Sharing Web Resources

NAEYC has many resources on their website to choose from including publications, accreditation, professional development and public policy. One topic I found particularly interesting to me that is relevant to my professional development is the matter of childhood trauma and how it impacts children’s abilities to learn, create healthy attachments, form supportive relationships, and follow classroom expectations.  It also has negative behavioral, emotional, neurobiological, and developmental repercussions throughout children’s schooling and their adult life. Children who experience trauma are two-and-a-half times more likely to fail a grade in school than their nontraumatized peers. They score lower on standardized tests, have higher rates of suspension and expulsion, and are more likely to be placed in special education classrooms.  When evaluating children for special needs, that is an important area to include in the process.

NAEYC is an advocate for play and has tips for parents to help them understand how important it is for their child’s development.

Here are 10 things every parent should know:

1.  Children learn through their play.  Don’t underestimate the value of play. Children learn and develop: cognitive skills – like math and problem solving in a pretend grocery store; physical abilities – like balancing blocks and running on the playground; new vocabulary – like the words they need to play with toy dinosaurs; social skills – like playing together in a pretend car wash; literacy skills – like creating a menu for a pretend restaurant.

2. Play is healthy.  Play helps children grow strong and healthy. It also counteracts obesity issues facing many children today.

3. Play reduces stress. Play helps your children grow emotionally. It is joyful and provides an outlet for anxiety and stress.

4. Play is more than meets the eye.  Play is simple and complex. There are many types of play: symbolic, sociodramatic, functional, and games with rules-to name just a few. Researchers study play’s many aspects:  how children learn through play, how outdoor play impacts children’s health, the effects of screen time on play, to the need for recess in the school day.

5. Make time for play.   As parents, you are the biggest supporters of your children’s learning. You can make sure they have as much time to play as possible during the day to promote cognitive, language, physical, social, and emotional development.   

6. Play and learning go hand-in-hand.  They are not separate activities. They are intertwined. Think about them as a science lecture with a lab. Play is the child’s lab.

7. Play outside.  Remember your own outdoor experiences of building forts, playing on the beach, sledding in the winter, or playing with other children in the neighborhood. Make sure your children create outdoor memories too.

8. There’s a lot to learn about play.  There’s a lot written on children and play. Here are some NAEYC articles and books about play.  David Elkind’s The Power of Play (Da Capo, 2007 reprint) is also a great resource.

9. Trust your own playful instincts.  Remember as a child how play just came naturally? Give your children time for play and see all that they are capable of when given the opportunity.

10. Play is a child’s context for learning.  Children practice and reinforce their learning in multiple areas during play. It gives them a place and a time for  learning that cannot be achieved through completing a worksheet. For example, in playing restaurant, children write and draw menus, set prices, take orders, and make out checks.  Play provides rich learning opportunities and leads to children’s success and self-esteem.

We as parents want our children to excel academically so we simply accept school's decisions to remove play from the curriculum, when in fact it is one of the biggest mistakes schools can make. Bottom line: Let the children play!!

References

http://www.naeyc.org/yc/article/creating_trauma-sensitive_classrooms_Statman-Weil

http://families.naeyc.org/learning-and-development/child-development/10-things-every-parent-should-know-about-play               

http://families.naeyc.org/learning-and-development/child-development/10-things-every-parent-should-know-about-play

NAEYC Podcast- Dual Language Learners

Participants:  Rae Pica, Jerri Daniel-Hosts

                         Karen Nemeth, Ed. M 

This podcast was about Dual and English Language Learners (DLL), (ELL) and I learned that there is a difference between the two.  First of all, Karen states that all preschool children are ELL which I hadn’t considered but such is the case.  DLL is where children of different ethnicities not only learn their home language but English as well. 

She also stated many parents only want their children to learn English and not their native language because they feel, especially living in the US that English is more important to their child’s academic success.  Research shows that when a child’s native language is used as well as English, it actually helps them to learn English more quickly and in fact, depriving them of their home language carries negative implications as well as their identity, which is an integral part of that child’s healthy development

Early childhood educators should encourage parents to use their native language in the home and for those parents who speak little English, to assist them by simplifying paperwork, using visuals, get translators, and try to learn common key words and make and keep eye contact.

Child Poverty in Bangladesh

Three insights I gained studying Bangladesh on Child Poverty from UNCEF’s page include:

• The extent of poverty declines according to the educational level of the parents. For example, 53% of households that have a household head with no education live below the upper poverty line, compared to only 19 per cent of households where the head has completed secondary education as a minimum.
•  Male headed households with children are more likely to live in poverty than comparable female-headed households. The research did not reveal why, but I am quite interested to know because I would have thought the opposite was true.
•  49% of households with children have at least one adult that suffers with a chronic illness.

There are key recommendations for policies and programs with regards to nutrition, health, education, child protection, water, sanitation, laws, and policy.  Because there are so many I will only list one from each category:

•  Expand nationwide evidence-based and proven nutrition interventions and improve coordination of nutrition programs, including: use of multiple micronutrients for control and prevention of anemia; exclusive breastfeeding and timely introduction of appropriate complementary feeding; and iron and folic acid supplementation for pregnant women.
•  Accelerate implementation of existing policies and strategies that are most likely to reduce risks to child well-being, and increase gender and age sensitive care and support services for Most at Risk Adolescents (MARA) and Especially Vulnerable Adolescents (EVA).
•  Access to safe drinking water and sanitation needs to be consolidated, expanded and sustained. Special emphasis should be given to arsenic affected, flood and disaster prone areas.
•  Alternative care facilities for children deprived of parental care and children in contact with the law should be increased and developed. The existing network of institutional care should be transformed into a family-type environment and monitoring and supervision mechanisms should be strengthened in order to ensure the quality of care.
• The inclusion of children, who are out of school, including those from ethnic minorities, needs the highest level priority.
•  Child related national legislation should be harmonized with the United Nations Committee on  the Rights of the Child Concluding Observations and Recommendations for the Government of Bangladesh 2009. A comprehensive child protection policy, addressing early marriage, child labor and street children issues, should be developed that articulates a clear and structured action plan to ensure preventive and protective measures for children.

Reference

http://www.naeyc.org/newsroom/NAEYCradio

NAEYC

http://www.naeyc.org

Vision Statement

All young children thrive and learn in a society dedicated to ensuring they reach their full potential.

Mission Statement

NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse, dynamic early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.

Values and Beliefs

Our core values are defined in the NAEYC Code of Ethical Conduct and are deeply rooted in the early childhood profession. In addition, we seek to be a high–performing, inclusive organization that is enriched by and continually grows from our commitment to diversity, as embodied by our core beliefs.

One of the topics I am interested in as it pertains to this course is the following:

Effective Family Engagement Principles

What does effective family engagement look like in action? There’s no one formula, but all 15 programs recognized by NAEYC’s Engaging Diverse Families project acts on the six principles of family engagement with many best practices in common. ·         Principle 1: Programs invite families to participate in decision making and goal setting for their child ·         Principle 2: Teachers and programs engage families in two-way communication  ·         Principle 3: Programs and teachers engage families in ways that are truly reciprocal  ·         Principle 4: Programs provide learning activities for the home and in the community ·         Principle 5: Programs invite families to participate in program-level decisions and wider advocacy efforts ·         Principle 6: Programs implement a comprehensive program-level system of family engagement

The NAEYC has identified many programs throughout the US that are exemplary in their family engagement practices.  The ones I identified in my state is Sheltering Arms Early Education and Family Center–International Village.  My goal is to explore this company further as I am quite interested in how they operate and reach out to the community.

Establishing Professional Contacts

My goal is to establish contact with at least two Early Childhood professionals located outside of the US so that I can expand my knowledge of some of the issues and trends we are currently studying that affect not only children and families in US but all over the world.

I have contacted via email the following professionals from NAEYC Global Alliance:

The National Early Childhood Development Alliance
Mr. Eric Atmore
P.O. Box 2363
Clarinch, 7740
South Africa
Tel: 27 21 683 2420
Email: cecd@iafrica.com

Pacific Early Childhood Education Research Association
Dr. Betty Chan Po-king
20 Somerset Rd. Kowloon Tong, Kowloon
Hong Kong
Tel: 852-23396005
Email: sannas@ycef.com

Center for Early Childhood Care & Development
Blesilda Rios

Philippines
Email: child_ceccd@yahoo.com

World Association of Early Childhood Educators
Juan Sanchez

Spain
Email: jsm@waece.org

 I have identified myself as a Walden University student from the US who is currently studying Issues and Trends in Early Childhood Education that affect not only children here in the US but globally as well and would to like touch base to collect information, obtain opinions, and experiences that may relate to some of the topics discussed during this course.

Currently I haven’t heard back from anyone, but I have resent the email s just in case it ended up in their spam and included "Early Childhood Education from the US" in the subject line.  I also sent each contact an email as opposed to a group email to avoid spam filters. If I don’t hear from anyone by next week, I will consider Option 2.

Expanding My Resources

As I perused the list of organizations in our resources section, I chose to follow NAEYC because they are a reliable resource.  They are well known, address many different topics and have a wide variety of communication tools from blogs, tweets and newsletters.  Also their website is easy to navigate and I don’t have to spend valuable time trying to sift through irrelevant information to locate what I need.

References

Global Alliance for the Education of Young Children

https://oldweb.naeyc.org/globalalliance/

NAEYC

http://www.naeyc.org/