EDUC 6162 - Week 4

On the NAEYC website home page, we have a few columns to look through. Our week's issue is highlighted a few times in the home page. The News and Highlights column begins with "Child Care and Development Block Grant" where they explain that money has been granted to raise the threshold for health and safety in early childhood programs. The NAEYC applauds that and encourages the senate to do the same. On the Act column, the first item listed is "Invest in Kids… ". By clicking on the link, the following is seen: "Join Us in Supporting a Strong Start for America's Children. Children’s early learning experiences set the course for success in school and life.  High-quality programs benefit everyone: children, families, communities – and because of the return on investment, everyone wins.  …" (NAEYC, 2014). These topics are clearly in line with the trend being studied this week in our course. With NAEYC being the leading organization in early childhood education, it is a strong message of support for these issues.

As a member, I can login and access the online version of Young Children. The September issue of Young Children is described in a previous blog entry, and a lot of it is about diversity in early years programs. Under the Public Policy icon of the website, we see the NAEYC's support and efforts to get more funding for improving quality programs in early years.

My personal favorite section on the website is Topics, where you click to find a list of practical topics for our daily work. The topics listed that are currently important issues (and potentially trends) for my practice include "Anti-Bias education: Holidays and fairness", "Obesity prevention" and "Play and learning".

Working with a huge mix of cultures and religions, being sensitive to holidays and what is celebrated, is quite important. I enjoyed learning about ways to handle holidays that are not bias and that embrace all celebrations. What a wonderful issue to tackle, and the link has a book listed that tackles this issue.

The Obesity prevention link has numerous resources that helps us educate parents and implement healthy eating in our centers. The first parents workshop this year at our nursery will be about healthy nutrition for the children in our care. Once again, this is an important issue for my work, and worldwide.

Once again, the Play and Learning issue is visited annually at our nursery, in order to ensure that play remains the core of our curriculum. This issue is very well resourced and backed up on the NAEYC's topic section.

www.naeyc.org

POVERTY ( EDUC 6162 )

One of my contacts in the early childhood field is in Thailand, and upon emailing her the assignment for the week, I received an incredibly well resourced and thorough reply. I feel that I have not only learnt about poverty in her region, but also about ways educators, schools, students, and communities can help - and have helped.

Let me begin by introducing her again :

Juliet Perrin has been teaching for 16 years and this includes teaching in Australia, Turkey, England and now in Thailand. She is currently the Head of Year for the pre-nursery and nursery section at Regents School, in Pattaya, Thailand. She told me that her experience included working in deprived areas in England and as we know, there is a lot of poverty in Thailand where she has been for 6 years.

Juliet described to me some of the work that the Regents school does to fight poverty in Thailand and this included several community partnerships that were the focus of each age group of students. For the early years, where Juliet is a leader, they partner with Father Ray Day Care Center ( http://www.fr-ray.org/ ). She explained that the children from the center come to visit the early years (2.5-5 years old) students at Regents school, and vice versa. I found that fabulous and certainly a learning process for both sets of children and educators.

The poverty in Thailand can be quite sad, and Juliet further explained that some of the workers from the neighboring countries, who may be there illegally, will often bring their kids and leave them to fend for themselves, in hope for a better life. The poverty that is described is way more severe than the poverty we know of in America. Running water alone, can be a luxury in poor Asian communities, not to mention shelter, food, healthcare and safety.

Juliet listed the 10 organizations that are supported by the Regents school and quoted on of them, and so I quote Juliet's quote:

" I like the quote from Fountain of Life  The Centre believes that “Poverty is the

enemy of our children and education is the best weapon with which to fight it.” "



My second contact had not responded to my email, although she was very prompt when I first contacted her two weeks ago. I can only assume that there is an obstacle with getting back to me.

EDUC 6162 - Week 2

The NAEYC's online journal Young Children is available on their website for members. The main topic for the current issue is diversity in the classroom, and includes everything from immigrant families, to adopted children, gay and lesbian parents, as well as specifically diversity in the elementary school. The title used for the edition, and all the related articles is "Engaging Families: Partnering in meaningful ways". The pictures in the entire journal issue are of diverse parents, children and staff.

Embracing and preparing for diversity, is clearly a 'hot topic' for the NAEYC. I found this edition to be directly related to our course, and this week's topic. On the website itself, there are links to numerous issues and resources, but the message of diversity is clear in their choice of pictures throughout the website. http://www.naeyc.org/

In this edition of Young Children, there were also articles on science, movement and dual languages. What I enjoyed reading about was "thematic instruction for dual language leaners" and in the article, they shared an idea for encouraging language development which I found fun and clever, named Grandma's soup. I liked that the journal included ideas that us educators can walk away with and implement in our classrooms. This puts theory into practice quite clearly.

In Grandma's soup, the children got to taste vegetables, say they names and play around with the names, then they used words related to making soup like chopping, stirring and so on... and actually made a soup. I won't re-write the details, but I am sure you will agree that it is very effective. Once again, diversity in encouraged in this activity/article.

For the first blog assignment (week 1), please click on the "course resources" page on my blog.