Getting To Know My Contact

My contact is new to the field of early childhood education. While writing to her about the excellence and equality in the field she mentioned that her program gets evaluated monthly - I was unable to gather whether that is internal or external people evaluating them.

She had mentioned that children across the board have access to education. She did not respond to my question about whether there is a program equivalent to Head Start in Canada - she had mentioned previously that in her specific area there was not a need for assistance when talking about low-income families. 

Communicating with my contact can be a struggle - our schedules seem to be opposite and she does not get onto the computer daily. I am hoping to learn more information from her still. 

I haven't heard back from my contact in New Zealand either :(

The Ever-Changing Head Start

            While searching the National Head Start Association website I came across the newsletter about Early Head Start and Head Start switching to a full-day classroom setting.  Currently, the majority of the classes are half-day (3.5 hours/day). This affects my current professional development because I this is my first year doing a full-day classroom at Head Start and I am having to learn new ways of teaching. Our full-day classrooms tend to enroll the children with higher priority scores, which equates to children with social-emotional concerns or behavior problems. I have learned new ways to de-escalate situations and have learned how to talk in a soother tone of voice.

            This newsletter about the proposed changes to Head Start programs has caused issues within the program – with the increase of full-day classes the programs are having to decrease the number of children and families they can serve but are now able to provide more in-depth learning. My program has slowly started to switch to full-day classrooms and had to decrease the number of children in our enrollment – last year we served 406 children and families, this year we are serving 366. It is unfortunate that we have to drop our enrollment numbers because I feel like we are failing those select children now. Head Start standards believes full-days are 6 hours (8:00-3:00) and my program does 8:00-5:00 so we are having to find funding for those extra two hours to make up the difference.

         Head Start in general is able to operate and continue serving children and families because of politicians who understand and support it’s vision and mission. If we did not have certain political support the children of low-income families would not have the opportunity to attend school and gain the extra support.

         I did not come across any new insights about issues and trends but I found an awesome partnership that could help my program with supplies. While exploring the NHSA website I found that Head Start and Crayon Collections has become partners to supply classrooms with crayons for the children.

International Contacts

Good News!!!

I was able to connect with two women who work in the Early Childhood field - one from Canada and one from New Zealand.

While discussing poverty with my contact who lives in Canada we seemed to live in two separate worlds. She mentioned that in her area/daycare they do not have any children that live in poverty necessarily but they offer subsidy, based off their finances (V. Kritsimilios, personal communication, November 13, 2015). Whereas, I work in a large county for a Head Start program, 90% of my families are below the poverty line. Our communication is very scarce so I do not have much information. 

I am still waiting to hear back from my contact in New Zealand - I do not know anything about her country so I am curious to see what she says. I hope by next week I will have an update for everyone.

With the relationship we are beginning to build with each other I am excited to continue learning from each other about our communities and the early childhood field. 

Web Resources

National Head Start Association - www.nhsa.org

The blog from Olivia Harper was short but reinforced the importance of parent engagement in the classroom. Olivia talked about how her goal for classroom was 100% of the children will be kindergarten ready and could not have been reached without the daily engagement, partnership and support her parents offered (Harper, 2015). Olivia inspired me to discuss with my supervisor the possibility of having literacy nights with just my classroom as a way to get more families engaged. We do parent education nights twice a year but they are school wide events - this makes it harder for my parents to really engage with us and each other.

I was able to connect with two ECE professionals from New Zealand and Canada  :) 
I look forward to learning more about their work.

References

Harper, O. (2015). Parents as partners: Creating advocates for a true "head start." Retrieved from http://www.nhsa.org/parents-partners-creating-advocates-true-head-start