Week 5

I have not had any luck with any responses, so I went to the website http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/ and was intrigued by a section I read about Theresa Betancourt, who is studying and researching the effects of global adversity and working to provide the evidence and research of child soliders in Sierra Leone and children who have lost their families to HIV/AIDS in Rwanda. Her work focused on findings and research of understanding the intergenerational transmission of emotional behavioral disruptions due to war. It amazes me it seems like one person like her, with the right knowledge, resources, and position, can make a difference. 
She is also working to provide an intervention for families to use in Rwanda, to help them overcome their negative experiences and adversity, and view life with a sense of hope and knowledge that even though they may have a certain kind of illness, they can still be good parents and care for their children, and be a family. So far, through a pilot intervention, there have been great impacts on the children and families. “There are very few prevention-oriented interventions in global mental health for children,” Betancourt notes. “And doing that work earlier in a preventive model is going to be so much more cost-effective than waiting for [children] to get severely depressed and suicidal, or drop out of school. Then, you’re trying to undo those very severe sorts of consequences.”  I can't agree more with her statement. The sooner you fix things and change them for the better, then sooner you will see short term influences and eventually the long term influences of your changes. It's more difficult to go back and try to undo negative impacts.

I believe that Betancourt is definitely onto a great path, helping these children and families overcome adversity and the negative effects of war on these children. I can forsee these interventions also taking place here in the US and other countries, maybe it the forms she has already established, but also in other forms, such as helping military families, families living in poverty, immigrant families, and more. 

References:
http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/

Update on NAEYC Wesbite

www.naeyc.org

I feel like there are many sections that are relevant to my current professional development. I think the sections on play, family engagement, DAP, and Common Core are especially important right now for me.  

One of the topics on the website was about Anti-Bias Education: Holidays. This section discussed the importance of teaching all holidays that children may experience, especially since the main three are Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. There is such a diversity of students at my school, and in my class I have a few students who celebrate holidays other than those main three. One statement I read explained that we should teach about the various holidays, not just the main three and to invite the families in to share or help teach about the specific holiday that they celebrate. Every year I do teach about various holidays, however after reading that statement I decided to contact the parents of my student who celebrates many of the Indian holidays. I asked if they would be able to share some information on the holidays they celebrate and asked if they would be willing to come in to share and help me teach about it. They ended up sending me a lot of information and a power point to help and I am waiting to hear back about them coming in to help support the lesson. I think this was a great suggestion that NAEYC gave and I am interested to see how things go.

Under the public policy tab, they give more information about the Federal developments and updates/alerts. I love checking the update/alerts because they post information pretty frequently. An article was just posted about new resources telling about the need to invest in high-quality early childhood education. http://www.naeyc.org/policy/federal/11_08_13

One insight I gained was the number of consequences that early childhood experiences when the Federal Government shuts down. Head Start feels major impacts, including having to close down because of the lack of federal funds or being shut down because of Sequestration. Other programs were/are unable to take new applications during the shutdown.

Global Fund for Children and India - Week 3

It has been quite a challenge to contact those outside of the U.S. I still have not had any luck.

The podcast I listened to was the Global Fund for Children (GFC) - Philanthropy Chat: Victoria Dunning, Vice President of Programs at the Fund.

From the podcast I gathered a few important pieces of information:

The programs serve up to 20 year olds and the focus on what children need to thrive to become a product adult. Those things include education/learning, being safe, having a healthy mind and body, and their enterprise( becoming a productive, contributing adult to the community).

The CBO - community based organizations - understand and know things that we do not know. For example, the family living behind that door with 10 people inside one small area. The CBOs are important, in that they provide information from the field and their expereicnes to help the Global Fund for Children and vice versa.

Global Fund for Children tries to support these CBOs with 3 main pillars - money (to support what they’re already doing), value at it’s services (how do we make this money go further and faster), and knowledge management (grantee to grantee, bringing them together to share best practices and knowledge exchange.) They work together as a partnership, sharing information and knowledge from Grantee partners to Global Fund for Children and vice versa. They focus on how they can share knowledge with others. Innovations are a focus as well. They look for some of the next best ideas in working on these global solutions to fix problems and make changes to help children and families.

GFC is considered a “scout”. GFC looks for potential groups that are working their way up to being a National, Regional, or Global group and looking to receive funding. These grants they will receive range from $5,000 to $30,000 dollars. They also focus on the groups and organizations that would not be receiving funding; the groups that get missed or go under the radar. They also attempt to reach children where they are - anywhere around the world.

India:

It was interesting to me to read that the education system in India struggles to effectively service children. I also found it interesting that their enrollment rate has improved, however, 20% of the world’s out of school children are accounted for in India. Instead of receiving an education, many children under 16 years of age are working. The most surprising information I learned was of the discrimination against females in India. I have previously known that in some cultures, the women are only to wear certain clothes or dress in a certain way, without their faces showing, or with full dress from head to toe, however I did not realize the extent to which India’s discrimination is present. Gender biases for females start at birth and continue for the rest of their lives, into the next generation. Women in India are viewed as inferior; less females attending school, higher male to female ratio, female children experiencing neglect, more young female children working, and a high maternal mortality rate are all influences of this gender discrimination. Interestingly enough, the discrimination continues because of the  males being perceived as more important in the family structure, although school enrollment has risen for girls. There are programs in place that are working for the welfare of the children, women, disabled and elderly. A state plan of action for children has been implemented, focusing on the welfare of the children.

References:

http://www.globalfundforchildren.org/about-us/press-room/gfc-on-air/

http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=countryo#11

Website and Info

I have chosen to study NAEYC’s website. The organization’s primary focus is to provide educational and developmental services and resources for young children. http://www.naeyc.org/

As of right now, one of my favorite parts of the website is the DAP section. It offers great tips, resources, and information on developmentally appropriate practice from infants to early primary grades. I found the 3 Core Considerations of DAP interesting, in that they provide people 3 valuable points in being knowledgeable about DAP. I believe and agree that in order to know what is developmentally appropriate, you need to be knowledgeable in child development and learning, what is individually appropriate for each child, and what is culturally important to the child and his/her family. NAEYC’s DAP section also offers information on the principles of child development, guidelines for effective teaching, and teaching tips/strategies. I will be exploring these sections under DAP as well. I have a passion for learning about child development and DAP.

One article that was recently posted on NAEYC under the Public Policy, Federal Government - updates and alerts caught my eye because of the statistics and information on the demographics, poverty, child development, parent well-being, neighborhood and family context, and public/private sector supports. I have saved this article to my computer and my blog so that I can refer and take more time to read it in the coming weeks. See this link: http://www.childtrends.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/MCCORMICK-FINAL.pdf

Contacting EC professionals outside of the US & EC website

I have not had any success in gaining contact from the agencies I emailed. I have decided to do my own search for schools and contacts through googling schools in the United Kingdom and schools in Austrailia. I have now emailed about 4 more people and I am hoping to hear back soon. I may end up trying to call. It has been rather difficult to contact people outside of the US, especially when you are not contacting someone you know or someone that is available. It would be helpful if this course had a list of specific people that you could contact, knowing that they will most likely respond. I think that there should be some kind of forum or board (kind of like Pinterest), that will enable early childhood professionals from around the world to communicate and contact each other. I may eventually have to do the alternative to part 1.

I have decided to take a closer look at NAEYC. I think it will be a great resource and share a lot of information that I can use and learn.