Week Eight: Final Blog

Learning about the international early childhood field has enabled me to expand my knowledge of how different areas approach and think about issues such as poverty, equity, accessibility, and health and wellness. This knowledge gives us some potential background information about what children may or may not have experienced prior to arriving in our classrooms. This knowledge also allows us to select areas where we need more development, support, or resources in order to best serve children with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and learning needs. Lastly, it can help us to identify focal points for becoming advocates, such as advocating for equity in education for children regardless of where they live or what socioeconomic bracket they fall within. 

Children and families need high quality care no matter where they live. One of my goals would be to advocate for high quality early child care both internationally and locally.

Week Seven: Getting to Know Your International Contacts- Part 3

I talked with Astarte about her professional goals. Her family is well off and she does not need to work in order to help support her family. She wishes to continue working with children because she feels a natural closeness with them. She likes to be a part of their development, watching them grow  and gain skills. She currently floats between classrooms as needed and loves this because she is able to see children each day and at various stages of development, from infancy to the late preschool years. She feels joy when interacting with children and hopes to be able to spend at least ten more years teaching in early childhood classrooms before she is no longer able to keep up with the physical demands of the job.

This last statement reminded me that working with children is physically demanding as well as emotionally demanding. As an administrator of early childhood programs, my workload is much different than it was when I was a classroom teacher; it is easy to forget the stress and strain of daily classroom work.

Week Six: Sharing Web Resources

One of the links that I had not previously explored on Child Care Aware was for the Best Practices Program: http://www.naccrra.org/programs-services/naccrra-best-practices-program. This program sets standards of excellence for care in the early childhood setting and is voluntary.

Child Care Aware has an entire section devoted to "Quality": http://www.naccrra.org/about-child-care/quality-matters. This section includes reports and statements about quality and equity/inequality in early childhood programs. There is also information about Quality Rating Information Systems (QRIS). Early childhood professionals can utilize these resources to keep themselves up to date on current data and information related to quality and excellence in the early childhood field.

The e-newsletter for Child Care Aware is not released monthly. The latest edition came out in August and was about safety for children in hot cars. However, something relevant to this course was posted recently on Child Care Aware's blog: http://policyblog.usa.childcareaware.org/. The blog post talks about the reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant and its impact on excellence in child care programs.

I love that Child Care Aware is so comprehensive. It has information for providers as well as parents. I thought that it was particularly helpful that they have a Child Care 101 section for parents, found here: http://www.childcareaware.org/parents-and-guardians/child-care-101. This section lists how to find a provider, what types of providers are available, what parents should look for when trying to find high quality providers, what to do if they can't find a provider, and more.

Week Five: Getting to Know Your International Contacts- Part 2

I talked with Astarte again this week, this time regarding the topics of excellence and equity in early childhood programs in Cairo. When I talked with her previously, she noted the great disparity between programs that existed for the wealthy and those for the poor/publicly funded populations. Children who attend the publicly funded schools generally do not receive the same level of care or education that children who attend private schools do. They may be taught by teachers who do not have formal training in child development or early childhood education. This lack of education may lead to a curriculum or teaching/classroom management style that is not developmentally appropriate. Cairo also has a larger equity issue based on a lack of gender equality. While this is being slowly addressed across Egypt, girls unilaterally receive fewer opportunities for education than boys.

Week Four: Sharing Web Resources

I have been utilizing Child Care Aware’s Child Care Provider section of the website for the last few weeks for my actual job. My program is license exempt but I have the same standards and expectations that one would find in a licensed program. I am currently trying to develop a code of conduct/code of ethics as well as more formal policies and procedures that are available to staff in one succinct manual. I have been using http://www.childcareaware.org/child-care-providers/management-plan/policies-and-procedures and http://www.childcareaware.org/child-care-providers/training/types-of-training to guide me through the process and help me to make sure that I am not missing anything essential.

Child Care Aware has a tool for families to help determine if they should stay at home with their children or return to work. This is accessible through their ASAP (Accessing Support for All Families) program portal, found here: http://childcareaware.org/node/1958. The tool takes them through several questions regarding their thoughts and feelings, logistics related to staying home or returning to work, finding resources, and finances via a budgeting calculator. I thought this was something that could be helpful for families who were uncertain about which decision was right for them/their families. It also relates to the issue of families making tough decisions based on affordability of care.

On their homepage, under “Quick Links,” Child Care Aware has a link titled “Cost of Care Report.” After clicking the link, you are taken to a very brief summary of the report, materials for downloading, and a graphic of a map depicting the daycare cost for an infant as a percentage of a married couple’s income. My state is in the highest percentage, more than 12%. More information about the high cost of child care and how that affects children, parents, and the community appears in the 67 page report. In the report, child care is referred to as “workforce support” and a “sound economic investment.” This echoes what we have learned this week about why economists and politicians have interest in early childhood programs and education. This report can be found here: http://usa.childcareaware.org/sites/default/files/Cost%20of%20Care%202013%20110613.pdf

I’m not sure if this is a new feature or if I just haven’t noticed it previously, but Child Care Aware has an amazing Live Support/Chat with a Child Care Expert function, found here: https://ccachat.childcareaware.org/StartChat.aspx?d=1. This could be an invaluable tool for teachers, administrators, and parents. 

Week Three: Getting to Know International Contacts

Contact with international contacts continues to be a problem. After not hearing back from the many professionals from NAEYC's list that I contacted in week one, I managed to establish contact with a professional through an international early childhood group on facebook. However, after a few initial conversations, she has not been responsive. Not yet wanting to use the podcasts for assignments, I talked with a teacher from my daughter's former daycare. This teacher, Astarte, spends part of the year teaching in Illinois and the other part of the year living with her family in Egypt. Prior to living in the United States, she taught at a nursery school in Cairo. In Cairo, children had very different early childhood experiences based on their family's wealth. Wealthy families sent their children to well-funded private schools that were almost always English language programs. Families who lived at or below the poverty line sent their children to publicly funded schools that were often dirty, under-funded, under-staffed, and inconveniently located...or they didn't send them to childcare programs at all. She mentioned that at all times of the day, hungry, poorly-clothed children would be walking the streets of Cairo instead of attending school. This was also true of younger children whose families could not afford to send them to even the public programs. In Illinois, she notes that there can still be differences between private programs and publicly-funded programs, but the disparity is nowhere near that of what she witnessed at home. She also sees a difference in the government's willingness to fund early childhood experiences.

Poverty is a definite issue in my town, as it is nationwide and globally. I am happy to have a community with many resources available to support families in need. I have used these myself throughout the years and this personal experience has allowed me to also become a source of knowledge of community resources for the children and families I serve. I hope that my colleagues are able to do the same for the participants in their programs.

Week Two: Sharing Web Resources

During our Foundations course, I examined the Erikson Institute's website, https://www.erikson.edu/. The website is divided into multiple sections as it is both a college and a source for research and community outreach. One of their divisions, the Center for Children and Families, offers a full range of services for children and families. This includes developmental assessments, medical assessments, Early Intervention, mental health support, transition support for children with disabilities, support for parents adopting abroad, therapy, home visits, and something that they call the "Fussy Baby Network" which is a comprehensive support and outreach program for parents of babies who are excessively fussy or who have difficulty eating or sleeping.

The Erikson Institute is located in Chicago and the outreach services that are offered are generally within the confines of that area. However, there are network sites in seven other states in order to increase the likelihood that families receive the services and support that they need. In most areas, multilingual staff are available. This eliminates the need for a translator and more adequately allows the families to participate in the programs.

EDIT: I re-read the assignment and realized that though the Foundations course was referenced, I believe the website information that we are to share should be from the current course. I'm adding that below as I already have a comment from a peer and do not want to delete the previously posted information as it may lead to confusion.

For this course, I selected NACCRRA (National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies)/Child Care Aware as my focal organization. Their site can be accessed here: http://www.usa.childcareaware.org.  This organization is a network of child care resource and referral agencies. They provide early childhood related information, trainings, research, and support to parents, teachers, and the community. The organization also acts as political advocates and helps the community to advocate for quality care, better funding, et cetera. Currently, one of the biggest "action items" on the site is for followers of Child Care Aware to contact representatives to reauthorize the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG). This grant funds many states' child care tuition assistance programs and the impact would be tremendous for families and providers if the grant is not reauthorized. A call to action is necessary and well-founded to protect our families, the children in our programs, and our programs themselves.