Well it has been another exciting and busy week. At work, we had our NAEYC 5-year accreditation surprise visit on Thursday and Friday and it made for some very busy days at work. I saw so many correlations from NAEYC standards to our topics this week: availability, accessibility and affordability, so that was interesting and nice to see the overlap.
This week was my first time to look at my new e-newsletter from the zero to three website and what an amazing website it is!!! If you still haven't had a chance to take a look, it is definately worth viewing. There are so many resources on there, it is amazing. It is a great resource to share with parents too. The newsletter that was emailed to me focused on prolonged separation of children and parents/foster parents. The article was entitled "Foster Care in the Hospital". I didn't read the entire article, but it discussed the hardships foster care children face when they are ill.
I proceeded to the zero to three website and found the WHATS NEW tab. There was a wonderful video that I shared the link with below entitled "Starting Life Without a Home" and it was based on the first congressional hearing, which just happened on Feb. 16, 2012, about homeless families and children, specifically homeless infants and toddlers. The video was great and contained wonderful information. Judy Bigart, from Illinois, was the politician responsible for leading the hearing and she said that 1/45 children are homeless in America and 42% of those homeless children are 0-5 years old. The video discusses development of homeless children and how a supporting relationship can help a child so much. The video is about 8 min. and definately worth watching.
Under FEATURED RESOURCES, there is an article entitled, "Conversation with Experts" and it was suppose to talk about how teachers can better support parents. It looked like a great article, but was $15 to read and honestly I didn't really feel like paying the money for it. I did notice though on the side of the page was a link called "From Baby to Big Kid" and it was a free e-newsletter about children from birth to age three. It is meant for parents to offer helpful strategies to them and I thougth it was a great resource we could pass along to parents who may need extra information.
I also chose to look under the tab about military families, since that is part of the population that I work with....Wow....there is a ton of great information here!!! They offer free duty to care training that helps professionals understand their role and how to help families of deployed solidiers through all the stages of deployments. I was also able to sign up for another free e-newsletter, "Coming Together Around Military Families", which will be another way to assist my military families at work. We have a group of dads getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan in Aug, so I may be needing some of these resources.
I checked my old website I was viewing-www.naecte.org to see what was new there. They did have a new newsletter up (Summber 2012--that made me laugh thinking teachers wrote that), but I only found one worthwhile thing in it. It discussed "Growing up Wild", a nature-based education program. The frustrating part was when I clicked on the link www.pw.GrowingUPWILD.org, it said the domain was not found.
After looking through the zero to three website, I am so happy that I switched web addresses and e-newsletters. There is so much information on this website and it can be for teachers or parents. I can't wait to look through more of the military resources!!!
References
www.zerotothree.org
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid4853363001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAP1OrgE~,Pg4k-7G5h8q5f5a18Ed-9RBn57qq9pZW&bctid=1543532738001
Hope you all did well on your surprise visit. Going through those visits is never fun and it can be very stressful. We just did our renewal for accrediton last school term and we had to create one of those portfolio boxes and they were very time consuming. They were good to have and do so that you don't have alot of questions to answer but they were like I said very, very time consuming. I have looked at the zero to three website before and yes there is alot of helpful informaton on it. I love a webstie that provides you with many useful resources. I am glad you like the zero to three website and hope you do continue to check it out. Good post.
ReplyDeleteOh Vicki...they are so time consuming!! But it was nice to see what each of the rooms are doing well, when you are gathering information and then also seeing what areas they need to do more work on.
DeleteHi Amber,
ReplyDeleteThe Zero to Three website is awesome! It is one of my favorite websites to visit and gather resources for various topics in early childhood. I am going to check out the video about homeless children and families. It is unfortunate that young children and families face such obstacles and do not have a place called “home”. I would like to learn more about being supportive to homeless children I may encounter in the school system. Thanks for sharing
Amber,
ReplyDeleteI also received the email from zero to three. I found the article about Talking to Very Young Children About Divorce interesting because I have a child that is experiencing this now. I have never been through a NAEYC Accreditation. The center that I was previously at was already accredited. I am at a new center that the agency built and we will be going through it next year. I would appreciate any pointers you can give me so that I will have a head start in what to look forward to.
Angela-I'll be honest. The actual NAEYC visit wasn't as bad as people made it sound like it would be and the ladies were actually friendly. I hear that is not always the case. For us, we have to follow a lot of Army regulations and for the most part, if we are following those (which we have no choice on), they are more strict than a lot of the NAEYC guidelines. What was the most time consuming is the classrooms portfolios. We went from all of the rooms having one to just each age group, so there was a lot of transfering of data. The portfolios are suppose to show progress over time, so we tried to have anything from 5 years to now as evidence to support each of the criteria that they were looking for. Your director should get a list of the criteria and share it with you, or at least that is what ours did. A lot of the things in there you already do, it's just a matter of putting evidence in a folder showing you do actually do that. For example, one criteria is that teachers communicate with families on a daily and weekly basis and use alternate means with necessary. Well, I'm sure all of your rooms do that, it's just a matter of taking pictures talking to parents or copying notes sent home to put in the folders. My advice is to start looking at them now and have your fellow teachers start looking at them now and save EVERYTHING that you do in your classrooms because a lot of it can be used as evidence. I hope this helps!! Let me know if you have any other questions.
DeleteHI- WOW , what a life juggle. Thanks for sharing in good information. Military families are unique. They have many needs and concerns. I am thankful that organizations like Zero to Three are concerned and working with these families.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post .