The Consequences of International Awareness

 I have learned a lot from my international contact and through international awareness websites. It is clear that quality care, poverty, and lack of equity in early childhood related systems are concerns worldwide. Support, funds, and resources are the top three influencing factors that are mirrored in many countries.  I also was reminded that programs with positive parent involvement, endless funds, and amazing staff any program, located anywhere, servicing any student can and will be successful.

I look forward to providing my full knowledge, passion, and desire to succeed to all my students and families. My career pledge is to assist in the ending of child hunger and poverty not only in my community, but my city, state, and country.

I will remain interested and committed to researching international failures and successes in the early childhood field. As an educator of future teachers and child care workers, I look forward to introducing upcoming educators to the wonderful field of teaching.

UNESCO: Access and Equity

I was not able to talk with my international contact this week, so I went to UNESCO's site and researched further: Access and Equity related to child care and education.

 

Being from a medical background and family I have always thought learning at least started at birth, but after becoming a Child Development instructor and working in the Obstetrics field I now know it begins during the prenatal period of life. However, the 1990 Jomtien Declaration for Education for All stated that learning begins at birth. Because it is now realized that early childhood is the foundation to future learning and success, in 2000 the 2000 Dakar Framework for Action agreed about the importance of early childhood and included the development of early childhood care and education as the first of its six main goals.

 

The main idea of the program and its goals is that participating countries dedicate themselves to expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, targeting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. One of the big issues related to quality care and education for children was the accessibility to them. Part of the program urges governments to branch out and support equitable access to those services by implementing better policies directed to underprivileged children and families.

 

 Normally, privileged children of the target age group benefit from state and federal funding and resources, while poorer children and those in the non-targeted age groups receive little to no government assistance. UNESCO supports the implementation of a universal policy with targeting, which they believe would minimize inequities. I also feel that cities and governments should equally distribute its resources among the entire population and especially towards those who live in the most disadvantaged regions, which I believe would help end the cycle of less than and low achievement. The ideas and approach of UNESCO is to create better access without creating another type of inequity, but we must understand we all have the right to equal care and education and if we see an inequity in either we are obligated to fight for change.

 

http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/

Little Texans, BIG Futures

It has been unusually hard to communicate with my international contact, therefore I decide to research a local organization focused on provide quality care and education to Texans; LittleTexans.org.

This website and program are intended to support parents, caregivers, and anyone interested in promoting the healthy development of young children, especially little Texans.  The information found is geared to help people understand more about how young children grow and develop skills, how we can support their growth, and it provides great resources to use and share with others.

“Little Texans. Big Futures.”  was started as a project of the Texas Early Learning Council, as part of its promise to bring new, voluntary; infant, toddler, and three-year-old early learning guidelines to Texas.  Under the leadership of LaShonda Brown, Texas Head Start Collaboration Office Director, the Texas Early Learning Council started on a two-year journey to develop the guidelines through a collaborative process involving many different types of experts and participants in early childhood services in the state.  The final guidelines were reviewed and approved by hundreds of state and national leaders, and they are endorsed by the Texas Pediatric Society .

Little Texans:

Vision

For all young children to grow and thrive in their families and in their communities

Mission

To engage in a comprehensive and collaborative process to develop and implement Texas’ Infant, Toddler, and Three-Year-Old Early Learning Guidelines (www.littleTexans.org, 2008).

Posted on the littleTexans.org website are:

• Assistance with finding quality childcare and educational programs
• Ads and resource center
• Act Early (Screening for Developmental Delays)
• Download Guidelines link

Each of these links are hugely educational for professionals and parents/caregivers of children from the prenatal stage through around 3 years of age.


I randomly heard about this organization on the radio a few months ago and thought it sounded awesome, so I decided to look it up. Surprisingly, I was able to find a lot of great information effecting my community and state. There are always websites and research available, but not really geared to my specific group of students or demographics, so hearing about littleTexans.org was amazing.

Parents as Teachers

  There is infinite amounts of information and resources available on the Parents as Teachers website and through the organization.

Looking under the RESOURCES tab on the website, there was one avenue that I had not explored: The Federal Home Visiting Program. The program is designed to strengthen and improve programs and coordination of services for at-risk communities and to improve outcomes for those families. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) see home visiting as one of several strategies embedded in a quality early childhood system that promotes maternal, infant and early childhood health, safety and development, as well as strong parent-child relationships.
 
The website and organization offer trainings and curriculum to assist parents in being able to better teach and guide their children. Leading early childhood education and child development organizations and professionals seek out Parents as Teachers curricula and training because it easily integrates into other services they may be providing, which allows them to tailor information to the specific needs of any family and provide practical, hands-on application for parents in real-world situations.
 
I do not receive any newsletters from Parents as Teachers, but they do send out letters for support and donation advocacy as well as for interested groups to enroll in their provided training.
  
  On the website there is a fact sheet and additional information about how Parents as Teachers assisted in the implementation of Indian Head Start. I feel that this creation is a clear push towards care and educational equity. In the letter and fact sheet, it is stated multiple times that all children have the right to premium education; which to me represents the basic foundation to constructing a pathway to equity in the early childhood care and educational systems, especially for such an extreme minority group as Native American Indians.

On the homepage of the website there was a news flash of new trainings and programs available to teen parents. More and more, especially in my community, there are teen parents struggle to provide quality care and education. This latest revision of this program, offered through the Knowledge Studio, is a giant step forward in the work with teen parents. Enhancements to the curriculum include more focus on:

Ø  Supporting adolescents in their development of life skills as they approach adulthood

Ø  Building family well-being capacity in areas like education, employment, and finances

Ø  Examining the mutual influences and potential impacts of the parallel development needs of adolescents and young children

Ø  Teaching parent-child interaction using a four-part technique

Ø  Emphasizing the important role of the father, whether or not he is living with the mother

I feel this Parents as Teachers is not only an organization, but could become a movement if more parents knew about the resources it provides. Some of programs and trainings could definitely assist not only parents, but also teachers and child care professionals. We as educators and some as parents have to responsibility to seek out programs and organizations such as Parents as Teachers to improve our knowledge, which would improve other areas of our personal and professional lives.

 

Global Children's Initiative

I have only been able to connect with one international resource, therefor I decided research deeper the Harvard University’s Global Children’s Initiative, established by the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard in 2006. The main belief of the program is that the vitality and sustainability of any society depends on the extent to which it expands opportunities early in life for all children to achieve their full potential and engage in responsible and productive citizenship. They see supporting healthy child development as the foundation of economic prosperity, strong communities, and a just society.  The main goal of the program is to get multiple sections regarding development involved in issues at a global level to better assess and assist in advancements in the field of childhood development and learning. They emphasis three main objectives that clearly their overall goal:

Ø Educating high level decision makers about the underlying science of learning, behavior, and health, beginning in the earliest years of life

Ø Supporting projects that create understanding of how healthy development happens, how it can be derailed, and how to get it back on track

Ø Building leadership capacity in child development research and policy to increase the number and influence of diverse voices and perspectives that are contributing to the growing global movement on behalf of young children.

A great program that was discussed regarding the Global Children’s Initiative is the Núcleo Ciência Pela Infância, its first major programmatic effort outside the United States. The program brought together 50 Brazilian politicians, policymakers, public managers and civil-society leaders together to examine how they can use knowledge about the science of child development to strengthen and advance policies and practices. 

The second program introduced on the website was Zambian Early Childhood Development Project. The main idea was to use an assessment tool that took into account existing child development measures and added in measures to take into the Zambian framework to evaluate children through all areas of development

I have learned in studying this website, that the same issues plague the world in regards to children.  This site strongly focuses on the idea that we all play an important role in advancements and improvements in the field of early childhood development. I completely realize and understand that as a world we are nowhere close to solving all concerns, but we are making great strides.

 

 

References:

Harvard University: Global Children’s Initiative Retrieved from: http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/