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.

Week One- Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

            I have had extreme difficulty establishing contact with two professionals. Of the many websites that I selected from NAEYC’s Global Alliance resources, almost all lead to null pages, broken links, or inactive sites and I have now sent emails to five different individuals on the list; four came back immediately as undeliverable. Have any of you had luck? Here are the contacts that have been unsuccessful thus far:

Canadian Child Care Federation
Yvonne Dionne
Email: ydionne@cccf-fcsge.ca

OMEP Comité Nacional Cubano

Sra. Hilda Pérez Forest
E-mail: hilda_perezforest@yahoo.com

Association for Early Childhood Educators
Jane Lim
Email: jane@aeces.org

Nippa - the Early Childhood Organization
Siobhan Fitzpatrick
Email: siobhanf@nippa.org

I’m hopeful that the one email that did not come back as undeliverable will be answered by the early childhood professional. If not, I added several global early childhood groups on Facebook as another method for finding potential contacts.

            For part two of the blog assignment, I looked at several of the early childhood organizations listed on the resources page. Many were interesting but some were out of date such as the Center for Child Care Workforce which still has its May/June 2011 newsletter on its front page. I decided to choose what is listed in our resources as National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA) but is now called Child Care Aware. It can be found at http://www.naccrra.org. I chose this because I frequently use my county and state resource and referral agency for trainings, resources, guidance, news on laws and policies, and more. They offer incredibly important services to providers, children, and the community, and I feel that it would be valuable to be more knowledgeable about the organization and its offerings as a whole.

Welcome to my blog! I look forward to exploring Issues and Trends in Early Childhood with all of you!

My Supports

In my daily environment, I have many supports including financial supports (my job, my husband’s job, daycare tuition assistance through the Child Care Assistance Program, free/reduced school lunch program), emotional supports (love and friendship of family and close friends), and medical supports (medicaid, employer-provided medical insurance, physical therapy, medications). Life would be very difficult for me without these supports. They are all important and play essential roles in my life. Without financial supports, I would not be able to feed or clothe my children and every day would be a struggle to survive. Without emotional supports, I would feel alone and over-stressed. Without medical supports, I would be unable to live due to chronic health conditions.

The challenge that I chose to imagine was being a single mother with no close family near me. In this situation, I would likely need a multitude of supports similar to what I currently have, but they would not come nearly as easily. For instance, my parents watch my children twice per week to help cut down on daycare costs as well as to spend time with their grandchildren. A single mother with no relatives nearby would have to build a network of trusted individuals. Single parents generally would have less income, as well, as only one parent is contributing to household income, and sometimes not even then in the case of a stay at home mother with no other options or resources. That parent may not have social or emotional supports and may feel isolated. Life without these supports would be very difficult.

Week 4: My Connections to Play

“Playing should be fun! In our great eagerness to teach our children we studiously look for ‘educational’ toys, games with built-in lessons, books with a ‘message.’ Often these ‘tools’ are less interesting and stimulating than the child’s natural curiosity and playfulness. Play is by its very nature educational. And it should be pleasurable. When the fun goes out of play, most often so does the learning.” ~ Joanne E. Oppenheim

“Play builds the kind of free-and-easy, try-it-out, do-it-yourself character that our future needs.” ~ James L. Hymes Jr.

“It is in playing, and only in playing, that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.” ~ D.W. Winnicott

As a child, most of my play involved imagination and outdoor spaces. My brother was the main supporter of my play. He is 16 months older than me and for the first 6-7 years of our lives, we primarily played together rather than with friends. My father worked out of town and my mother was often busy with managing our household so most of our day would be spent outside making forts out of sticks and plants, making bricks from the clay dirt (we lived in Virginia), water, and ice cube trays, and making concoctions from honeysuckle and other native plants. While I’m sure we did other things, these are the things we did together that really seemed to resonate and matter.

I try to instill the love for this type of play into the children with whom I work and particularly with my own children. My husband and I emphasize the importance of imaginative, free-structured play. We also encourage our children to use items in unusual ways, such as my brother and I did when using ice cube trays for brick-making. However, I do see that in general, the state of play has become much more materialistic, focused on playing with a toy for its set function or playing a game on a screen. My hope is that with so many health initiatives focused on getting children and families to become more active and to do things together, play will shift back to free-form.

As an adult, I have had very little time to play. From the time that I was legally able to work, I have done so, often working multiple jobs at one time. Since having children six years ago, I have even less available time but I have made an effort to reclaim play and bring that kind of free joy back to my life. My husband, kids, and I take trips to rivers and creeks to search for tiny insects and creatures in the water and under rocks. We try to identify tracks in the mud on trails in the woods and imagine what animals may have made them. In those moments, I can feel the deep connection between my past and present life and the future that I have in my children.





My brother and I would record stories that we made up with each other.



This clay-type soil is amazing for building!

Relationship Reflection

Ever since I was a young child, the development of relationships has been very important to me, particularly the development of close family relationships. This has stayed with me as I have grown and as a professional, I have made relationships and partnerships a central theme to what I do and how I operate. 

In my personal life, my relationships with my children, parents, brother, and husband are of utmost importance. I also value my relationships with extended family, in-laws, close friends- most of whom are also co-workers, and the children and families in my programs. The relationships I that I forge are deep and long-lasting. 

My husband and daughter

My son

I love my children immensely. My children love me and expect that I will keep them safe and do what is best for them. They each have very unique personalities and individual ways to interact with me and I with them. While motherhood is much more difficult and all-consuming than I could have imagined, the relationship that I have with my children is the one that I value the most.

My relationship with my husband is one that has changed since we became parents. It has become more reciprocal; prior to other humans being involved, our relationship was very much one-sided. As parents, we really have formed a partnership. Without this partnership, we would not be effective parents. Instead, we would constantly be overruling each other's decisions or creating chaos with our lack of consistent rules, boundaries, and structure.

My ability to connect with others and create, foster, and maintain relationships and partnerships positively impacts my work as an early childhood professional. This allows me to form bonds with children and families, as well as my staff and co-workers, creating an environment that is formed around creating a caring community.

Week Eight: Thoughts About Child Development

The video above is of my son and daughter playing an organ when they were 3 and 1. I love to watch this from time to time to see how their play has evolved as well as the developmental differences between their ages/stages; I especially love the part where my daughter experiments with with the sounds that she can make by sitting on the keys with her bottom and her knees. My son, who was older and more "mature", sang a silly song but played the organ appropriately with his fingers.



More thoughts through quotes:



"All children accomplish milestones in their own way, in their own time." - Magda Gerber


"For children, play is as natural as breathing—and as necessary" -Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld

Week Six: Testing for Intelligence

When testing for intelligence, professionals should look at the whole child. This does not mean altogether abandoning traditional methods of testing for intelligence as that may be a valid measure for some children. What it does mean, though, is also including opportunities for other kinds of intelligence to be explored and measured. What I would like to see is a system that is as responsive and accommodating as the Response to Intervention (RTI) technique being used in special education. In RTI, every student who is determined to be below average in achievement receives special assistance of some sort; at times, this can be as much as half of the classroom (Berger, 2012). If students were to receive these services, regardless of their level of academic achievement, each child's individual strengths and weaknesses could be uncovered and/or supported. If talents are not uncovered or not fostered, they may forever go unknown, grow stagnant, and disappear.

Finland does not have "high-stakes national standardized tests" (Gross-Loh, 2014, para. 2). They individualize instruction based on the strengths of both the teachers and the students. When they do test intelligence, they have standard intelligence tests such as the Stanford-Binet and Wechsler as well as tests for musical giftedness, prosocial behavior, and creative and divergent thinking. Input and observations from parents and teachers, and student portfolios are also used as part of the assessment process and are of as much if not more importance in determining giftedness than actual testing (Roukonen, 2005).


References

Berger, K. S. (2012). The developing person through childhood. New York, NY: Worth Publishers.

Gross-Loh, C. (2014, March 17). Finnish education chief: 'we created a school system based on equality'. The Atlantic. Retrieved April 11, 2014, from http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/finnish-education-chief-we-created-a-school-system-based-on-equality/284427/

Ruokonen, I. (2005) Estonian and Finnish gifted children in their learning environments. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/20047/estonian.pdf?sequence=1

Week 4: Consequences of Stress on Children's Development- Environmental Pollution

From before I was born until I was 17, my parents smoked cigarettes. They smoked inside of our house and our car, and anywhere else we went. The vast majority of adults who came to our house smoked. In addition, when we went to visit family members or stay at their houses for vacations, those adults smoked, too. I was surrounded by smoke. As a very young child, I was constantly sick and by six years old I was diagnosed with asthma. I struggled to breathe, but no one seemed to make the connection to the pollutants that I was inhaling every moment of every day. I continued to get worse and was diagnosed with Chronic Bronchitis, a subset of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, something that is typical for heavy smokers to develop later in life. I've never smoked- not even once- but my exposure to second-hand smoke has greatly diminished my lung capacity as well as my quality of life. My breathing improved after my parents quit smoking and as an adult I avoid as many situations as possible that might trigger a breathing emergency. I have also made it my mission to protect my children from my experience. This has unfortunately resulted in them not knowing portions of my family as well as I would like, though, as I refuse to take them into a home filled with smoke. 

In 2008, my husband studied abroad in Cairo, Egypt. While he was enamored with the culture and history that he encountered, he was not quite expecting the level of pollution that surrounded the city. On a clear day, the mosque of Ibn Tulun looks like this:

On a day where pollution is very high and the air is hazy- my husband says most days are like this- the mosqu of Ibn Tolun looks like this: 

Imagine breathing those particles of "silica, sulfate and carbonate" into your lungs each day of your life (Khaled, 2013 para. 6). Pollution levels are many times higher in Cairo than any recognized safe or acceptable level. As a result, up to 25,000 people die each year and for those who survive, essential organs and body/cognitive functions are affected. In order to protect children, efforts are being made to reduce the impacts of pollution, such as planting tall trees to act as filters. A new program is also helping industrial plants to reduce their lead emissions; high lead emissions lead to stunted brain growth among other developmental delays (Cairo Air, 2014). 

References

Cairo Air Said 'Seriously' Polluted. (n.d.). Al Bawaba. Retrieved March 29, 2014, from http://www.albawaba.com/news/cairo-air-said-seriously-polluted

Khaled, R. (2013, April 21). Air pollution indoors and outdoors high, threaten health and environment. Egypt Independent. Retrieved March 27, 2014, from http://www.egyptindependent.com/news/air-pollution-indoors-and-outdoors-high-threaten-health-and-environment

Week 2: Child Development and Public Health- Breastfeeding

Since having my first child, I have become very passionate regarding the topic of breastfeeding. I struggled with low supply and a child who was unable to latch but because I knew of breastmilk's many long-lasting health benefits, I pumped what I could until he was twelve months old, while also supplementing with formula. In preparation for my second child's birth, I researched galactogogues to help increase what was likely to again be a minimal milk supply due to multiple endocrine disorders, met with lactation consultants, made sure that I had several electric and hospital-grade pumps available to increase my pumping output, and most helpful of all, I surrounded myself with people who knew how much I wanted to succeed in breastfeeding past one year and were willing to support me in that goal. My daughter was able to latch, and while my supply was still low, I was able to personally provide her with about half of what she needed each day. My wonderful support system stepped in and provided donor milk for the rest, stocking my freezer so that she received breastmilk until she was 18 months old. While I would have loved to breastfeed for even longer, I am happy to have at least given my daughter a bounty of immunities and nutrients while bonding and sharing those exquisite moments with her.

During my time as a nursing mother, and ever since, I have acted as a breastfeeding advocate and support network for friends, co-workers, clients, and even strangers. Sometimes this means offering empathy, giving guidance or information regarding laws on public feeding, pumping breaks, et cetera, or pointing families to support groups and resources specifically for breastfeeding mothers. It also means not pressuring, guilting, or shaming mothers into breastfeeding.

With all of the time that I have spent reading about and researching breastfeeding, I am surprised that I just now found the article "Breastfeeding in the Land of Genghis Khan" by Ruth Kamnitzer. This amazing piece details the author's experience, as a breastfeeding mother, of moving to Mongolia from Canada where the social climate and expectations related to breastfeeding are very different. In Mongolia, breastfeeding in public isn't just common; it's expected and accepted as completely natural. Kamnitzer (2011), in my absolute favorite part of the article, illustrates this perfectly with the following vignette:

When I walked through the market cradling my feeding son in my arms, vendors would make a space for me at their stalls and tell him to drink up. Instead of looking away, people would lean right in and kiss Calum on the cheek. If he popped off in response to the attention and left my streaming breast completely exposed, not a beat was missed. No one stared, no one looked away—they just laughed and wiped the milk off their noses. (para. 8)

There is no pressure to wean children from the breast at 6 months or 12 months, as is often the case in North America; Mongolian children often breastfeed until their third birthday or beyond. The article mentions that it's not even uncommon for adults to drink leftover breastmilk; there is no attached taboo or stigma. Clearly, they "get it" in Mongolia! One of my current personal/professional goals is to help others "get it" by having my workplace certified as breastfeeding friendly for both the public and employees. More information on what that means can be found here: http://www.c-uphd.org/documents/maternal/Breastfeeding-Friendly-Business-Rating-System.pdf  If we normalize breastfeeding, mothers, children, families, employers, and communities will all benefit.


References

Kamnitzer, R. (February, 2011). Breastfeeding in the land of Genghis Khan. In Culture Parent. Retrieved March 14, 2014, from http://www.incultureparent.com/2011/02/breastfeeding-land-genghis-khan/

Week 1: Childbirth in My Life and Across the World

My son's birth and my daughter's birth were very different. With my son, I was a first time mom who had a birth plan and some ideas about how I wanted his birth to proceed, but I was also afraid to make decisions that might harm him. I wanted a low-intervention birth but my doctor pressured me into an induction on my due date by saying "if you go over forty weeks, he's more likely to die". I knew that my body was not ready, but the doctor's scare tactics left me feeling like induction was the only responsible choice I could make. I endured three days of chemical induced laboring, three hours of pushing, and an episiotomy before finally being asked to choose between having my son removed via c-section or vacuum suction. I chose suctioning, and he finally arrived, 8lbs 10 oz, 20.5 inches. 

With my daughter, I  alternated between a low-intervention doctor and a set of midwives for my prenatal appointments, and all were present for her birth. There was no pressure to induce or deliver early, and I very happily and comfortably delivered my daughter at 41 weeks 5 days after just under 30 minutes of pushing. She was 9 lbs 15 oz, 21.5 inches. 

I chose this example because there was a dramatic difference between the two births, and having the appropriate provider and environment really makes an amazing impact. Childbirth standards and practices vary not only from provider to provider, but also from one country to the next. For example, I read an illuminating article about the world's best and worst places to give birth (Sweden and Niger). In Sweden, mothers have access to affordable prenatal and postpartum care as well as high quality delivery rooms and well educated doctors and surgeons. Hospitals are clean and offer alternative pain treatments to laboring mothers. Very few mothers or babies die in Sweden as a result of labor or delivery. In contrast, in Niger, mothers have a one-in-seven chance of dying during labor/delivery and one-in-six children will not survive to the age of five. Mothers labor in silence and if they are assisted by a medical professional, it is usually in a dirty facility with outdated or unsafe equipment. Prenatal, postpartum, and labor/delivery services, if available, are unaffordable for most mothers (Moorhead, 2006).

Birth, and the circumstances surrounding birth, including prenatal care and labor and delivery, absolutely affect child development on multiple levels. If mothers do not receive adequate care, nutrition, and services, their infants will be negatively affected- developmentally, physically, and cognitively. Proper care for mothers, then, is essential for the healthy development of their babies. 

Reference

Moorhead, J. (2006, October 3). Different planets. The Guardian. Retrieved March 10, 2014, from http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/oct/03/healthandwellbeing.health