Wednesday, October 8, 2014

EDUC 6162 - week 6

On the NAEYC website, I decided to search the link titled "For Families", and I found a wealth of information. On the home page of the NAEYC for families, there is a newsletter families can subscribe to, there are topics featured for 'families today', there is a book featured, and there are links on various learning and development issues. Also on their home page are links for families to look for NAEYC accredited programs, and general guidelines regarding what to look for in programs. The word quality is seen repeatedly.
I found this link very much in line with our current studies of excellence and equity. NAEYC seems to define high quality, with guidance for parents and equal opportunity for anyone navigating their website.
I also found several articles featured for parents regarding school readiness, so I feel that it is a hot topic for the NAEYC. It is tackled from various aspects, but with a clear goal of preparing parents so that they can help their children succeed in school. There is a blog for parents which can be accessed through the For Families site, and lastly I was thrilled to see that they had a link for music.
It is obvious to me that the use of Spanish is being promoted by the NAEYC, and so they are setting an example for programs and professionals in the field. This is a great effort that addresses the barrier of responsiveness that we studied this week. Even in the music link, Ella Jenkins songs are featured and one out of the three has Spanish incorporated, and the second out of three has French incorporated. I found those fabulous ways to promote additional languages.
On the NAEYC home webpage there is the link to their annual conference. That webpage has listings of all the sessions during the conference, with details of each one. It is incredibly organized and thorough. There are several sessions that address the bilingualism issue, which is directly related to the responsiveness barrier, once again.

After another fun and interesting exploration of the NAEYC website, I found that they emphasize school readiness, play and nature play, reading, languages other than English and quality of early childhood programs. Most of which are issues we have studied over the past few weeks.

3 comments:

  1. Wow! Its almost as if we wrote the same post. I follow the same blog as you and found many of the same things to be true. I did look a the National conference and all of the school readiness. We were twin souls it seems in this regard.

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  2. Dear Zeina,

    I also chose NAEYC as my resource center. I also enjoy the fact that there is a strong emphasis on issues that are of extreme importance for both parents and teachers. It is very obvious that children are at the heart of everything on their website. I found many articles related to the issue of equity and I read about many projects that have been in place in order to support parent`s access as well as participation in their children`s education, Quite an uplifting website.

    Ana

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  3. I think it is great the NAEYC website has some much information, especially for the families. I think sometimes families do not know where to go to find information or answers to the questions they have so I think having that link on the NAEYC website is another great resource families can go to for information.

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