My Own Capacity

This issues that fuel my passion are ensuring that ALL children have access to high quality early childhood programs.  In order to accomplish the goal of ALL children having access to high quality care it is critical that we first ensure that we have an educated workforce that will implement curriculum to meet the needs of the children attending.  Many states have developed Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) and the primary goal of a QRIS is to improve overall quality for children and families.

The special skills that I have to contribute to the advocacy work regarding improvement of high quality early childhood is my knowledge and work experience.  I have worked directly with children living on both ends of the spectrum from poverty to extreme wealth.  I have been a child care licensing worker.  Over the last 14 years I have been working with our states Professional Development system.  I oversee the workforce data collection, environment rating evaluations, and professional development opportunities.  My past experiences coupled with my current access to data places me in a prime position to be an effective early childhood advocate.

The resources I have to benefit my advocacy work first and foremost is the access to workforce, program evaluation data and training data.  Our state registry includes over 10,000 early childhood professionals and we have another 5,500 people with training data.  This data is the key to making effective policy decisions about improving the education levels of the workforce because it will inform the state with the education information of the people working daily with children and families.  If that data paints a picture that the majority of children in Oklahoma are being taught by people with high school diploma as the highest level education attained then that would inform policy that we do not have an adequate amount of credentialed or associate degree level teachers.  This could potentially lead the state to increase funds into scholarships to help address the issue of an undereducated workforce.  Using the data to improve the overall quality will benefit the children receiving subsidy, but it ultimately benefits ALL children because the policy decisions would be to increase the education levels of the teachers of young children.

This course has helped me to grow by gathering more information and how to better research issues.  Improving my researching skills and learning how to utilize the information learned to evoke change is what I am hoping for from this degree program.  I have been an active early childhood advocate for many years, but I want to become a great early childhood advocate.  I want to become more like my mentor Adele Robinson.  She has a plethora of knowledge that she can readily recall off the top of her head and that comes from continuous researching of topics and learning the best way to share the message.  I think learning how to craft effective messages is also a place that I personally need to grow. 

My Role as an Advocate

My time serving on the Early Childhood Association of Oklahoma (ECAO) board, Oklahoma's National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) was when I first began to learn the value of advocacy and I attended the NAEYC Public Policy Institute that is when I became motivated to advocate for very young children.

It is critical when conducting advocacy efforts to get people involved at both the grassroots level and the greater area because you serve different purposes in the effort.  The people at the grassroots level serve to get people excited and they are equipped to tell their story with passion.  At the macro level you have people that are keeping the grassroots level people informed with action alerts and details of the movement.

Anyone can be a community leader on early childhood issues if you take the time to become educated about the issues.  In our reading this week a lawyer became an early childhood advocate.  My advocacy mentor Adele Robinson is a lawyer, but now serves full time as a public policy expert for NAEYC.

The key to be a state leader on early childhood issues is knowledge and information.  The information is available, but sometimes not readily available so you have to be willing to do research, understand the landscape of your state, understand the political will and if you do these things you will become a state leader in early childhood issues.

Action alerts and information about the legislative process are strategies that every effective early childhood advocate implement to stay abreast of the hot issues.  Tracking and timing are critical because you have to act when the time is right to help secure the votes or inform the public of the need to contact before the vote.

The best way to become a state advocacy leader is to join up with an active association so that you have support and can use the organization to grow as an advocate into a leadership role.  For example, in Oklahoma joining ECAO, Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (OICA), Smart Start Oklahoma, or Oklahoma Child Care Resource and Referral Association are all organizations that are active in advocacy efforts at the state and federal level.  There are many ways of developing leadership within these organizations to become know as a state early childhood advocate.

Personal Advocacy Reflection

I believe that for me personally the event that impacted me to want to learn to become an effective early childhood advocate was when I attended my first National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) Policy Institute.  The first time going to the Hill to talk with Senator's and Representatives filled me with pride that maybe something I said might make a difference for the children and families back in Oklahoma.  Listening to the speakers provide us the messages for the Hill and learning from Adele Robinson made me want to become the public policy junky I am today.  I follow many different list serves and get Call to Action emails from several advocacy groups. 

Adele Robinson has written the book Advocates in Action and has written many tools for early childhood advocates.  She is my mentor in advocacy and I aspire to be more like her.  She amazes me with her knowledge.  She truly knows every Senator and Representative by name and their typical voting patterns.  When she would do a quick debrief with us prior to attending the Hill she would be able to give every state a short bit of information that would benefit them in delivering their message.

I teach an advocacy training in Oklahoma for directors and much of the material used in my presentation comes from things I learned from Adele.  I am proud to call her my friend and colleague and hope to continue to learn from her.

EDUC 6766 Week 1 Blog Post

I am excited to begin this class and learn more about how to be an effective early childhood advocate.  I have been waiting for the specialization classes of this program since I started and it is amazing that I am just two classes away from the end.  As I reflected on our last class I began to think about the possibility to beginning an doctoral program and it becoming more and more of a desire.  My passion has always been to be an effective early childhood advocate that creates policy that improves the quality of care for all children.  I look forward to learning with this great group of colleagues over the next eight weeks and then into our final capstone course.  I have learned so much for you all in the last course and I am looking forward to learning from you and with you in this course.

 The title of my blog is ECE Public Policy Fanatic so being able to put this new acquired knowledge into action is both exciting and a self-filling prophecy.  My desire is to truly be known as an effective ECE Public Policy expert.