National Head Start Association (NHSA)

The NHSA was a huge support for early head start and head start programs in 2013 by helping send 37,740 letters to Congress during the sequestration. These letters were from teachers, head start alumni, and parents to advocate about the importance of Head Start. When the Federal Government shut down in October of 2013 it forced 57,000 slots to be cut.

There is a pilot program that NHSA is doing called First Advocates - this helps train and guide parents on becoming advocates. They will be trained in; how to effectively communicate their story and message, how to engage state and national elected officials, and how to organize their peers and community. This pilot program may be helpful when discussing the barrier of awareness...by having the trained parents in the community raising awareness of head start and sharing their story. This is an interesting program and I am curious to find out more about it, I will be emailing my director to see if she has more details about it. 

While browsing through the section labeled 'Resources for Families' it took me to an outside link - Head Start Early Childhood Learning & Knowledge Center. This is a great resource for all Head Start program! I currently use this for teaching tools and if I have a question about one of our standards. This website is also helpful when needing resources for families. 

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

Professional Contacts

I was unsuccessful trying to make a professional contact - I emailed about 9 people through a common ECE page on Facebook hoping for a response. I have yet to receive any messages...I am still hopeful!

The World Forum website was not working either, so I signed up for the Save the Children newsletter. My boyfriend and I decided to sponsor a child through the organization as well - we loved the fact that we can receive pictures and letters from the children. We are looking forward to learning about the little girl and would love to share with everyone.

I decided to follow two websites; National Head Start Association and National Association (NHSA) of Early Childhood Teacher Educators (NAECTE). Since I work for Head Start I wanted to keep up to date on the ever changing regulations/policies. I chose the other website because I noticed they had a communication network for teachers that I thought would be beneficial.

I'm excited to keep everyone up to date on the different aspects of Head Start and educators across the country through NAECTE. 

My Supports

When I think of the word support I think of the people in my life who lift me up and encourage me to keep going. Of course, we need supports in the way of money, food, and shelter as well but I relate to those second to people and relationships.

My support systems would have to be my family (boyfriend, parents, siblings) and my friends. Without each of these people I would not be where I am today - they all have a special emotional connection with me and encourage/support me in different aspects of life. My boyfriend has the hardest part, he plays the role of everyone sometimes :) 
If anyone one of my family or friends was not in my life there would be a large void because I communicate with them all on a daily or weekly basis - thanks to text messaging. Even if it is just a simple check-in and not a long drawn out conversation the fact that I know they are there is what counts. 

I had a snowboarding accident about ten years ago where I lost my vision for a couple minutes and had major trauma to my head. I still wonder what my life would have been like if I was unable to regain my vision that day on the mountain. This accident taught me to be grateful for all that I have in life and not take things for granted. My support system would have grown if I ended up losing my sight because I would have needed to learn Braille, rely on my other senses, and would have probably had another set of friends who I could relate to.