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.

My Connections to Play

QUOTES:

“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce (author)

“Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable.

Without it, life just doesn’t taste good” 

Lucia Capocchione

“Children learn as they play. Most importantly, in play children learn how to learn.”

 O. Fred Donaldson (martial arts master)

PICTURES OF ESSENTIAL PLAY ITEMS FOR MY YOUNGER SELF: 

 Doll Baby;   Tricycle;   Lego

 

In Nigeria, play was widely supported when I was younger.  My parents bought quite some play items for us (children – we were one or two years apart) to play with.  Items like Tricycle, Doll Baby, Lego, Ludo, Black Board and Chalk (although bought for learning, we also used it in teacher-student play).  Quite a lot were gained in play, like using Lego to build things - a house or an aero plane - promoted sense of imagination and confidence in us; using the tricycle as a taxi in taking people to market, collecting money and giving change was very good for our mental alertness and creativity which I still enjoy today.  Apart from getting the items for us, my parents, especially my father, trained us on the usage and still participated in some of the plays.  There were early childhood centers then also, but we had more play than learning that it was generally believed that we just leave home to play.

I feel play today is different from the play in which I engaged in as a child because in the centers then we hardly touched any writing material unlike today that children are now taught to hold and use writing materials from early childhood class. We were able to play with one another then and this helped us mentally, physically and also to know more about others around us, but today young children are saddled with writing and learning that there is little or no rapport among the children in the class.  Then, parents are able to get acquainted with each other through their children’s play pal but today, parents urge their children to learn and write faster than the other child that hostility is easily spreading across board.  My hope for younger ones today with regard to play is that the parents, teachers and the community will once again see the importance of play in lives of these children and embrace it as it used to be.

Relationship Reflection

Relationships are the significant connection or similarity between two or more things or people and their involvement with one another.  Relationships/partnerships are important in life because man can not live  and thrive in a vacuum; even the Holy Bible supports relationships in Genesis when it says: ”it is not good for man to be alone”. Without relationships procreation would be absent and very soon the world would have come to an end.  Personally, relationships broaden my horizon, enrich my knowledge with various ideas from partners and this continue to help in sharpening my brain and keeping me abreast of new ideas. 

Currently, the relationships/partnerships between the following people and myself is positive and very cordial:

This is my husband and myself.  We have a good
husband/wife relationship. 
The relationship is being developed and
maintained through constant communication,
love, individuality and mutual respect for each other. 
Married in 1994.

              

This is my daughter. We enjoy a very good child/mother 

                                     relationship. 

                                     The relationship is being developed and                      

                                     maintained through constant Communication, show of love, 

                                     proper respect and understanding.

This is my son.  We enjoy a very good son/mother
relationship. 
The relationship is being developed and maintained 
through constant communication, show of love,
proper respect and understanding.

Next is my mother.  We have a good mother/daughter relationship. The relationship is being developed and maintained through communication, respect, idividuality and show of love.

Then all my four sisters. We have good sisterly relationships. The relationships are being developed and maintained through constant communication, mutual respect for each other, individuality, understanding and show of love toward one another.

Over time, I have experience some challenges in developing and maintaining relationships as a result of inadequate and total break-down in communication; ego; pride; and the like.

Some special characteristics that kept the relationships going are 1) Real show of love in exhibiting understanding; for example, if I had to spank any of my children (not often though), they still come back hugging me and apologising for their wrongs because they usually have a clear understanding of why the spanking was necessary.  2) Another characteristic is correcting in love; often, I have heard people around me; at home, at work and in church; say the way I correct brings fun to the ears, but sense to the the brain.

As an effective early childhood professional, my experience with relationships/partnerships will definitely impact positively on my work because I always learn from esperience and put myself in other peples shoes by imagining how they would  feel in situations.  I did not have many happy experiences while growing up (especially from my mum), and this has helped me to understand actions, reactions and feelings involve, and as a result, I am able to decide against some actions that draw negative feelings from the receiver and affect the general outlook for the child’s entire life.

When I Think of Child Development …

QUOTES: About Children

"Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate."

                                                                                                Anonymous

"Hugs can do great amounts of good, especially for children."

                                                                                Princess Diana, Princess of Wales

 "Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see."

                                                John W. Whitehead, founder, Rutherford Institute