Sharing Web Resources #2

I know this week we are focusing on web resources, but I wanted to include what Maria, my international contact had emailed me this week about Sweden and the poverty there.  I'm learning to email her earlier, so that I am able to get my responses in time for blog posts.  I thought her response was so interesting, I just copy/pasted the whole thing to share with everyone.

Hello Amber!

Poverty, what a difficult subject. It’s hard to define what poverty is. For me it’s when you don’t have enough money to buy food every day, and don’t have money to pay the most important bills, like the rent on your apartment and electricity and worse if you don’t have an apartment at all. And if you don’t have enough money to buy clothes and shoes.

If you live in Sweden and have children you get money from the government, like a child support, every month. You get 150 $/month for the first child. And if you have more children you get a “large family support“.

We also have another system, Government Healthcare, were you can get social welfare. So a child in Sweden should not live in poverty. But in the report from Save the children 13% or 248 000 children grow up in low-income family or are dependent on income support like social welfare. And the number of children who grows up in poverty has grown from last year.

Save the children says that the most exposed group of children is the children to single parents, children of parents who doesn’t have any work and children to immigrant parents. According to CRC, Sweden is obliged to ensure that all children have a fair standard of living, and that no child is discriminated against because of their social origins. Save the Children believes that discrimination exists in Sweden today, since the children living in economically disadvantaged families are at risk of poorer health, less educated, and less opportunity for recreational activities.

In the preschool we must report to the social services if we are worried about a child. But I have never had to deal with it at my workplace. But sometimes my colleagues and I think that some kids have fewer clothes and also outgrown clothes. The preschool have some clothes that the children can borrow if they have to. I hope that you got the answer that you need.

Maria. :)


Now on to sharing web resources....
   The more and more that I look at the site that I first chose, naecte.org, the more I do not like it as much.  It seems very limiting in what it offers, unless I sign up to be a member and I have a hard time wanting to be a member when I'm not super impressed with the content that they have on their main page.   For this week, and possibly for the following weeks, I chose to look at www. zerotothree.org.  I already signed up for the newsletter because I really like what this site has to offer.
    I looked under the policies tab on the website and I was pleasantly surprised by all of the great information that I found on what the federal government, state and communities are doing to support children.  From the way Dr. Grace spoke in the video segment, I kind of took on her thinking that politicians are not doing much in the way of helping children except when it helps their own agenda.  I found this not to be true.  There is an amazing amount of programs and intiatives out there that the government is working on.  The website links to OESE, the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and there is a lot of information listed there as well.
   I decided to look up Race to the Top-Early Learning Challenge because I have heard of it, but I was never sure what it really was.  The challenge is to increase the percentage of low-income children and disadvantaged children in each age group of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers enrolled in high quality programs, to design and implement high quality programs and have assessments that follow the National Research Councils.  The grant is awared to states that are creating these programs.  I didn't see the results though of who has been awarded these grants.
   The website also containted a lot of research-based information from neuroscientists and other scientists about brain development, challenging behavior and literacy to name a few.  I did not see anything on the page about economists becoming involved with the early childhood field though.
  Hopefully by the next blog post, I will have more opportunities to read newsletters on the zerotothree website and be able to share what these newsletters are discussing.   The website kept saying that the newsletters were not available at this time and to talk to the site administrator.  Hopefully they will be up and running soon.  It is a wonderful website and I probably should have chosen this from the start.


Resource
www.zerotothree.org

Getting to Know International Contacts-Part 1

    It has definately been an interesting week!!  My computer is not letting me connect to the internet and my boyfriend is out of town with his computer, so I'm writing this from my parents house...never a dull moment!!  I was able to create contact with two individuals, but only one has been emailing me back on a regular basis.  Her name is Maria and she is from Osterund, Sweden and she works as a preschool teacher.  I really enjoyed what she has to had to share with me.  She was excited to work on her English and there were  a few times in the email where I was a little bit confused as to what she meant, but overall, it has been great conversing with her.
    Maria works in a public preschool.  There are 3 departments in her preschool and a total of 54 children.   They are 1-5 years old in preschool.  Mom or dad stays home the 1st year of the child's life and they get paid by the government to do this (Wouldn't that be nice?).  In Maria's room, there are 3 teachers and they have 18 kids plus one resource teacher for a child with special needs.  The one thing I was a bit confused on was the age of kids she serves.  She wrote "2, 5-4 years old", so I'm not sure of the ages.
     There are five languages that children in her center speak:  Swedish, Finnish, German, Kurdish and English.  At school, all of the children speak Swedish, but for one hour every week, they meet with an adult who speaks their language.  It is the muncipalities job to find someone for that child to speak with, not the schools.
      She said that the most important way her children learn is through play.  She and the curriculum strongly believe that children learn best this way.  She sent me a copy of their curriculum, which was really interesting to look at.  It was very similar to what we use.  I would have included the attachment, but I was afraid it would take up too much room.
     Emailing back and forth with Maria has been very interesting.  I asked her about povery at her school and the area, but she didn't answer those questions for me.  I'm wondering if the language barrier is making it hard for her to understand what I was asking?  Learning about the Swedish early childhood school system has been awesome because I know nothing about it.  Hopefully you are all learning as well.

Web Resources

       The link I chose was www.naecte.org.  The website shares a common interest in Early Childhood Teachers Education, promotes professional growth, discusses educational issues, advocates for improvements, gives members access to conferences and position papers, and has a forum to discuss with other ECE educators.
        I first looked throught the Winter 2012 newsletter, which was their most updated newsletter.  I actually didn't find too many interesting things in the newsletter.  It talked a lot about upcoming conferences, which would be great to attend, but there are too far away and not really feasible for me to go to.
       I did come across a position paper that I really enjoyed though.  It was NAECTE's position statement on Early Childhood Certification for Teachers of children 8 years old and younger in Public School settings.  I chose to read through this because I have a strong belief that any individual teaching children 8 years and younger should have very specialized knowledge in ECE and have attended specialized degree programs to make sure they are best prepared to teach our children.  If you were to teach any primary, middle or secondary education classes, you would have to have a minimum of a bachelors degree, so why is that not the case with ECE?
      NAECTE has the same view that I do on this matter.  It states, "If children are to thrive in school and meet current expectations for acheivement, they need teachers who have specialized knowledge of child development and best practices in Early Childhood Education (NAECTE, nd.)  It also goes on to say that these teachers are better trained to deal with children from low-income homes and those who speak English as a second language.  Language diversity and language barriers are the issues that I chose to focus on this week and I think the better trained a teacher is, the better they are able to handle any situation, but especially those dealing with this population.
     The position statement also goes on to say that states should start requiring ECE certification and endorsements in order to be hired to teach and priority should be given to these teachers.  The position statement also says that teacher prep courses should be consistent with NAEYC.
      Being a teacher requires a love of children, but it also requires understanding of  how best to teach these children and what methods should be used.  A good teacher prep course is a much needed tool to go through in order to ensure that all teachers are quality teachers.

Issues and Trends in Early Childhood-Week 1

             Hello new classmates!!  This has been a very interesting and busy week!!  I went out of town on Thursday, so I have been doing most of my work not from house, which makes for one busy week!!  I have tried to establish contact with different professionals living outside of the United States through a few different ways.  So far I have been waiting to hear back from these people, so hopefully out of everyone that I contacted, I will be able to find at least two people.  Instead of looking through the websites that were given to us, I wanted to find acquantances of people that I knew. The first person I contacted was an old classmate I had that lives in China and I contacted her through our Walden email.  Facebook has actually been my main method of contacting individuals though and the method I have found most helpful.  The next couple that I contacted are not early childhood professionals, but I was hoping that some of their friends may be.  They live in Leeds, England and we met them a few summers back and recently went to London to visit them.  I'm hoping that they can help me find individuals in England that I can contact.  I sent them a message through facebook and they are on the hunt for friends that can help. I also had a family at work that moved to Germany that I have contacted and, through posting on my facebook what I was looking for, my great uncle gave me the email of a girl living in Ostersund, Sweden, who teaches preschool.  Facebook has been an amazing thing!!!  What a great way to get in touch with people all over the world!!  Hopefully I will be able to find someone soon!!  I also have a family friend in Italy that is a secondary education teacher, so I am going to send him an email as well.
    The website that I am choosing to look at every week is the National Association of the Early Childhood Teacher Educators or www.naecte.org.    I really liked what the website had to offer and I think this will be a great fit for me.  They promote professional growth, discuss educational issues, advocate for improvements in early childhood and have forums where you can discuss a lot of different issues.  For graduate students, it's only $45 to be a member for a year and once you do that, you have access to position papers, conference information and a lot of other things.  They also have job postings from all over the US, which is a nice feature.
  I hope everyone is having a great first week and good luck finding your contacts outside of the US!