My Supports

Within my daily environment there are certain things or people that I can draw support from. The first thing that I draw support from is a spirtual support. I draw spiritual support from knowing that God has His hands on my family and I and without Him I am nothing and I have nothing. I draw support from my children, their very existence pushes me to be the best me that I can be. The benefits of having God as a support is that He is the best thing going on in this troubled world. Plus, if you know like I know God offers the best benefits package ever seen! With Him I just know that their is nothing I can not do. I can make it through any situation. As a single parent of three, having God in my support system gives me that peace of mind to know that I am not alone as I take care of my three children by myself. He makes sure that all of our needs are met and that we are safe and secure. The benefits of having my children as supports is that they challenge me to be my best each and everyday. Just by them being in this world, I strive to continue to educate myself so that I can provide for my children and I. Plus, I want to them to know that hard work and determination pays off and that you are never too old to achieve goals. Because I have to lead by example, I am always trying to do my best. If I did not have these two major supports, my life would be a dark place. I just can't even imagine life without these two supports. If they were gone, the impact would be tremendous. I would probably be lost and trapped in this dark and cold world without a sense of direction, living a meanless, purposeless life.

My Connections to Play

Here are two quotes regarding play.

"Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn." by O. Fred Donaldson

"Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiam for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn't tast good." Lucia Capocchione

As a child, my play was encouraged by the adult individuals in my life. Unlike today, I was given ample time to run play, laugh, and explore with my siblings, cousins, friends, and classmates. Digging mud holes whether it be at home or at school, turned into a real life science lesson as we uncovered worms that were nestled deep in the soft dark soil. Discoveries such as this one were furthered as adults asked and answered any questions we may have had. My parents encouraged us to play outside and create games to be played with my siblings and cousins. Boy, them were the days.

 Play was such a delight, but that has since gon away and the children of today are deprived of such experiences. The children of today are missing out on what it means to play. With the growing technology industry, our children grow more and more fascinated with playing with the latest techno gadget or video game. Even in our schools, play is coming invisible, as children and teachers conform to the growing pressures of meeting standards and academic requirments.

When it comes to my life play has been an intricate part of it. I learned many skills as I engaged in play with my older cousins and classmates, making up games and rules helped me to problem solve and control myself enough to play with others. Even as an adult, I work hard and I play hard. After a busy week of work, I like to relax and enjoy some playtime with my children, family, and friends. This helps to clear my mind and alleviate some of the pressures of being a mommy, sister, friends, and colleague.  Play is essential and we all need it.


The pictures included would be essential play items for me, because they would allow me to transform to whoever I wanted to be as I played.       

Running on the playground was so much fun!

Friends were an essential part of my play

I learned a lot of skills by playing in the house area.

A Shout-out to my Colleagues

As we close out the final week in our class, I just would like to thank each of you for helping to contribute to the knowledge that was gained during this course. It was just a pleasure to interact with you all through the method of the internet. I also thank you for sharing with me and others about your passion for early childhood and your experiences. You all are a very valuable and knowledgeable group of individuals and I definitely look forward to interacting and learning from you in future courses. I wish you all much success in your future professional and educational endeavors.


Here are some quotes regarding children that really caught my eye:

"An aware parent loves all children he or she interacts with- for you are a caretaker for those moments in time."
- English Proverb

"The soul is healed by being with children."
-Mohandes Ghandi, political and spiritual leader in India

"No one has yet fully realized the wealth of sympathy, kindness, and generosity hidden in the soul of a child. The effort of every true education shoud be to unlock that treasure."
- Lady Bird Johnson, former first lady

"Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children."
-Dr. Seuss, author

Assessing Children

Assessing children can be positive or negative. It can be positive because the abilities of the child can be assessed. It can be negative because the whole child is not assessed. When a child is assessed, the assessor and all involved only see a snapshot of the child's abilities. I really think that Gardner and Brofenbrenner were on to something with their theories. Gardner's Multiple Intelligences believes that children have different intelligences, such as linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, etc. Brofenbrenner believes that they best what to assess children is in their natural environment. I, agree with both of these theories, because assessing children only through testing, does not offer a fair and justifiable understanding about what the child can actually do. When assessing children, I think that the child should be observed within a child friendly learning environment that invites the child to be themselves. Assessing their social skills, cognitive skills, physical skills based on their age and developmental stage can help to give an accurate view of the child's abilities.

When preparing for this blog post, I looked for information regarding assessment methods from around the region and world. What I found was that PISA also known as Programme for International Student Assessment is being used to assess children. The general age starts at 15. It's main goal is to offer school systems and other stakeholders the progress that is being made in schools and whether or not students are mastering key learning concepts.

Racism

When I was a child, I had my first experience with racism in Springfield, Missouri. My family and I had moved from Memphis, Tennessee to Springfield, Missouri. It was in this awful city that I was introduced to the hate and dislike that is racism. The people who lived behind us were extremely racist and they would make all kinds of racial remarks whenever they would see my siblings and I out playing in the backyard. We would tell our parents and they would tell us to ignore the ignorance of others. Well, it was an awful feeling to be singled out and ridiculed due to my skin color. I even had to ride the bus with these kids. At school, the racism was even worst. at lunch these three boys would stick their hands in my lunch and says, are you going to eat that ******. I would try to follow the instructions of my mother and report it to the teacher, but she would never do anything about it. I read about the racism that my grandparents had to endure, so in my day it was an eye opener to even think that racism was still going on. As an adult, I am even more aware of the racism that still goes on, but is a little less obvious than what it use to be. Though, change has been made we still have a long, long way to go.

I decided to learn about racism in Japan, I was really surprised to see how Japan shows racism to foreigners, blacks, and hispanics. I was so out done by reading how they exclude blacks and foreigners from using their restrooms, eating in their restaurants, and shunning away from them in public places. I even read that they discriminated in the areas of healthcare, employment, and housing. This type of racisme would be detrimental to the well being of young children whose parents had to move to this country due to job relocations. They would have to endure smirks and jeers of racist young Japanese children and they would more than like suffer from maltreatment if they are denied health care due to their race. I would have never thought of that Japan was a racist country. I must say I learn something new everyday.

Nutrition and Malnutrition

The topic I chose for this blog was nutrition and malnutrition. I chose this one because, I couldn't help but to think about how much food we waste here in the USA. The program that I work for the little children there just bite off of their lunch and then to the garbage can it goes. I can only encourage them to try the food, but if they do not want to eat, they have the right to just dump it in the garbage. I think that this is so wasteful, because I think about all the hungry children who would love to have that food. While are children are afforded a variety of choices to eat, the children in South Africa, struggle with malnutrition and a lack of key nutrients that are needed for proper growth and development. Children ages 1-9 suffer the most from nutrient defiency. They lack nutrients such as iron, vitamin A, iodine, protein, energy, riboflavin, calcium, and zinc.  As I progress through out my educational and professional journey, I can and will do my best to help others understand the importance of all children having enough nourishing foods to eat for optimal growth and development. To do this, I don't have to go as far as South Africa, because we have starving children in our own communities.

Childbirth- In Your Life and Around the World

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was extremely addicted to eating ice. Ice seemed like the only thing I craved for day and night. When I went to the doctor to for one of my third trimester checkups, the doctor told me that if I did not stop eating the ice I would experience difficulties during labor. Well to make a long story short, I was two weeks over due and when I went to the doctor, he decided to put me in labor. I was overdue and had only dialated one centimeter. The labor was truly an experience and 19 and a half hours later, I had a beautiful baby boy. That was 15 years ago and I remember it like yesterday.

I learned that women in Africa experience, trauma during birth due to the lack of prenatal care and poor health habits. Many of them often die during the birthing experience and infants often suffer a fatality as well due to the poor health, poor nutrition of the mother, and lack of prenatal care. This is kind of similar to my experience because I experienced a hard and long labor during the birth of my first child. It is different because unlike the women in Africa, I had access to prenatal care during my pregnancy and I also had access to a healthy choice of food.  Being under the guidance of a physican helped to prevent any fatalities and trauma to my unborn child and myself, unlike the African women who do not have early intervention to prevent death or trauma.

NAEYC Ideals that I Value

The purpose of this post is to highlight some ideals that have been set forth by NAEYC that have special meaning to me.

I-1.1—To be familiar with the knowledge base of earlychildhood care and education and to stay informed

through continuing education and training.

This is important to me because without knowlege you will not be able to provide th children and famillies serve with quality early childhood experiences.

             
I-1.3-To recognize and respect the unique qualities,abilities, and potential of each child

This is important because as you work with young children it is vital to know that they do not grow and learn at the same time.


I-2.3 —To welcome all family members and encourage
them to participate in the program.

This statement is important  because children are apart of families and we must be respectful and welcome families into our classroom. Making them feel needed helps them to understand the important role they play in helping their children have successful starts.

Early Childhood Resources

Hello All,

As an early childhood professional, I have put together a list of resources that I have found to be very helpful to me through out my early childhood career. The resources listed were apart of our learning resources for week 5. I have found helpful information from these resources and I hope that people read my blog, these resources will be of help to them as well. Enjoy and have a great week!

Early Childhood Resources:

National Association for the Education of Young Children
http://www.naeyc.org/

The Division for Early Childhood
http://www.dec-sped.org/

Zero to Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families
http://www.zerotothree.org/

NAEYC. (2009). Where we stand on school readiness. Retrieved May 26, 2010, from http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/Readiness.pdf

Early Childhood Journals:

YC Young Children

Childhood

Journal of Child & Family Studies

Additional Resources:

http://www.highscope.org/ : The preschool I work at uses the High Scope Curriculum and this website gives tons of information about young children and the best practices to use to help them be successful.

If you live in the Tennessee area here are some helpful resources and organizations that support the young child, families, and early childhood professionals.

Tennessee Association for the Education of Young Children- http://www.taeyc.org/

Southern Early Childhood Association- http://www.southernearlychild.org/

Quotes from this week's learning resources

"We need bold federal leadership focused on the failure of the early care and education delivery system to support the well-being of practitioners with a living wage and critical benefits, and to provide comparability in salaries among members of the birth to five and K-3 workforce with equivalent education. "

 Marcy Whitebook - April 26, 2010

A family's responses to crisis or to a new situation mirror those of a child. That is to say, the way a small child deals with a new challenge (for instance, learning to walk) has certain predictable stages: regression, anxiety, mastery, new energy, growth, and feedback for future achievement. These stages can also be seen in adults coping with new life events, whether positive or negative.

T. Berry Brazelton

My Personal Childhood Web

Hello everyone, this is week 3 of my master's program and so far so good. This week we were dealing with family systems theories, Brofenbrenner's theory, and Mahaley an eight year old girl who is supported by caring individual from different levels in her environment. With that being said, my blog for this week will focus on the people in my life that supported me and helped me.

Rosie: A warm and caring person that is so encouraging and supportive. She is my mother. She passed away when I was 22 years old, but she always encouraged us to follow are dreams and work hard.

Lena: Another warm and caring person who told me to dream big and that I can do anything if I stayed focus. She is my grandmother.

Latasha H: She a determined and resilient person who motivates me to challenge myself to work hard. She is my childhood friend.

L. Katherine: helped me to stay motivated and focus through her comments on how proud of me she was as I juggled taking care of children and home, work, and school. She is my children's aunt and my friend.

With supportive people like these in my life, success is bound to come.

Education = Opportunities

About two weeks ago, I applied for a job with the State of Tennessee, as a child care program evaluator in other words a licening counselor. I have been looking at this position for a couple of years now, but could never really apply for it because I didnt' have my bachelors yet. Well now I do and I have applied for the position. I have checked my status and I have passed all requirements and have been placed on the list for eligible list of candidates. Oh, how happy I am that I can possibly have the opportunity to come out of the classroom and work in another area of early childhood. Though, I haven't recieved the job, I just have this gut feeling that I will be selected for an interview. I am just excited about the many opportunities that become available as I continue to further my degree. Whether I get the job or not I am still proud and excited about my decision to keep on learning and achieving my goals.

Blogging and Me

Ok, It's day four of my new master's program. So far so good.  I'm realizing two things how much there is to know about technology and  that I don't know even half of it. Because this course requires me to blog, I will be helping myself gain knowledge in this area. I hope I gain it really quick, because for the past four days I have been editing and redesigning my blog page, in an attempt to get it right. OMG! Hopefully by Sunday it will be right. Any who, I have been enjoying interacting with my peers in the course. I think its going to be a great course. Though, I am not new to online learning, but jitters come anytime I begin a new course. Mainly in fear of the unknown, but hey, I'm up for a challenge. Until next time. Happy blogging!

About this Blog Page

My name is Priscilla and I created this blog as a way to express the joys and pains that I experience as a preschool teacher and my journey to complete my master's degree. Creating this blog will help me to further interact with other peers and professional who are striving to achieve excellence. Through blogging, I hope to enhance my technological skills, share and gain new knowledge and insights, and learn from others who are working diligently in the field.