Getting to Know My International Contacts-Part 3

My Blog Address-http://kidgreen-donna.blogspot.com

 

My two international contacts had almost the opposite things to say regarding this week's questions. I put them together so readers could clearly see the contrasts between the two countries:

1.What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed where you live and work?

*Mexico- Recently, Mexico has given more attention to the support needed for primary and pre-school education in our country. There is such a small percentage of children under the age of 5, that even attend some type of early learning program. In recent years, children are now required by law to attend a year of preschool before starting primary school. The government has started providing more funding to recruit more educators and students, especially those that live in the rural areas of our country.

*New Zealand-Most children under five years of age, attend some type of early childhood education program in New Zealand. These children attend pre-school free of charge. Services are continuing to expand to meet the high numbers of children enrolled in these programs. Those that are not attending pre-school are mostly children from low-income families, indigenous children and migrant children. Grants have been developed to help children and families that fall into these specific categories.

2.What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

*Mexico-There are few regulations regarding requirements for levels of education pertaining to early childhood educators. Many of the teachers still do not have much formal education if any at all. The ratio of students to staff is very high and the salaries are low. There is a lack of professional development and/or training amongst the staff. Improvements have been made over the last few years regarding training and support for early childhood educators. However, it is still a weakly supported system.

*New Zealand-Early Childhood Educators receive salaries compared to those in the primary grades. Most of the teachers have at least a three-year degree. Professional development occurs on a regular basis-with continued training and support throughout the year. 

3.What are some of your professional goals?

* Mexico- I came back to Mexico to support my family until they are able to join me again in the United States. I love my home country of Mexico, but the opportunities are very small. The lack of funding and support in the school systems make it a day to day challenge. Many of my students will never make it past the primary grades. Most will quit school to help support their families.  My professional goals are to be the best influence as an educator, that I can to my current students. Hopefully, I am helping to encourage each one of them to continue on with their education in order to help their family and society in the future.   

*New Zealand-To retire in two years knowing I have helped instill a passion for learning to every child I worked with.

4.What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges? 

*Mexico- That the Mexican Governments will realize the key to a stronger more productive country starts with the children. Allowing more funding to be used for the early childhood programs and primary grades, would provide positve outcomes and a higher population of those who continue on to the secondary grades and beyond.

*New Zealand- All children in our country including migrants and the very poor would participate in the high-quality programs that are available to them. My hope and dream is that our Government would provide more funding for programs that provide resouces for these families to be educated more on the positive benefits early learning programs provide for their children. Challenges I foresee, are getting the migrant and low-income families to trust our school system enough to allow their children to participate in these free programs that provide such rich opportunities. 

 

    

Blog address-http://kidgreen-donna.blogspot.com

Sharing Web Resources

El aumento notable en la diversidad cultural y linguitica entre ninos y famlias participantes de programas para nino pequenos requiere urgentemente nuestra atencion. Una de las necesidades mas apreminantes es la de mejorar las practicas de evaluacion de ninos que aprenden el ingles (NAEYC, 2009).

For this week's blog assignment, I spent some time thoroughly searching the NAEYC website for resources pertaining to equity and excellence in early care and education. One of the links I located, featured some valuable resources regarding immigrant children and early childhood education. 

One article, in particular that caught my attention was "On assessing young English language learners" (NAEYC, 2009). The article stressed the importance of assessment for young children. These assessments should be used to support their learning and development (NAEYC, 2009). However, many young children whose home language is something other than English, receive assessments that have invalid results or are ineffective due to language barriers (NAEYC, 2009). Appropriate adaptations should be provided for children whose home language is other than English. When proper adjustments are made, the results of the assessment provide a better understanding of what services and supports are needed (NAEYC, 2009).

The first paragraph of my blog this week, will be very easy to read for my classmates that can read and/or speak Spanish. For those of you who cannot speak and/or read Spanish, my first paragraph will be meaningless and a waste of time. This is just a small example of what many non-English speaking families deal with on a regular basis. Fortunately, many of us in the early childhood field have been made aware of the importance of family-first and respecting the home-language of each child. Federal and state funding needs to be provided to hire bilingual and bicultural staff (NAEYC, 2009).

New insights about issues and trends in the early childhood field I have gained this week-

*By 2030, 40 percent of school-age children will have a home language other than English (NAEYC, 2009)

*Resources are widely available for early educators to learn more about how to work with diverse populations

*We all need to stand-up and be advocates for increased early childhood funding to provide high-quality programs that meet the needs of ALL children

References-
 http://www.naeyc.org/


Classmate blogs I commented on:

http://julievillers.blogspot.com
 Julie- As I have mentioned previously- The NAEYC is one of my main resources for finding the latest information pertaining to education. Also, I use it for lesson plan ideas and answers to questions pertaining to issues that may come up.

I agree with you on questioning why there are still no many unresolved issues, when the answers and solutions are at our feet. MONEY is the key to solving many of these issues. Getting the policy makers to clearly understand the importance of a high quality early childhood education for all children still has a ways to go. Once they realize it has direct impacts on their personal lives, we will see more issues resolved.

Donna

http://jennilewis8512.blogspot.com (Jennifer Lewis)

NAEYC-My very favorite resource for teaching, as well as updated information on the latest information on policies dealing with education. Just today I was reading on their website about how to get early childhood programs NAEYC certified. I would be interested to find out how many early learning programs in my area have this certification. They are currently offering scholarships for the upcoming conference this summer. It covers all cost including hotel, meals, conferences etc.

Donna

Getting to Know My International Contacts

My blogspot address is: http://kidgreen-donna.blogspot.com

This week I communicated with Ali from New Zealand. I asked Ali to share some information with me about issues related to excellence and equity relating to education both in the early childhood field and across the grades. Below is a brief description of what she shared:

New Zealand has 8 universities with a half-million students attending these schools. The total population of New Zealand is only 4 million. Of the 700 top universities in the world, all 8 of the universities in New Zealand are ranked in the top 500. Auckland and Otago are in the 200 top universities in the world. 

New Zealand is the top in the world for education based on access to education, quality of education and human capital.

Young children in New Zealand are not required to attend any type of formal early childhood services. However, most attend either a Playcentres-lead by parents and caregivers. These are licensed centers that offer education through play.

The Correspondence School- Offers learning programs for children 3-5 who live too far away from early childhood learning services.

Maori Language and culture programmes- Centers that offer young children and their parents the chance to build their understanding and knowledge of Maori language and culture.

These programs are free of charge, but many have waiting lists. People from all ethnic and economical societies participate in these programs. There appears to be little inequality amongst the programs or quality of education.

My blog address is :http://kidgreen-donna.blogspot.com

My classmates blogs, I commented on this week are:

Julie Villers
http://julievillers.blogspot.com

 Julie- It really helps when you have the side-by-side comparisons of the two educators from two different countries. It is encouraging to read about all the resources offered to these children, especially in France. As an educator, what bothers me the most about their answers, is the fact that there are so many free resources available to all children, yet many parents for whatever reason choose not to use them. Is it lack of motivation, lack of transportation, lack of education????? All of these and others? These are issues that even in the U.S. need to be addressed more. In our area we offer "Kids Closet". These are brand new clothes, shoes for any child who receives free or reduced meals. This year, free after school bus transportation is provided and the number of children taking advantage of this incredible program has risen greatly.
Donna



Reem Husseini
http://sharewhatwelearn.blogspot.com
Reem- It made me angry to hear that teachers needed to "lower their expectations" for the public students. What kind of ignorant administrators would allow this kind of behavior? Most humans will step it up to the plate when given the confidence that they can and will succeed. It sounds to me like the public school system is setting these children up to "Fail" from the very beginning. Have they ever thought about the positive results that would follow if they "raised their expectations for all students". Surprisingly most would not only step it up, but many would surpass those expectations.

Donna

The NAEYC has an incredible amount of resources and information for anyone that works with children. Anytime a particular subject comes up that I need more information such such as this week's discussion assignments, the first place I search is the NAEYC website. For example and article I read just a few days ago- NAEYC Calls for Investments in Early Childhood Education to Make America Stronger-This article discusses the importance of all professionals working with children to urge Congress to provide more funding to early childhood programs (NAEYC, 2008). The argument certainly justifies the fact that for many years early childhood education has been inadequately funded, yet the to maintain these centers has increased greatly (NAEYC, 2008). The article includes information from economists that support investing in childhood education. They say early childhood education lead to a significant return on investment, and that high-quality programs prevent higher costs later through les remedial education, lower juvenile crime rate, and lower school dropout rates (NAEYC, 2008).

Reading articles such as the one above, adds to my understanding of how economists, neuroscientists, and politicians support the early childhood field.

Some specific information I found on the website that seems particularly relevant to my current professional development is pertaining to the importance of play for children both inside the classroom and at home. There are wonderful articles, suggestions and ideas on how to correlate play with lesson plans. There is also an area on the website where you can pull resources to share with the families. This is especially important to give out to parents so they too, can be more informed about how important and vital it is for our young ones to engage in exploration and imagination. Some of the topics include :
1.Assessing and Scaffolding Make Believe Play
2.Chopsticks and Counting Chips
3.Playdough-What's standard about it?
4.Block Building and Make-Believe for Every Child
5.Block off time for Learning
6.Recess-It's indispensable: Test scores do not improve when recess is cut
7.Why Do Babies Like Boxes Best?

Over the years, whenever a professional issue or controversy has arisen, again I can look to the NAEYC website for information, resources and support. Now, I have had students over the years whose families did not celebrate Christmas and/or other holidays. I have always completely respected that and together we would make appropriate arrangements for these children at times when we were celebrating. Personally, it frustrates me that we are not supposed to call it a Christmas party, but a Holiday party is ok. However, there have been a few issues that I thought the parents were becoming unrealistic with their demands on what their child should be doing whist the party was taking place. As an advocate of young children, it really upsets me to see a child get embarrassed or feel shameful by their parents. In one particular issue I was dealing with I had the support of my staff and other professionals in the field that I could turn to. The NAEYC was again another helpful source to find articles on this subject matter. One such article is -Anti-Bias Education Holdiay Fairness.

Resources
http:www.naeyc.org/newsroom/

The blogs I responded to this week:
Reem Husseini
http://sharewhatwelearn.blogspot.com

Donna DiMillioFebruary 2, 2013 at 12:34 PM

Reem- The article from UNICEF that you blogged about this week is very informative. It is a sad situation that so many millions of children have to suffer.The long-term results are so devastating and uncalled for. However, it is encouraging that decision makers such as neuroscientists, politicians, and economists are making a stance to support quality early childhood education for all children.

Donna

Susan Anderson

http://teachingearlyedu.wordpress.com

Susan- The information regarding the assessment resources on the NIEER website if helpful, thank-you, I agree with you completely about hiring early educators with degrees. Many teachers in preschool programs, as least where I live, have associate degrees. It would be wonderful if early education programs would offer incentives such as tuition reimbursement for those willing to continue on with higher degrees.
Donna