What I Learned, What I'll Do

The 3 consequences of learning about the international early childhood field for my professional and personal growth are:

The priorities for the field we have in the United States are not the same as in other countries.  Examples of the differences are:

 Obesity vs. Famine

            Health Care vs. Aids

 Clean Air vs. Clean Drinking Water.

2.  There are people, all over the world willing to share their knowledge.

3. There's a vast amount of information available on many subjects related to early childhood from a number of sources and resources to both help and share.

Setting one goal for the field related to international awareness of issues and trends and the spirit of collegial relations was difficult.  After a lot of thought I've decided, at our next planning meeting of our local and state AEYC, to advocate for inviting an international speaker to the annual conference to address pressing early childhood issues, hopefully within the next year.

International Early Childhood Education Related to My Professional Goals

     I accessed the Unesco Policy Brief on Early Childhood and chose The Workforce in 'Developed' Countries:  Basic Structures and Education as well as Quality for the topic of my blog this week.
     As a former Education Specialist for Head Start, Curriculum Coordinator on my most recent job and an annual trainer for the Community College District, I aspire to Teach Teachers of Young Children.  This is my professional goal because I see the need in the Early Childhood community for well educated and trained teachers who are responsible for leading, guiding and educating the children they serve.  There are plenty child care workers in the field who need the basic core courses before they even start learning Piaget or Vygotsky.  I have corrected spelling on lesson plans, word tense on labels in the classroom and how teachers initiate meaningful conversations with children.  These teachers love what they are doing but it can be detrimental to the children, concerning to the parents and embarrassing to program when a sign is posted with "Feets are for walking" on the list of classroom rules or "Look at what we done" on an art display!
     The Early Childhood workforce is often made up of a diverse group of pre-school teachers, care workers, informal carers and other professionals.  Adequate training and work conditions are essential so they can integrate the content and practice of early childhood care and education (Unesco).  Many of these teachers don't look at themselves as professionals due to the inequity of the salaries.  They must however prepare themselves by getting the education they need and staying up-to-date with current trends.
     There is a divide in early childhood services in many countries.   Divided systems of services, with differences in administration, access, costs to parents funding, regulation and in the structure and education of the workforce for nursery or child care workers and 'teachers'.  Typically, the 'teachers' have higher levels of basic education, better pay and other employment conditions and greater social status Moss, P.).  I remember as a classroom teacher for toddlers telling my soon to be sister-in-law that I was a teacher.  She was very impressed.  she asked me what grade I taught and I told her I taught toddlers in a child care facility.  Her whole attitude changed and she said,"Oh, so all you do is watch kids all day"!  I had more education then as now, than she did but she discounted my work because it wasn't in, what she called "real school".
     A number of countries have moved towards integrating the divided systems.  In the 1960s this took place in the Nordic countries and in the late'80s and '90s New Zealand, Spain, Slovenia, England and Scotland integrated their systems (Moss, P.).  We can see the United States working more on integration of services and quality by requiring more education and training of child care workers and professional development plans to help in their growth.  Education might refer to school, college or university-based courses and qualifications and training to those based on the workplace and learning by doing, including competence-based qualifications, with emphasis on a practical way of transferring knowledge (Moss, P.).  Restructuring the workforce around a 'core' profession will increase costs, both for the education of workers and their employment.  Once early childhood workers are educated at the same level as school teachers, their is a compelling case for comparable pay and conditions.  The question is, who will pay for a properly qualified staff? (Moss,P.)    
     These are my ideas as related to what I read.  In my opinion, it is important that all teachers and administrators learn and spend time in early childhood settings, so that they will understand the importance of that time period in a child's life in relationship to their overall development.  When they see the hard work it takes, the low wages paid and the gratification received when milestones are met, then Early Childhood teachers will be more respected for what they do. I would like for policy makers to also spend time in an early childhood classroom for one pay period with all the responsibilities of the classroom (of course there needs to be a qualified worker with them) and receive the pay, so they can experience the difference in the work and the pay.  I would like the Early Childhood teachers to experience working in Reggio Emilio to see the similarities/differences in their work with young children.  Until that time, when I teach those teachers of young children, my first priority is to let them know they are professionals, they are to be respected and they have a voice in demanding respect for their, no OUR profession.



     References:

Moss, P. (2004).  The Early Childhood Workforce in 'Developed' Countries:  Basic Structures and Education UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood No. 27 October 2004 Retrieved from





http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001374/137402e.pdf

UNESCO Quality Retrieved from  http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/quality     

Sharing Web Resources - deux

In a previous blog, National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI) is the resource I want to share with my colleagues at http://www.nbcdi.org.  We have discussed quality, so I decided to search the NBCDI website for information on that topic.  What I found was interesting (http://teach.nbcdi.org/about ) and compelled me to search other suggested links.
In 1990, Child Care Services Association created the T.E.A.C.H. (Teacher Education and Compensation Helps) Early Childhood Project.  This project was created to address the issues of under-education, poor compensation and high-turnover within the early childhood workforce.  I learned the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Project gives scholarships to child care workers to complete course work in Early Childhood Education and to increase their compensation.
T.E.A.C.H. is built on four components:

Education:  T.E.A.C.H. helps participants to earn a required number of college credit hours in early childhood education each year.
Scholarship:  T.E.A.C.H. offers counseling and financial support to pay for college courses and fees, books, travel and time away from work.
Compensation:  T.E.A.C.H. recipients earn a compensation bonus or raise after successful completion of a year of education.
Committment:  T.E.A.C.H. recipients agree to continue their service as a child care professional in their current early care and education setting.

Having these components to rely on helps programs improve the quality of their staff which improves the quality of the program. 

The website provides information on eligibility, scholarships available, forms to complete, presentations, FAQs, resources and contact information.  It also has a link to http://www.childcareservices.org which addresses affordability,accessibility and high quality child care for all young children.
There is a newsletter called T.E.A.C. H. Speaks, which includes a list of the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood states and other links.  Those links are as follows:

Center for the Study of Child Care Employment:  http://www.irle.berkeley.edu/cscce   This website provides information on Access to education, rewarding environments, workforce data and leadership development.

National Registry Alliance:  http://www.registryalliance.org  There is a policy brief on this website titled "Degreesin Context:  Asking the Right Questions About Preparing Skilled and Effective Teachers of Young Children

National Child Care Resource & Referral Association:  http://www.naccrra.org  The Mission of NACCRRA is to promote national policies and partnerships to advance the development and learning of all children and provide vision, leadership and support to community child care resource and referral.

The new information I gleaned from the NBCDI links was the existence of 3 early childhood workforce data systems in the United States. The 3 database systems are:  early childhoodeducation (ECE) workforce registries, T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood and NACCRRAWaRE/T-TAM used by child care resource and referral agencies across the nation.  I also learned that all the states, except for 2, and Washington D.C. use these systems and that half of the states use more than one of the systems.  All 3 systems collect similar ECE workforce information and that each system was developed for particular program purposes.  These programs are independent of each other which complicates efforts to align the system within and across states.

References:
http://nbcdi.org
http://teach.nbcdi/about
http://childcareservices.org
http://teach.nbcdi.org/files/2010/12/NBCDI-TEACH-Press-Release.pdf
http://www.osse.dc.gov