Profesional Development

Professional Development on the NAEYC page is a very important section. They have a separate tab with many different links, articles and conferences listed. The NAEYC understand the importance of teachers being life long learners right along with the children we teach. EC teachers should be ready to constantly refresh their knowledge and gain new insights through conferences and other trainings within the field. NAEYC offers online classes and learning sessions. They sell training DVD's and offer NAEYC’s Annual Conference and Institute for workshops, networking among other things. 

One thing that I took interest in was their national conference as well as the regional conference. I went to their two day conference in central NY last year and I was learned so much information that I was able to incorporate into my classroom and home visits! I would really love to be able to attend again this year if it is close enough. This year the annual conference is going to be in Washington D.C. at the end of November, I think that it is total possibility for me to attend!

There is a section on the website that is specifically for Early Childhood Research, but you have to sign up for the journal in order to read it. That was a little bit disappointing as I would like to read a sample or two before I went ahead and ordered it, as it was over $50.00 for the year. There is also another section that has updates and alerts in federal developments with a list of them by date recent to oldest. The most recent one was 3/25/14 Child Care & Development Block Grant Moving Through Congress.

I really like this website and am seriously considering becoming a member. I hope you all enjoy taking a peek or at least getting some information about this site from my blog.

Poverty In Denmark

First I would like to apologize for the late post this week. I have had some family issues that have kept met away from my computer and I was unable to check my email for the correspondence with my contact in Denmark. I did not get her email until this evening when I came home.The following is Annegrethe response to my questions, I hope you enjoy as I have learning about a new country's policies.

"I live in a country that takes very good care of all people and poverty can be hard to find. Here in Denmark the state will give you Money if you Loose your job or cant find any.....You will reseve Money as long as you do what they ask of you....that Means you sometimes have to take a not so good job, but if you dont you will not get payd.

 

Hospitals and doctors are free because we pay very high taxes but that Means everybody can get help.

When you are a student here in denmark you get Money from the state while you study, it is not much but enough to get by you can also get at very cheap studentloan. 

 

In my Work with children ofcourse some of the parents have more Money than others and you can see that in the clothes the children were. Sometimes children are mean and tease if you dont weare the rigth clothes, but that happens more often in school and not in the kindergarden where i Work.

We do have people WHO live in the streets, but they are often alcoholics or drug addicts

I personally pay to a child in Benin every month so he can go to school and his Family can get help to, i feel it is important to give when i have more eventhoug i dont get very much Money as a single mom, though the state helps me pay for my childs place in kindergarten"

Website

I chose to look at The Association for Childhood Education International. I chose this website because, of their mission statement:

"Our mission is to promote and support the
optimal education, development, and well-being
of children worldwide. We have consultative status
with the United Nations."

They are a group of educators and advocates worldwide who come together with the knowledge and passion for the education of children. I think that this would be a great group to follow, and gain knowledge from. I am already a member of NAEYC (national association for the education of young children.) So I thought that the next step would be to take a look at a group on a global scale. This might also be important reference for future assignments when communicating with our professional contacts from other countries. 

Here is the website in case anyone would like to take a closer look.
https://acei.org/about-us/about-us.html

 

UPDATE: professional contacts

I just wanted to give an update, that I had GREAT luck with my Facebook friends. I really was never a person for social media, but it sure came in handy for this assignment. I had several people with contacts for me, the first one is a woman named Vicky from Thailand, Annegrethe from Denmark,  Lars is from Kosovo/Denmark, and I have another friend putting me in contact with someone from Shri Lanka. I hope that this will help me gain a good glimpse of what other countries are doing for their children.

I also forgot to put the website that I was interested in looking at more. I chose to do zero to three, because I work with 2 year olds, and feel that if would be very beneficial for not just me but the kids I work with.

Estabishing contacts

So when I first took a look at this Blog assignment I was completely blown away and felt way out of my element. I had no idea where to start when I was looking through the global contacts. I felt absolutely clueless when glancing through trying to figure out I was going to choose. As I was scrolling through the list the first thing that popped into my head was the my cousins were in Ghana for 2 years with the peace corps and I decided that if they had a contact for that country then I was going to start there since it has personal interest to me. I did in fact find that they had a contact Rev Charles Arko-Nunoo. I liked this for a couple of reasons, Rev. Charles has an email address along with mailing address and a telephone number. I am not sure how in-depth we are going to have to get with our new contacts so I thought it might be helpful to have multiple ways to get in touch if I needed to.

The second person I chose to try and get a hold of was Siobhan Fitzpatrick from Ireland. I chose this person for a few different reasons, the first being that I know that I can have an open line of communication with this person based on our language similarities. I know that you can use the translators online, but when asking questions and trying to get ideas across, from personal use, they are SO not correct. The person reading can get the gist of what is being implied/said but it is not accurate. I also wanted to have someone in a country that I might be able to visit in the future. I have family friends who live here and have more of an opportunity to be able to go observe later in my life's journey.

The hardest part for me this week was trying to figure out a professional way to introduce myself to a total stranger, who has no idea that I will be contacting them. I sent out emails to the ones that were provided on the website asking them if they would be okay with giving knowledge of their education system and helping me to better understand the policies, expectations and programs that they offer in their countries. After I figured out how to construct what I wanted to say, I sent out about 6 emails, all of which were returned as bad email addresses. This worried me, until I realized that I know several people who live in other countries and I decided to get a hold of them to see if they had an contacts that I could pick their brains. I am waiting for responses at this time, but I will update once I have an answer. FINGERS CROSSED!