Farewell as a Final Post

It is hard to believe that this is the last post for the MS in ECS program.

It is wonderful to look back and see how much I have learnt and how much I have grown as a professional and as an individual. 

The early childhood development course was probably one of my favorites because it gave me answers to a lot of what I see daily; and so it would be hard for me to choose one thing from that course to describe as a deeply felt learning experience. There are many.
In the course on issues and trends, I learnt a tremendous amount about poverty, its definitions, interpretations, implications, effects on children and how varied it is globally. That has not left me, and I think about children living in poverty often.
Learning about leaders in our profession, through numerous courses, is another deeply felt learning experience, because it taught me about commitment and passion, and its value for childhood.

In this course, I have learnt about my own passions, my own goals and aspirations; and for that I thank Dr. Lisa Embree for continuously encouraging deeper and broader thinking about our projects.

One of my goals is most certainly to work with children who are underprivileged, and after learning about so many organizations globally, I feel very motivated to pursue this goal in the near future.

As a farewell, I have made a short movie that summarizes my blogs and expresses my emotions as we adjourn from our program together.

I am grateful for every classmate I have had and their comments on my posts and discussions. I am thankful to Walden University for enrollment, the courses and the opportunity to complete my MS in ECS. And I am so very appreciative to all my professors for their commitment and passion to educating the educators and leaders in our profession. You truly shape the future.




To stay in touch you can reach me through work anytime: www.seashellsnursery.com
seashellsnursery@hotmail.com

Week 6 EDUC 6990 International Organizations

International organizations are probably what I would be most keen to pursue for a career after my current role as director of a nursery school. I find that the impact these organizations make on childhood is on such a large scale, that it must surely be intensely rewarding. At the same time, the risk of seeing massive suffering is much higher and that can be quite devastating.

The three organizations that I would pursue would be the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the World Health Organization (WHO) and Save The Children. All three fund and organize efforts to impact the lives and well-being of children all over the world. Most of their efforts are for basic needs such as clean water, immunizations, shelter, food, protection and education. It has always been a passion of mine to work for children’s rights, at a large scale, so that I can help in reducing some of the suffering around the world.

At UNICEF, they have listings under their job seekers section, and they are very diverse as well as scattered around the world. I can see that my Arabic language skills could be quite useful for the projects in Syria, but I am not one to take risks by going to a country at war. Similarly, the vacancy in Jordan considers Arab speakers an asset. It seems that I could meet most of the qualifications required for any of those positions. I think someday, I will contact UNICEF and see where I can help out, as a volunteer or an employee.

At the WHO, it would be my previous career that would be more suited to most of the job vacancies, but I would love to someday combine the two careers and work for a large organization as such. I studied and worked as a pharmacist for almost ten years, and so I would qualify for the antimicrobial resistance consultant (pharmaceutical). However, I would have been more interested in a campaign to immunize children in under-privileged countries, but there was no such vacancy.

At Save the Children, there were numerous vacancies listed, and many in Arabic speaking nations, but none were really of interest to me, and many that I looked at required qualifications different from mine. Regardless, I could see myself someday contacting them to simply volunteer in any capacity they could see useful.

I would like to share the webpage of two organizations that I have helped fund raise for, in order to improve the lives of children. One of them helps build schools and nurseries in Nepal, and the other houses and cares for under privileged children in Lebanon. This is probably the type of hands on global work that I hope to someday pursue.

https://erecruit.who.int/public/hrd-cl-vac-view.asp?o_c=1000&jobinfo_uid_c=32740&vaclng=en

http://www.unicef.org/

https://www.savethechildren.net/jobs

www.childrenofthemountain.org/

http://www.sos.org.lb/

Week 4 EDUC 6990: More Job Opportunities ...

In the second week’s assignment, I had already looked at large international associations for job opportunities and so for this assignment, I decided to look at American Federal or National Associations. The first place I looked was at the National Association for the Education of Young Children because the reputable association is attractive to me for various reasons. On their website however, when I finally found their job listings, on http://www.naeyc.org/about/jobs/overview, I realized that not many positions involve work with children directly, or with educators directly. Although I am a fan of the NAEYC’s ethos and their efforts in influencing early childhood on a national scale, I feel that I would want to work with them in a capacity that utilizes my experience and qualifications.

Digging into my passions, I recognized that I always wanted to work with children that are underprivileged and for that reason I had researched UNICEF for the previous assignment. So in applying this passion to the USA, I went onto the website of the US department of health and human services, and under the Administration for Children and Families, I found the Head Start program’s job listings. My home state is Florida, and I found a director position there which was very attractive to me. Under that listing, their preferred qualification was a Master’s degree in Early Childhood which I hope to soon have, and hence I would qualify to apply. This listing was found on http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc/hs/careers?state=FL . After working for ten years with children of affluent families, and tackling issues of the new world, I feel that working with families that need support of the financial kind, would be a new challenge for me and a huge learning opportunity.

The third organization that I explored was Zero to Three, and they describe themselves as “a national, nonprofit organization that provides parents, professionals and policymakers the knowledge and know-how to nurture early development” (Zerotothree, 2015). This resonates with me and so I explored their job opportunities on the link http://careercenter.zerotothree.org/jobs/ where there are numerous jobs listed. For opportunities with Zero to Three, I only found a few but one of them was interesting and could be very challenging for me, where the organization is looking for a senior program manager for a program called Text4baby. This is a text message service that parents sign up for and they then receive texts several times a week informing them of what to expect for their baby’s development, according to the birth date. It is in fact a very practical way of reaching out to parents, with the knowledge they need as they raise their baby.

Beyond these three US based organizations, my passion remains to work with global children’s organizations that can make a large impact on children’s lives. My international experience and my languages could be beneficial in addition to my qualifications and experiences, for organizations such as UNICEF, World Health Organization, World Food Programme (WFP) and so on.

If I continue to grow my career in early childhood, I would someday like to explore the academic aspect of educating the educators, and hence impacting children’s lives. I feel that a university position would be very interesting to me and most certainly a challenge that is different from mentoring employees in the work setting.

References:

ZERO TO THREE: National Center for Infants, Toddlers and Families, 2015. Our Mission. Retrieved from http://www.zerotothree.org/

Exploring Roles in the ECE Community

I find this assignment to be a fantastically unsettling experience. The reason is because I love my work of directing an early childhood program, and only rarely wonder what else I would like to do. This assignment encourages me to dig into my interests and expand my horizon. There are two things that I feel I would enjoy doing and these are working at a university to prepare educators for the management side of educating young children, and also working with organizations whose efforts are to improve the lives of children that are less privileged than most.

I only found one university in the city that I live in which mentions early childhood education and it is mentioned as a specialty in the Bachelor’s degree in Education. Zayed University follows American standards and offers National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) degrees in education. They do not, however, have any vacancies where I could be a match for their requirements. Regardless, because this has sparked a deep interest in me, I intend to contact them and offer our nursery school as a practical site for their students to visit and intern with us, under my supervision.

My fascination with United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has been there for a very long time, and probably before I started working with children. On their main page, they list their priorities for children and they include: survival and development, as well as education. I am passionate about healthy development in childhood as well as the opportunity for education; so this resonates with me. Looking at their job seeker’s link, they have internships listed and they have job listings as well. So many of them were fascinating to me, none of them were looking for someone with my exact experience or qualifications, and none of them were in the country that I live in. So I could see that this would be an organization that I could pursue, perhaps later in my life when my children are out of the nest and I am ready for a global adventure. Regardless, I will write to them with my interest in helping in some of their regional projects as a volunteer because I can speak Arabic.

This inspired me to look up a local charity that reaches out to global needs for children and education; named Dubai Cares. On their website I could not find a lot of information regarding their needs and current projects, nor did they have a job vacancy, but they have an inviting way of asking for enthusiastic professionals to contact them. So this organization targets my exact interests in philanthropy, is in the city that I currently live in, and is open to volunteers; so now I find no reason not to contact them and look at a potential role with them.

This assignment has opened my mind regarding expanding my work beyond my daily responsibilities at our nursery school. In fact I am quite excited about potentially taking on new responsibilities or new experiences, for the benefit of childhood none the less.

http://www.dubaicares.ae/en

http://www.unicef.org/about/employ

http://www.zu.ac.ae/main/en/colleges/colleges/__college_of_education/index.aspx

Starting EDUC 6990

I look forward to this last course in our Masters of Science in Early Childhood Studies, during which I will get to know my classmates, my professor and lots of fun challenges in early education.

Farewell EDUC 6165

After an interesting 8 weeks, I wish you all best of luck in the remainder of your program. Thank you Dr. Hampshire for the course, and for continuously challenging us to learn more about this important aspect of our work.

In the spirit of communication and collaboration, I would be thrilled to stay in touch with all my classmates, so feel free to email me on zeina.matar-ghantous@waldenu.edu

Thank you all for the comments, questions, and posts.

Farewell until our paths meet again.

Zeina 

EDUC 6165 - week 6

Adjourning is a fabulous process that a group goes through in order to achieve closure, upon completion of their goal. This stage of team development is a celebration, a mourning and a farewell between the members of the team.

My sons play baseball with the little league and so each season we form teams for each of my two sons and train and play together for four months. Then the All-star teams are formed and we train, travel and play together as well. All those teams go through the forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning stages. The players go through the stages, as well as the volunteer coaches and the parents. After each season and each All-Star tournament, the adjourning includes meals together, awards, pictures, gift exchanges and lots of hugs and farewells. If I were to choose the aspect that makes the goodbye hardest I would say that yes a team that performs well by having lots of wins, is always adjourning as a celebration and it is somewhat harder to end that unity. In addition, a team that has a lot in common, which to me is the norming stage optimized, is harder to leave than a team with little in common that hardly goes through any norming.

I find the baseball teams are a perfect example of team work, and all that we have learnt this week. If we finished our season without the closure of adjourning, the children would feel a sense of loss instead of a sense of victory. The season's closing ceremony is a perfect example of adjourning, with the rituals that represent everyone's commitment and unity.

I think the same applies to our Master's program. We all come together, trusting the path set by our leaders for our goals, with the respect and commitment needed to complete the task. After the storming, norming and performing, there certainly needs to be a finale that celebrates the efforts, the relationships, the accomplishments and even the lessons with each failure, along the way. I look forward to congratulating the classmates, and thanking the professors who are sharing this journey with me. The adjourning rituals are surely to take on the culture of the leadership and I trust that it will bring closure and a sense of victory.