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.

EDUC 6165 - week 5

I have to face conflict very often because of my responsibilities at the nursery as director. Sometimes the conflicts are very intense and frustrating, and other times they are a reminder to improve communication and clarifications.

Most of the conflicts are sensitive to share on my blog, but I will share with you a common scenario. I usually have one staff member a year who is insensitive to the fact that taking time off outside the calendar holidays can be very stressful to the nursery. We follow a school calendar and so staff have very frequent breaks and a long summer off; all of which is paid leave. When a staff member asks for time off while the nursery is open, it burdens the nursery with staffing concerns and continuity in the classrooms.

I have such a conflict this year with one of our teachers, who has already taken lots of time off. We have had to organize a substitute teacher to cover her class on several occasions, and all for non-urgent matters. When she requested more time off to travel with her family in May, it became a conflict between us.

I most certainly knew that I would remain respectful while disputing her request, which remains an unresolved dispute. Although my instinct is to become non-responsive, because of the repeated requests, I probably need to remain responsive while debating the need for more leave. The reciprocity is what I find missing from her side, so that she needs to reciprocate our efforts of being flexible and accommodating, by being considerate herself.

Of course we will not reach a violent communication, but the concepts of NVC are applicable here: empathetically listening and honestly expressing. I can see now that if I adopt these two concepts, then I am likely to resolve the dispute effectively. The observation of her repeated requests is obvious to me, and the feeling of being frustrated with it is evident from my part and from the part of the parents and colleagues at the nursery. The needs of the nursery and her needs, must come to a balance in order to continue working together, and I think I will request a commitment to the job as soon as possible in order to continue working together.

This conversation was going to happen in order to reach a solution, but it is interesting to see it in this breakdown of steps.

EDUC 6165 - week 4

I chose my husband and my long term colleague to evaluate my communication skills and much to my surprise is that they evaluated me almost exactly like I evaluated myself. The slight difference that we found was that I saw myself as having mild communication anxiety whereas they both saw me as having low communication anxiety. My explanation is that I probably hide my mild anxiety quite well.

In this week's reading I learnt the differences between self-concept, self-esteem and self-efficacy and I found it interesting, and very accurate that we avoid situations where we know our self-efficacy is low (O'Hair & Weimann, 2012). Although I speak Arabic quite fluently, when I need to speak it in a professional setting, I struggle and so I try to avoid it as much as possible.

I also enjoyed learning the concept of self-monitoring. Since I live in a tremendously diverse city, I have to agree with the statement: "communicating successfully involves finding the appropriate level of self-monitoring for the situation and the people involved" (O'Hair & Weimann, 2012, P.56).

References:

O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's