Reflection

Learning about early childhood on an international basis we will have a better understanding of some children, open our eyes to the world around us, and adds to every teachers portfolio. As I stated in my reflection this week I believe that we, as educators, can learn from each and every person. 

My goal is to continue interacting with my contact from Canada and try to learn as much as possible from her. This concept has given me an idea for my own workplace as well, how great would it be for other teachers in my program to connect with someone internationally on a professional level. My director seemed interested in this concept, as well. 

My Contacts - Part 3

I have enjoyed talking with my contact in Canada, the few times we have been able to connect.

It seems that Canada is very similar to where I live in the United States. They are struggling to teach others the importance of early education and are constantly asking the community for help. She has an equal opportunity for education and training as I do, which she seems to be taking full advantage of. As far as her education goes, she is pursuing her Master's in Early Childhood Education, as well. She also has a diploma in Early Childhood Education and an BA in Child Studies. 

Her professional goals are her education and parent engagement. She would love to have her families more involved in her classroom and has already improved on that this school year. I am waiting for her response as to how she has made that change. I have had a lot of parent engagement but could always use more ideas so I can continue to switch my classroom style around.

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