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.