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.

My Connections to Play

As a child I did not have many toys - we spent most of our time outside playing. I had a baby doll I liked to carry around with me and I pretended to be the babies teacher, my siblings and I would play football in the front yard with our neighbor friends and I spent almost every weekend in the mountains skiing or snowboarding.

                                                               

Quotes that represent play in my childhood:

"Children should play outside and get dirty." - National Trust

  "Don't just tell your kids to be active and to get outside to play. Lead by example." - Summer Sanders

When I was a child my parents were outside playing with us and taking us to explore the beautiful Rocky Mountains (which are basically my backyard), which is why I chose the second quote. We cannot learn to play when we are younger if nobody shows us how. When it comes to the baby doll I use to carry around I engaged in conversations with my mom about the baby and she would treat it like a person. This showed me how to respect toys and people in general. 

I feel like play (for the most part) is completely different from when I was younger - watching my nieces and nephews grow up with iPhones, iPads, computers, and televisions in their rooms. We had one computer in my house (which was located in the kitchen so my parents knew what we were doing) and one television in the main room which was hardly turned on. This allowed us to go outside and use our imagination with our friends - nowadays all kids know is Superheroes and Ninja Turtles.

The importance of play and exploration in my childhood has made me learn to love nature, use my imagination, and live a healthier lifestyle. As an educator I have tried to express the importance of playing outside to my classroom children - there are some kids who don't like playing outside and want to be inside. These are the children I tend to spend more one-on-one time with on the playground to show them what to do and how they can have fun. Playing in the centers is also essential for children but I feel that is not where our children struggle, I feel that their exploration in nature is struggling.