be obtainable.

Article: Almon, K. (2002). The vital role of play in early childhood education. Gateways, 43. Retrieved from http://www.waldorfresearchinstitute.org/pdf/BAPlayAlmon.pdf

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS)

Definition:

Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) = A situation in which a seemingly healthy infant, at least 2 months of age, suddenly stops breathing and dies unexpectedly while asleep (Berger 2009).

Why is it Meaningful to me and how it has impacted my future work:

SIDS is important to me because just a year ago, one of my employees lost her infant to SIDS.  It was such a devastating time for the parents and the staff.   Each of my employees are now required to have annual SIDS training so that are using developmentally appropriate practices  at home and at work to ensure the safety of the children are enforced and maintained at all times.   Our goal is to empower our staff with the knowledge and skills needed to meet the needs of individual children and their families by providing a safe and nurturing environment.

 Research:

 Infant mortality has dropped worldwide over the past few years.   Studies show the United States as having the least amount of infant fatalities compared to other countries such as Chile, India, Mexico and Poland.  I believe this is due to identified causes and early intervention.   Infants are diagnosed with SIDS when an autopsy and careful investigation cannot identify the cause of death.  

In 1990, there were about 5000 reported cases of SIDS in the United States averaging 1 in every 800 infants.  Similar rates were reported in Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and bout European and South American nations.  Surprisingly, research identified ethnic differences: Asian babies were less likely to become victims of SIDS compared to European or African descents.   Even before the worldwide campaign to reduce risk of SIDS, only 1 baby in 3,000 in Hong Kong died of SIDS, compared with 1 baby in 200 in New Zealand ( Berger 2009) and (Byard, 2004).  Some researches believed that low socioeconomic status (SES) increases the rate of SIDS, but further research found this to be an untrue hypothesis.   Researchers began focusing on infant care practices and found that placing infants on their backs to sleep decreased SIDS. 

While SIDS can occur outside of cribs, it's also known as crib death because it happens most often during sleep, usually between the hours of 10 p.m. and 10 a.m.  It occurs most frequently during cold-weather months.  About 20 percent of SIDS deaths happen in childcare settings, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics in 2000

Some experts believe that SIDS happens when a baby with an underlying abnormality sleeps tummy-down or in an area with soft or loose bedding, or is faced with an environmental challenge such as secondhand smoke during a critical period of growth.                                                         
                                                                          
References

American SIDS Institute (1983 - 2009). Welcome to the american sids institute. Retrieved from http://sids.org/

Berger. K. S. (2009). The developing person: Through childhood. New York. NY: Worth Publishers

Kidshealth (2005-2010). Sudden infant dealth syndrom. Nemours. Retrieved from http://kidshealth.org/

Professional Thanks

Professional Thank You…

I would first like to say “Thank you” to Dr. Jan Ferrari for her insightful knowledge and leadership throughout this course.  I’ve truly enjoyed her elaboration on the various course topics as well as her prompt responses to questions and comments.

Secondly, I would like to say “Thank you’ to my colleagues. It has truly been an awesome experience learning with you and from you.  I see you all as resourceful professionals whom I’ve had the privilege of learning from.  I look forward to growing professionally with each of you throughout this degree program.

I wish you ALL a very MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!                                                                                                                

When I think of Child Development…

                                              

"The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.”

                                           ~ Alden Nowlan 

"Childhood is a promise that is never kept." 

               ~Ken Hill

"It is never too late to have a happy childhood." 

              ~Tom Robbins

"A child is the greatest joy, the ultimate Blessing."

              ~ Emily Laughton

"Children are the world's most valuable resource and its best hope for the future."                               

              ~John F. Kennedy

Assessing Children

As professionals, it is important that we understand the way in which each child learn best.  In order for this to take place, we must assess the child’s abilities so that adjustments can be made to ensure learning takes place.  The problem arises when a child becomes labeled based on one or two test scores.   If a child is given a pre-assessment at the beginning of school, there is most definitely going to be varying differences between student scores, because of their diverse cultures and living conditions.  These children have not been given the same opportunities to learn.  Once they are in school where the teachers have observed and assessed each child’s learning style, they are able to foster the child’s development.  

 I think that too much attention is placed on test scores and not enough on the child’s progress.  Just like not all children learn the same, not all children test the same.   Some children do very well in school, but panics when it’s time to test.   Whenever, our children are preparing to take a placement/ assessment test, they are always instructed to go to bed early and eat a big breakfast, because “studies” show that children do better on test when these two things take place.   So what happens if these things are not accessible to some of these children?  I do think children should be assessed to provide us with a better understanding of what areas need improvement, but I think this can also be identified through the child’s classroom work and included in the overall score of the assessment results.

Asia                                                               

Millions of children living in developing countries or marginalized areas have schools that are unfunded with teachers who lack adequate training and students who may or may not reach the basic literacy and numeracy levels of development. These developing countries understand the importance of education for all children is essential for economic growth, social stability, and the functioning of a stable and equitable community of nations.  According to Friske (2000), “In order to talk seriously about educational quality, it is important to be able to define it and to measure it” (p. 9).  Student’s achievement is measured by test and other assessment devices.  In the past, political and educational leaders focused on the teacher’s preparation, textbooks availability, and class size, but this data was difficult to measure.  They needed to look at something that was measurable, so now they focus on output and results (Friske, 2000).

Friske, E. B. (2000). Assessing learning achievement. Retrieved from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0011/001198/119823e.pdf