Sharing Web Resources

The newsletter I subscribed to is Zero to Three http://www.zerotothree.org/. The reason I choose this site is for personal growth to learn more about a child’s development from ages 0 – 3.  This is an age group that I have not worked with a lot as a teacher. So as a Director I want to learn as much as I can to be able to help educate my staff, parents and community leaders. 

This is a very comprehensive site that gives Parents, Professionals and Policy Makers information about young children’s development. This could be from developmental milestones to pod casts.  The site has four main topic areas, Behavior and Development, Maltreatment, Care and Education and Public Policy. Zero to Three is a non-profit - research based organization. Their mission is to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life (Zero to Three: Early Experiences Matters, 2014).

The child trend that caught my eye was “Ensuring Assessments and Services for All Maltreated Infants and Toddlers.”  This specific article was from, “Highlights from Changing the Course for Infants and Toddlers: A Survey of State Child Welfare Policies and Initiatives” (Zero-Three: Early Experiences Matters, 2014).

The importance of this article is to note that not all states have adequate programs in place for children who have been a victim of maltreatment.  Only 26 out of 46 states have policies in place for referring a maltreated child within a certain amount of time to a specialist for further assessments. The time frames are very broad from 2 – 60 days depending on the state.

As Early Childhood Educators we continue to improve the quality of care for children in classrooms. We also have to be advocates for children in all settings. If they have been placed in foster care for maltreatment, we have to make sure they get the best possible care and referrals to specialists sooner than later. There needs to be a better system across the board to give children, no matter what state they live in consistency and help when they are in need. 

Reference

Zero to Three: Early Experiences Matters. (2014, January 12). Retrieved from Zero to Three:
http://www.zerotothree.org/: 

http://www.zerotothree.org/policy/docs/ensuring-assessments-and-services.pdf

  

Establishing Professional Contacts

This assignment started off with a lot of road blocks. The two World Forum web addresses both said not found.  http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/about.php  NOT Found. http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php  NOT Found.  

WOW!  As I researched further, I found the following addresses to access. https://www.worldforumfoundation.org/about-us/world-forum-alliance/#issa and http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/working-groups/nature/join-nacc/ . I found personal e-mail addresses and have tried to contact a person in New Zealand, Haiti, and at the World Forum Foundation organization. 

As of this writing I have had no response back to my e-mails but I will keep trying, because I think this will be the more informative way that I would like to learn about other areas. There is the possibility that I will have to use the alternative approach.

I went into The Global Alliance of NAEYC for early childhood professionals worldwide:
http://www.naeyc.org/resources/partnership/globalalliance and found the web site of

International Step by Step Association – Haiti   http://www.issa.nl/network/haiti/haiti.html this is one organization I would like to explore. I am very interested in early childhood programming in areas hit by natural disaster along with children who live in poverty like in Guatemala and how their lives are affected and progressing. These are countries I have been researching in previous classes.

I think this will be a fun project but also a time consuming one. I have also wished I would have former student’s home e-mails to contact. Throughout my Graduate Certificate degree there have been students from around the world who I have communicated with but as I look over their previous blogs, they have not posted since finishing their degrees. They were from Korea, Iran, India, and Jamaica. It would have been interesting to get their perspectives.

Quotes and Professional Thanks

To my Colleagues and Professor,

Thank you for your insights and wisdom throughout the Child Development Class. I value your knowledge, challenges and support. I wish you the best in your future endeavors with children and families.

Best of Luck – Diana

“We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

George Bernard Shaw

“If a child cannot learn in the way we teach, we must teach in a way the child can learn.”

Unknown

Viewing Children Holistically

To view young children holistically would refer to looking at the total experience of the young child. Every sense absorbing information, from the moment a child is born and as they age they accumulate the information in their brains and gradually piece it all together to achieve learning. The aspects of development are linked together: each in turn affects one another.  When children play the holistic development is encouraged. I wish that children could be assessed during play. They are being creative and letting nothing stop them from having a good time. There is no test anxiety. If you think about children who are put into a relaxed situation how much easier it would be to assess their knowledge and progress. 

I wanted to look at Guatemala’s education system. It was very difficult to find anything out about their assessment or measurement system. The average grade for a child to stay in school is to the third grade.  The first standardized learning tests were completed in 2004. This was an assessment test. The PRONERE tests are sample-based, nationally representative, and norm-referenced, and contain 40 questions in each area under assessment. Guatemala lacks a unified national curriculum, and proposals on standards have not been successful (Educational Assessment Systems in Latin America, 2013).

In the United States we are so lucky to have an opportunity to go to school and learn. Our children can grow up to be young adults before they have to go to work or even leave our homes. Children in other countries are not so lucky. Guatemala is ranked 3rd worst in the world in child nutrition. There is human trafficking.  In both rural areas and cities, thousands of children are victimized through abuse, forced labor and absolute neglect.  I think when we look at the problems of Guatemalan children, assessment and measurements are not as important as basic needs and survival of childhood (Kids Alive International, 2013).

References: 

Educational Assessment Systems in Latin America. (2013, December 5). Retrieved from http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/Ferrer.pdf

Kids Alive International. (2013, December 5). Retrieved from Guatemala: http://www.kidsalive.org/around-the-world/latin-america/guatemala/