My Family Culture

The challenge of uprooting your life and being evacuated to another country with a completely different culture is a difficult task to swallow. What's even harder is choosing just three items to take with your family? Just three small items to describe your culture.

For my family there is an important point to make, besides the human members we have three pets. These are included in my family, not the items we would take. I think this is an important point to make because these animals are not just pets but family. Lucky (dog), Thomas (cat), and Izzy (cat) are all additional members with my fiance and daughter.

For our family, one of our photo books would need to come with us. This would be needed because it holds precious family moments and photos of our departed dog, Cinnamon. The second small item we would take would be one of our laptops. We hold most of our photos on the laptop and even in third world countries you can find locations that would allow for the use of computers. Our laptop/tablet would also allow for the communication between other family member through video (when accessible). The third item is more difficult to come up with, there is just so much that we use on a regular basis that describes our culture as a family. But it would probably be a kindle/some books for our daughter. We are both avid readers and love to read to our daughter. Without that, I think our lives would be disrupted.

Our photos are important because they show our families history. This is important to me because each family holds different experiences in a different light. Our adventures and big moments are the most important to us, this is shown through our photo books. COmmunication between our extended families is very important to our small family. I come from a loud Italian American family that is connected through many generations, where my fiance has a very large extended family of first cousins and aunts/uncles. Keeping in touch is important. Literature is important to us because it shows how important learning is to us as a family.

If someone told me I could not keep all the items upon arrival I would be very upset and frustrated. Unable to live where I wanted with my family and being kept from our extended family in a culture unlike our current one would probably break my spirit if I was told I was unable to keep what little I had left.

This exercise taught me that there is a lot that we could live without but the few items that mean the most I would not part with, but the most of all is keeping us all together.

building research competencies throughout my career

This course has opened my eyes to another level of early childhood education/studies. The methods of conducting research have expanded in my eyes and opened new career paths for the future, as well. I enjoyed learning about triangulation and the methods used during qualitative research. As a student, I am familiar with research but until this course we never discuss multiple methods data collection.

 After this course, I realized how in-depth the planning and designing of research studies can be to complete a competent study. Each step is important to the overall completion of the study, itself, and the contribution to the early childhood field of study.

The one challenge that I met well learning about research methods, was the amount of time needed to conduct these studies. I believe that for a study to be valid, the research must be given the time to complete all aspects without any time constraint to pressure their results.

The final question to answer would be how my perception of the field changed throughout this course. I would not say my perception changed about the early childhood field. However, my eyes are open to the research that still needs to be completed and the advancements that need to be made within the field to better serve the children we educate and their families.

It has been a great eight weeks working with my fellow colleagues and learning about their work experiences.

Early Childhood Australia

I chose to look into the Early Childhood Australia webpage. Below I have listed to link and basic information provide by Dr. Myers. 

Early Childhood Australia: This is the Australian equivalent to the U.S. based NAEYC. You can access several links to early childhood research from the menu on the left side of the home page.
http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/

Some of the current research topics being explore "down under" are school readiness, baby sleeping, child health and childhood obesity, and the Early Learning Years Framework. These resource themes are available on the sidebar on their homepage. 

I was wondering around the webpage when I noticed their code of ethics portion after exploring I was excited to see a literature review within this section. Ethics is very important for me as an educator and student.  

I enjoyed reading a bit about the Every Child magazine and the guidelines for authors. 

What is Equity?

For my research project simulation I will be researching how equity effects early childhood education and the educators who work in the field. From a professional stand point this research effects me as I review staff requirements and pay rates. Personally, I feel early childhood educators need to be given more respect and offered more training within  the field. Although my overall focus is equity in the field of early childhood education the subtropics will be focused around educator requirements and standards of learning for children. This is a very broad beginning but I think with a little refining and suggestions for directions from colleagues this topic can be researched in depth.

Consequences of International Early Childhood Programs

After speaking with colleagues, i believe there are several consequences to learning about the international early childhood field. One is the idea that we are virtually unable to help those impoverished countries reach their goals in the classroom. This can lead to a positive consequence of changing goals to serve overseas in those countries that need help within the early childhood field. Another consequence can be a personal drive to join organizations to help those in need of help.

My personal goal is to contribute to missions that go to impoverished countries to help children. Working with my program to create care packages from the children here to children there.

Ghana; Trends in Early Childhood Education

Ghana is a small nation in Africa. A colleague of mine, works over there with children for months on end for missions. She brings love, faith, and education to those children. Unfortunately, I have not heard back her response this week.

As alternative I looked into the podcast. The United Nations education site explores different aspect of the system. I explored the quality section of the webpage. This section discusses "High quality childcare, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, promotes motivation, confidence, good cognitive and linguistic development and school readiness."  

I will post up about Ghana as soon as I hear back from her. I want to apologize for the short post. My family has been going through a rough patch this past week. We thought we may have to put our beloved dog down. But thankfully she has made a  turn for the better and seems to be healing a bit. Thank you all for your understanding.

Exploring More of Zero to Three

After a long week, it was enjoyable to explore more of the ZerotoThree organization webpage.

I decided to look as a parent today: Exploring the Resources for Parents Link.
This link directed me towards an area which revolved around information for parents of children birth to three years old. Searching more into this area I found informative brochures and fact sheets about child development, milestones, other valuable information as a parent. I decided to read the pamphlet for the 6-9 month old (my daughter is just 6 months old). I gathered some great information to pass along to my fiance regarding the importance of bath time play and structured good night.

The website also offers information regarding the Early Learning Challenge Grant, a federal grant to help support early learning environments for infants and toddlers. I have learned to explore things and see where it takes me. After looking at the website for six weeks I just found a great new resource for parents and friends that have young children.