Week 1: Professional Contacts and Resources

Week 1: Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources This week I was not able to get a solid contact from all my emails, still waiting for someone to hopefully come through. While waiting I went ahead and listened to the world forum foundation’s episode 6 with Meridas Eka Yora who is the founder and director of the institution Fajar Hiayah for Islamic Education and Director of the Yayasan Fajar Hidayah Foundation. Meridas developed three boarding schools for children orphaned as a result of that devastation in Aceh. Aceh, a special territory on the Southern tip of Indonesia, was the closest land to the epicenter of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, in which more than 225 Indonesians were killed and 500,000 left homeless. Meridas talked about how he started the foundation and that it helps many children and has grown to over 2,000 students as well as other children in need. There are seven schools as of 2009. (www.worldforumfoundation.org) The organization that I am interested in is the: Association for Childhood Education International (www.acei.org). This organization was founded in 1982 and they are involved on the international level so they can help advocate for children everywhere. ACEI also advocates for teachers and parents. They have a blog, radio broadcasts, e-news and global news as ways to communicate. I will continue to explore and share over the next eight weeks.

Break before next class!!

Hello everyone, Hope everyone is enjoying our little break from class-getting many things done for work before the rush begins for EDUC-6162, Issues and Trends in ECE field. Is anyone going to be in class with me? Hope everyone did great in our last class and relax for the holiday and get ready to jump in again :-) See ya on the 4th!!

"My Supports"

“My Supports” The supports I have around me are my family: husband, daughter and son. These are my immediate supports because these people help me stay focused, give me the support needed to continue my education and do the job that I love. My husband has been by my side for over thirty years and supported me in whatever I wanted to do, we have always helped each other achieve our dreams of education (while in the Air Force it was his dream to obtain his Bachelors and become an Officer) and when it was my turn to continue my education (after our children graduated high school) I returned to school and obtained my Associates degree at the same time my daughter graduated from George Mason University with her Bachelors degree. My daughter supports me by being there for me to bounce ideas off of and help me understand how to put my thoughts onto paper when I need it. She is there for me when I am having a rough day and I am there for her as well. My son supports me by being my computer wizard and helping me to learn new things for my education and job. He is always just a phone call away for me to ask how I do this. All of these people support me through my goal of getting healthy and fit again-by cooking me healthy meals, going on walks or bike rides with me. My challenge would be to move to another country again and have to leave my support system behind and start over. Even though I have lived overseas many times, I always had my family with me and now my children have their own families so I would not have those supports with me. I would have to build new relationships with new co-workers and neighbors and for me this would be hard because I am really an introvert and do not make friends easily. I would have my husband with me so that would be a big support to keep me grounded and able to start over, I would be linked to my children by email, skype and the phone. The other challenge with the move would be learning the language in order to do my job-this would be an intense learning experience, but again with my husband and new co-workers it would get done. If I did not have my supports, I feel I would have a harder time at succeeding in my new job and home. I would need to find a way to take them with me while I build a new support system to help me succeed.

My Connections to Play

Adults are obsolete children-Dr. Seuss www.quotegarden.com We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing-George Bernard Shaw www.quotegarden.com "Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood, for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul." Friedrich Froebel http://www.childsplaymagazine.com/quotes/index.htm When I was young I would play outside all day with my friends and family. We loved to go exploring because we lived in the country and had alot of fun climbing trees and just seeing what nature had for us to find. I used to enjoy playing outside on our tire swing and playing games at night around the neighborhood. My siblings would play games and explore with me even though they were older than me. This helped me to grow closer to them and learn young about how rules can change from one minute to the next. I was an outside player when I was growing up and still perfer to be outside whenever possible. Both at school and at home outside play was encouraged and we also had family time when we would play games together (board games and outside games ). Play was encouraged-but I grew up in the 1960's and the electronic age had not hit yet, so that was good. Today I think play is alot different because so many children do not play outside. Today children play inside on electronic devices or are watching television. When I was growing up children played sports and got together outside-today children play some sports, but also get together to play computer games and other inside activities. Play time is being taken away from children today in many programs and being replaced with more desk work and for me this needs to be changed back to how it was when i was growing up and you had recess two to three times a day and you played outside most of the time.

These are some of my favorite things to do and play with even now with my grandchildren-we are always playing outside and making up games to play. It is great to watch them explore and ask questions about the world around them. I instilled in my children a love for the outdoors and we are all trying to do the same thing with all the grand children.

Relationship Reflection

Blog: Week 2

Reflecting on Building Relationships: My Reflection

Reflecting on my relationships and partnerships with the many people in my personal and professional life, I find that they are pretty much separate from each other. My relationships/partnerships with my parents are very important because they will be the foundation of how my relationship with each child starts. Relationships with anyone can make you who you are or what you become throughout life. I have a very good relationship with my daughter Sarah (now that she is older); over the years we have grown very close and work together to raise her daughters whenever she needs a sounding board on why they are doing something she doesn’t understand. Sarah is my biggest supporter on continuing my education and pushes me forward whenever I think I can’t go on. I know I can talk to her about anything and she comes to me whenever she needs to talk as well. My son is also part of the backbone to getting my education-he is also working on his Bachelor’s degree after returning from Iraq and having a very hard time adjusting. We are his family and help him in any way we can. My family is who I depend on daily and I know they will stand behind me in all my decisions. They help me understand why I should or should not do something and I am the same way with them. Being from a military background I have made friends around the world, so sometimes it is hard to stay in touch-but I still keep in touch so we can continue our relationship over time and distance.

My other person that I have a great relationship with is my husband, we have been together for 31 years and I know I can depend on him to keep me grounded in both my personal and professional choices. I can talk to him about anything and know he will give me an honest answer and help me understand why if I don’t agree with his answer. We have been through many happy and sad times and I know he is there for me. My cat that we had for 18 years is also very important to how I look at relationships because he was a constant in my life for a very long time and went everywhere with us (traveling cat) he went to Germany, Japan, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia with us. He was part of our family and it was very hard on everyone when he passed away. These relationships have made me into the caring person I am today and taught me how important each person is and I continue to build on this daily.

These relationships have helped me to understand just how important building a connection with my families is and also how hard it can be sometimes. I try to learn about each of my family’s backgrounds so I will better understand them as a whole. When I know as much as possible about them then I will be able to work better for the whole family. It can be difficult to keep relationships going because sometimes you get busy, move away, change careers, or any number of other reasons. Sometimes it is just meant to be that a relationship fails or changes and we need to move on. My experience with relationships/partnerships has helped me grow into a better listener and also I have a better understanding of other cultures/diversity because of moving around so much throughout my life. I have built an understanding that each culture is different and we need to understand that not everyone has the same beliefs-but we do all have the same needs.

My relationships over the years have definitely made me who I am today because when I want something I have people behind me telling me to go for it and that I can do anything I put my mind too.

Week 8: When I Think of Child Development

Quotes that have meaning:

While we try to teach our children all about life, Our children teach us what life is all about-Angela Schwindt
www.quotegarden.com

Children need the freedom and time to play. Play is not a luxury. Play is a necessity.-Kay Redfield Jamison
www.quotegarden.com

"Children are our most valuable resource" -Herbert Hoover
www.compassion.com

Children need models more than they need critics.-Joseph Joubert
www.notable-quotes.com

All of these quotes reflect jsut how important children are to us and they show us that we must take care of them because they are the future. There are so many quotes available for us to read and ponder and it is sometimes hard to pick just one or two. I can't wait to read everyones quotes so maybe I will be able to find some new favorites. This class has been great and I have learned so much from my colleauges-I hope to see many of you in my next class.

Testing for Intelligence? Week 6

Blog Assignment Week 6:

Testing for Intelligence?

This week we are looking at children being assessed and or measured. For me I think that assessing a child can be done with the “whole child” in mind, but is not normally. Most assessments are focused on certain areas and then they have another assessment for whatever else is being looked at. Assessments can be a good thing for a child because we need to look at everything to see where the developmental issues might be. When assessing a child we look at many areas; social, cognitive, and physical and each of these areas has other areas within to look at and measure. In order to get a full picture of a child’s development and or abilities we need to assess them at some point. This is not to say we test them so much that they are afraid of testing or even failing, we need to make it more of a game for young children if possible so they will get the most out of the experience. When we only look at certain areas of a child-we are not getting the full picture so we will not really know the child. Every child is different and develops at a different pace, so we need to take this into account when doing any assessing.

The country I picked to look into is Japan-partly because I lived there for three years and I would love to go back at some point (maybe as a DOD employee). In Japan they have no real assessment criteria, until they are in secondary education and this is so they have a better picture for the high school years. Children are regularly assessed by their teachers in Japanese and mathematics by teacher made assessment forms or professional ready-made tests (http://www.inca.org.uk/japan). In order to continue into high school each child must be assessed or they cannot proceed. Children are passed onto the next grade by the teacher’s assessment and not by testing as we do in the United States.

http://www.inca.org.uk/japan-system-mainstream.html