Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1

I am yet to establish contact with either of my conversation partners and the podcast participant, however, as soon as I am able to establish contact with either of them I will not hesitate to share with the class because I would have been so thrilled.

From the podcast, I realized that episode 10 that was the latest about two weeks ago is still the latest.  I am having the notion that the episodes are seldom changed.  Episode 10 is by Susan Lyon.  Susan, in her statement, stated that she had been an educator since age 22 teaching children having disabilities and emotional parlance.  She got fascinated by a young child’s idea of the word “city” and began to carefully consider the ideas that occupy children’s heart.  She has since worked on many projects aim on improving the living conditions of children.  She is the Director of the Innovative Teacher Project in San Francisco. This project involves a network of schools interested in the in-depth approach  to children.  Both public and private schools are participating and it started in 1994.  Currently, she is working on a rehab of a San Francisco structure into the first Italian immersion preschool. 

From the website, I read about childhood poverty in India.  India’s population is second only to China’s with an estimated 1.03 billion citizens in 2001 while about 260.2 million people live in poverty as at 1999 – 2000.  An estimated 400 million of the population are children between 0-18 years.  These children are living under very hard conditions as almost half of all children under age five are malnourished and 34 percent of new born babies are under significantly underweight.  There is a decrease in infant mortality from 80 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 69 in 2000; and enrolment of primary school-aged children rose from 68percent in 1992/1993 to 82 percent by the end of the decade; this is an indication of important achievements in health and education sectors.  However, India still has the largest numbers of working children in the world, with about one third of the children below 16 years of age.  In all of these, female children are seriously impacted as a result of stark inequalities in child wellbeing based on gender, class and caste.

The disadvantaged cycle continues over and over again as it starts at birth, continues through childhood to motherhood and to the next generation while it is also reflecting in the inferior health and educational status of women, the high maternal mortality rate, the neglected of the girl child and subsequent higher participation in the child labor force.  This shows that female children are less valued than their male counterpart and this could be damaging to a nation as mothers stay longer with children (male and female) than fathers.

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre’s page (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/)

Sharing Web Resources

The name and link for the organization I selected are: Zero To Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families http://www.zerotothree.org/

The organization is focuses on encouraging the growth and development of infants and toddlers including their general physical condition.  It is a source of information, support and training for the professionals, policymakers, and parents in improving the lives of the young ones.  

A current issue is about making it a year full of play.  This encourages the play aspect of children’s lives.  It supplies information according to ages of children, please check Year of Play in order to know more.

A current issue from the newsletter under Behavior & Development – Health & Nutrition is on the tips on health and nutrition. For example, healthy eating habits for young children offers information on: feeding skills for the first three years; how feeding tenderly cares for the body, heart and mind of the young children; knowing what an individual child really needs; how meal and snack times give chances to help the infants and toddlers know a lot of things like - learning healthy eating habits, feeling important and loved, etc.  There is also a chart on the ages and stages of children in relation to feeding and what adults can do to assist where necessary.

In relation to the topic of the week - Issues and Trends: Changing Demographics and Diversity – from the public policy, I found the article on early language and literacy development quite relevant.  It focuses on how development in positive early language and literacy can give children a window to the world and the absence affects the brain’s architecture which makes children lag behind. I also found a submission in conversation with the experts by Stefanie Powers on the findings providing useful insight into how professionals can better support parents and other caregivers in their efforts to nurture healthy development.  Some of the important discoveries include – a) parenting practices are influenced by one’s own upbringing, that is, often, we tend to pattern the training of our children to the type of upbringing we had; b) grandparents are vital sources of support and information, for example, grandparents at times serve as baby sitters and custodian of family culture; c) fathers and mothers experience parenting differently, that is, the combination of the two different types of upbringing to produce another type of upbringing in the children. To this effect, there is a five point policy recommendation in order to increase literacy skills for all children.

There is also a research submission that literacy is about communication and that children achieve competency in school readiness skills when they begin to experience and master all the domains of development, that is, cognitive, social, emotional, and physical development.  However, in gaining the experience, there is a pointer to the significant adults – families and other caregivers – in the child’s life.  Where there is family movement from one geographical area to another, the rate at which the communication gap is bridged depends absolutely on the level of interaction between the early childhood professionals, the communities and the new family.

Reference

Kupcha-Szrom, J. (2011).  A window to the World. “Early Language And Literacy Development.”  From Zero to Three Policy Center February 2011 http://www.zerotothree.org/public-policy/infant-toddler-policy-issues/positive-early-learning.html

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

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

Since the Global Alliance of NAEYC has e-mail addresses for early childhood professionals worldwide, I decided to go through that route. I tried to locate and contact two professionals; one in Ibadan, Oyo State in Nigeria, while the other is in Mankessim, in Ghana.  I sent an email to them individually, but no response.  I sent another, hoping that I will get a response, but still, none yet.  I contacted four more and also sent to the earlier two in order to keep on moving.  But as at Saturday, there was still no response.  Although, I would not want to choose the alternate assignment, but since I there was no response from the professionals contacted, I was left with no choice.  For four of the six contacted, I received an automated “message not delivered” response.  This shows that most of the emails on the website are no longer functional.

I moved to the World Forum Foundation.  Here also, I tried severally to gain access to the links to podcast of conversations with early childhood professionals from around the world.  After the several attempts, I was able to gain access and listened to the early childhood professionals. 

Selecting an early childhood organization out of the whole lot was not an easy task because I was engrossed with all the organizations.  The process used was: checking through some of the websites in different locations; looking through their vision and mission; their various impacts; finally, I settled for Zero To Three: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families, this was picked from Early Childhood Related Websites – United States.

I felt disappointed with the ‘undelivered messages’ received.  I feel there should be a way to keep all information on websites active and up to date.

With all that I have done this week, my horizon is widened and I am feeling as if I have traveled all over the world.

My Supports

To me, support means to give active help and encouragement to someone.  It could be money, helpful advice, voluntary work, and so on.

The factors within my daily environment that are supportive to me are: Weekly minder – in the person of my mother who helps to take care of my nine year old boy by monitoring his getting ready for school in the morning and his coming back in the afternoon, ensuring the completion of his assignment, I monitor him on weekends.  This has been beneficial to me in that I am able to concentrate and more relaxed at work, without which I would not have been able to cope because I leave home by 5.30am and school resumes 8.am, his sister is in the boarding school and my husband works on the rig (2 weeks on and off at intervals), therefore, without this support, it would have been the little boy and myself at home.  Staff bus – helps to transport me to and from work every day (Monday to Friday) amidst terrible traffic - 4hrs per trip.  This is highly beneficial because I always have some minutes nap on the way going and do some of my assignments on the way back, therefore, without this support I would have to join public transport which will definitely make the journey cumbersome and uneventful.  Computer – helps me to organize my thought and submit my daily job on time.  This is beneficial to me because it helps to complete my job timely with less stress because I always have a whole number of deadline jobs to attend to on daily basis while attending to customers on phone and e-mail, some even come personally to get information. Without this support I would have stayed longer on jobs and this would have affected my daily output.  Food storage – freezer helps to keep the food ready to eat.  This is beneficial because I always prepare food for the week and keep, when I get back from work I bring the preferred food out of the freezer and warm.  Without this I would have to go to market on daily basis and cook daily after going through the daily terrible traffic.  Power generating plant – helps to keep the freezer working with the incessant absence of national electricity. The benefit of this is that it produces power for the freezer because we seldom have electricity in this part of Nigeria.  Without this support, it would have been the same as the food storage.  Daily devotional – helps to keep me balanced through studying and meditating on the word of God.  This is beneficial to me as it invigorates my spiritual life which keeps me sound and balanced, without which I would have been overwhelmed by the happenings all around.  On-line studying – study on early childhood helps to keep me more readily alert on my environment and keeps me abreast of current happenings within families. This is beneficial to me as I am now able to give a more assured professional advice to the suffering families as a result of inadequacies in some areas of upbringing.  If any or all of these are gone, definitely the benefit(s) would be gone too and saddle me with the challenge(s) therein.  I honestly would not want to think of a life without any or all of these supports!

The challenge I chose to imagine is not having a place of work after graduation and the thoughts I have with regard to supports I would want and need are – having accommodation; getting capital to start business of my own.  The factors within my daily environment that would be supportive to me are; parental/family support for immediate necessary things (which should be for a short time before we start getting on each other’s nerves). Without this support, I envisage a feeling of emptiness that would make life unbearable. Societal/community support – this is to help in providing adequate jobs for people in order to provide means of living without which life would be miserable. Describe what you see as the potential benefits of these supports. How difficult would it be to exist without these supports? The absence of these supports would create a negative impact in my life and the way I relate with people generally.