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!