Strengthen the Bonds of Collaborative Learning

Learning from my colleagues in Trinidad and Tobago showed me that even though we might be on different continents as early childhood professionals we are still struggling with the same issues.  It makes me realize that the issues we are dealing with in Oklahoma are really global issues.  That helps me better grasp the fact that these issues are hard and they don’t have simple solutions.  They are struggling with quality services for 3 to 5 year olds and dealing with transitions from preschool to public school.  They are also grappling with creating partnerships, which is one of the same issues happening here in the United States nationally.  The US is attempting to help states create partnerships between child care, Head Start, and Public School. 

            The similarities in professional goals between me and my colleague Dominique are fascinating to me.  His goals are to develop a professional cadre of childhood practitioners and to create new curricula that meet the needs of the practitioners.  We are both committed to the professional development of teachers.  It is also very important to both of us to cultivate relationships with other professionals.  Again understanding this has expanded my thoughts to be more global versus just thinking about my state or my country.

            Developing these connections has broadened my perspective.  I thought that I was very aware of other countries because my husband Jairo is originally from Venezuela so that has helped me to be more global in my thinking, but this experience has helped to realize that I was still thinking very shallow and narrow about early childhood.  It was if I knew those other places existed, but they were not impacting me personally.

            My goal is one that I share in common with my colleague Dominique from Trinidad and Tobago universal access to early childhood educations holds the key to equity in the education system as more young children are better prepared to benefit from high quality programs.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts--Part 3

My contact Dominique Eustace from Trinidad and Tobago provided the following responses to our questions of the week.  He provided me a response on Thursday of this week on his last day before leaving for the Christmas Holiday.

1.      What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed where you live and work?

·         The link between good training and quality practice in ECCE.

·         The development of quality early childhood environments (building new schools that meet the needs of all children)

 

2.      What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

·         UWI

o   Bachelor of Education (B.E.D.) – Early Childhood Care and Education

o   Certificate in Early Childhood Care and Development

o   Postgraduate Diploma in Education

o   MEd (with concentration in Curriculum)

o   MPhil and PhD degrees in Education

·         SERVOL

o   Skill Training Programme in Day Care/Pre School

o   SERVOL built a Regional Training and Resource Centre to train teachers, field officers and administrators for an expanded Early Child Care and Education (ECCE) Programme.

·         UWI-FDCRC

o   Early Childhood Care and Development Programme

·         UWI - Open campus

o   Certificate & Diploma Early Childhood Development and Family Studies

o   BEd Early Childhood Development and Family Studies

o   BEd Educational Leadership & Management

o   Certificate in Early Childhood Care and Education – Teacher

o   Certificate in Early Childhood Care and Education - Administrator

o   Certificate in Child Care

·         Caribbean Nazarene College

o   School Education with emphasis in Early Childhood Care and Education

3.      What are some of your professional goals?

·         To develop a professional cadre of early childhood practitioners

·         To create new curricula for the Caribbean that speaks to our culture and national and regional goals

·         To create a site that would allow for the development of a statistical unit for the Caribbean region

 

4.      What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges?

·         To assist in the professional development of our staff at the UWI-FDCRC

·         Sourcing funding

·         Not having timely and adequate data across the region to assist current research

Sharing Web Resources

Continuing my journey through the Child Care Aware America® website I found they are connected to many public policy and advocacy groups through links and posted resources.  They are either to support parents in selecting quality child care or to support providers of early childhood in the improvement of their quality.  Additionally, they provide a plethora of resources and links to provide support for an early childhood advocate.  The exploration of this website has provided me so much information and for an early childhood education public policy junkie it seems as if I have hit the mother load.  Before this class I primarily used NAEYC and National Women's Law Center so this has been very enlightening.

The section of the website that I explored this week was the Parent section.  One of the resources that I found very interesting was the "Family Decision Making Tool" to be used when deciding whether or not to return to work.  This tool provides some insight into all the different things that must be considered when making this decision.  I thought this was a great resource for family planning on having children.  They provide a plethora of resource for parents about how to select quality child care and also where and how to find quality programs.  They provide a very detailed and comprehensive resource section for parents.  They have teamed up with Parents magazine I think in a effort to ensure that parents are familiar that the resources they have are being utilized to the fullest.

I receive the newsletter "Capitol Connection" and the December 3 newsletter was about the need for increased funding and the direct link to this need with the continued battle about the fiscal cliff.  There was a link inside the newsletter that takes the reader to a NBCNews.com story about about rope-a-dope and that Speaker Boehner and House Majority Leader Cantor were discussing the fact that the proposal from the White House was not a serious offer.  The newsletter also provided information from both sides the Republican as well as the Democratic side on the fiscal cliff solution.  Both the newsletter as well as the links away from the newsletter shared that at this point in time we are not any closer to a solution and that cooperation is not being used to develop a solution.

The contents of newsletter is directly related to our coursework topic this week in that we have been talking about quality, affordability, and availability.  This website fully examines these three challenges from both the perspective of the provider, but also the parent.  The content of the website is very complimentary of the content of the course and very relevant.

The exploration of this website coupled with the information reviewed this week solidifies for me that idea that early childhood is a very political issue and when the country is in fiscal crisis early childhood is also in fiscal crisis.  This proves the need for more strong early childhood advocate working at all levels, local, state and federal because our children's lives and the quality of their lives depend on us.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

Excellence and Equity in ECCE in Trinidad and Tobago

 

 

 

I learned so much from my newest contact this week Dominique Eustace with the Ministry of Education in Trinidad and Tobago.  Regarding equity Dominique reported that the Ministry of Education recognizes that universal access to early childhood care and education (ECCE) holds the key to equity in the education system as more young children are better prepared to benefit from formal schooling.  The Ministry has implemented a comprehensive plan that expands access and ensures the provision of high quality early childhood education and services in quality facilities designed, built and administered to international standards.  He went on to state that there are approximately 1,154 early childhood centers in Trinidad and Tobago, 750 of which are registered with the Ministry of Education.  The current Ministry of Education has highlighted the importance of building a partnership with private institutions in achieving Universal ECCE by 2015.

With regard to excellence Dominique reported that quality care and education hold the key to transforming children into healthy adults.  The National ECCE Centre Survey conducted during 2004-2005 found that many ECCE centers operate under unsatisfactory conditions both in terms of physical facilities and the teaching and learning experiences.  The survey also found that the qualifications of the majority of EC teachers were below the new standards set by the Ministry of Education in keeping with international requirements.  As part of the Vision 2020 agenda, the government embarked on a mission to put new policies in place to ensure quality standards in all early childhood environments.  One such mandated policy requires upgrades in the qualification of EC teachers and administrators.  In doing this teachers were provided materials needed for effective teaching.

Some of my follow up questions for Dominique are to find out exactly what these new mandated qualifications are for teachers and directors.  What kind of training they are providing for the teachers to help them become more effective.  I was amazed at the amount of information he provided me with just one simple question.  Additionally, I am beginning to see Dominique and Patrick as true colleagues and will use these contacts in my work and I am fortunate that this class forced me to step out of my comfort zone and reach out to international partners. 

Reference

Eustace (personal communication, November 29, 2012) excellence and equity in ECCE in Trinidad and Tobago.





Sharing Web Resources

On November 14, 2012 Child Care Aware® announced that they have joined forces with Parents magazine to focus on the national child care crisis.  They stated that parents are having difficulties finding affordable, quality care together are asking readers to write to member of
Congress to support protections for children attending child care.

I think that Child Care Aware® is looking for partnerships that support their mission, but are not the typical advocacy partnership.  The safeguards they are seeking would increase requirements for most all states basic licensing requirements and these safeguards can be costly.  I personally agree with the safeguards that they are seeking, but in our state we just did public hearings on our revised licensing requirements and some of the items such as increasing initial training to 40 hours would not pass in our state the way the system is currently set up where states set their standards.  So some of the items that they are pushing for in their package to Congress could become controversial to the child care industry as a whole.

This information is very political and coupled with the information we have read about making the investment in early childhood it is critical that we provide high quality care.  The safeguards that they are seeking will increase the health and safety for young children thus increasing the quality of care.  I think that going to parents is the key to getting the word out and engaging them in a magazine that they regularly read is genius because they already have a trust in the brand.

Reading the public policy blog Child Care Aware® has opened my eyes to begin thinking about early childhood through the lens of the parent.  While I have always known that parents are key partners in working in this field Child Care Aware® does a very good job at keeping that parent focus and writing for the parent viewpoint versus the early childhood professional viewpoint.  I feel that I have read information that I already knew, but seeing it through a different lens strengthens the information.  Reading about Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) through the lens of the parent is very different from the lens that I typically use so I think it is making me a better early childhood public policy fanatic!

Getting to Know Internation Contacts

My international contact is Patrick Makokoro from Zimbabwe.  Patrick is the Director at Nhaka Foundation, a non profit that is implementing a program that is increasing access to early education especially for orphans and vulnerable children. Early Childhood Development centers serve as an
entry point to the community for OVC and HIV/AIDS initiatives. The focus population consists of families containing orphans and vulnerable children in economically deprived rural areas with a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS.

The following questions were this weeks exchange of information between Patrick and I:

How are you involved in early childhood work in your country?

I am the founder and promoter of the Zimbabwe Network of Early Childhood Actors. Through this platform we are bringing together all the organizations especially the grassroots organizations working in ECD to make sure that their voices are projected and that there is access to resources both at a
Network and organizational level. In fact, I am just now coming from the successful hosting of our inaugural national conference! This has come as a culmination of my role as a Global Leader and also my work in ECD in Zimbabwe for the past 5 years.

What impact does your work have on the early childhood community where you live?

The impact is huge. I actually live in the peri urban areas where the prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS is very high and therefore families rarely make conscious choices of ensuring that orphans are sent to preschool. As a person who promotes access to early learning for children the community's
perception and awareness on the importance of ECD has been increased. More children are now accessing quality learning preschools and this has been a huge impact felt in the whole community.

What is your greatest challenge in your early childhood work?

The greatest challenge we have has been the resources. There is such a lot of work that needs to be done in the communities in order to increase access to early childhood programs. The preschool buildings are old and worn down and as such require renovation, there are no play materials, the teachers need to be retrained in order to increase quality education amongst the many
challenges. These require either financial or material resources and my job has been made even tougher by the global financial crisis. Some of the other down level challenges we have been handling through appreciative inquiry and other strength based approaches to community development.

This week with the study of poverty and my personal quest to learn about the local poverty in my community and beginning my exchanges with Patrick has caused me to really reflect on poverty and its over all impact on the lives of children and families.  This has been a very inspiring and soul searching week for me personally.

Sharing Web Resources

The Organization I chose to learn more about is Child Care Aware® of America.  The focus of this organization is be our nations leading voice for child care.  They work with local and state Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies to ensure that families have access to quality and affordable child care.  They also are leaders in developing and advocating for child care policies.  The website is as follows:  http://www.naccrra.org/

In the public policy section of thier website they provide information for advocates on the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG) as well as develop a policy agenda.  They have an action center and your can sign up for their weekly newsletter titled, "Capitol Connection:  Weekly Update!".  They also provide training for child advocates and host a national policy conference each year in the spring.

In this weeks Capitol Connection they provided resouces for parents and professional regarding recovery and relief from Hurricane Sandy.  The provided information on Voting for Children and Families and how to locate your polling place.  They were also utilizing social media by providing updates for both Twitter and Facebook that stated "I Voted for Children and Families".  Additionally, they provided information about Race to the Top District Application deadline extensions.  Each week they host a lunch & learn webinar to provide training for early childhood advocates.  This weeks lunch & learn was titled, "The New Face of Hill".  This webinar is on Thursday and I am planning on attending.  I will keep you posted!