International Early Childhood Field: Summary

          For the past weeks, we have been learning about issues and trends in early childhood field internationally. Personally, I chose to know more about the issues and trends in the British world because we run a British curriculum in school, even though we are not there. So that prompted to learn more about the issues and trends that exists in the field of early childhood. Though I could not get a reply from most of my international contacts, but all thanks to Ms. Daminne Black who was a former colleague, but is back to Scotland for her degree in Early Childhood studies. She helped me to identify some of the issues over there in U.K and Scotland respectively.

          Learning about the international early childhood field was an eye opener for me to learn about early childhood practices in other parts of the world. One major thing I noticed is that the same issues and trends in early childhood field exists almost in every country all over the world. For example, poverty is a worldwide issue but may be more in some countries that their counterparts. Going through other blogs posted by my colleagues, the passion I had for early childhood education was rekindled. For example, after reading about Ariana and all she goes through on daily basis to meet the needs of children in her child care center at Sierra Leone, I practically said to myself that I have no excuse not to affect children’s lives positively as an early childhood educator. I had an understanding that no matter the challenge I am facing as an early childhood educator, someone somewhere has faced a tougher one and still overcame.

          One goal I have set for myself as long as I remain in this field is to continue building a network with other early childhood professionals, so as to share ideas, resources, and also encourage one another to become better. While doing that, I will also engage in research and continuous learning about the current issues and trends in the field both locally and internationally, and at the same build stronger relationship and partnership with parents in order to understand their respective issues and how to be of help to them.

          Finally, I want to say a big thank you to Courtney, Tequilla and Ruthanne for their wonderful and educative blogs. They were really inspiring and motivating. Have a wonderful learning experience in your future courses.

Establiishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

Establishing Contacts

According to this week’s task, I have tried to establish contact with some early childhood professionals with the help of the websites. I sent an email through NAEYC, in order to reach out to early childhood professionals under their umbrella. Also, I was able to contact two professionals (Beatrice and Caroline) through The British Association for Early Childhood Education, briefed them about my current course requirements which is Issues and Trends in early childhood field, and I hope to get a feedback from them. In my first year in my career as an early childhood educator, I had a fantastic early childhood supervisor (Hannah Jenkins) whom I worked under for about one year, though she had gone back to England, but I believe I could build a great professional partnership with her. I have also contacted her.

Expanding resources

Of course one cannot over-emphasize the need of exploring resources in early childhood field. As an educator, there is every need to refer to journals, newsletters, websites and other relevant resources to be able to meet up and following the current trend in early childhood studies. While going through the websites, one of the websites that came alive to me is The British Association for Early Childhood Education (www.early-education.org.uk). They were lots of activities like publications, training and consultancy, ethics and principles as it relates to early childhood studies. As we continue in this course, It is going be fun and as we explore and share the knowledge we gained by establishing new contacts and expanding our resources.

My Supports

Supports are like aids to help our abilities both physically, emotionally and in every other aspect of our life. There is no existence in life that does not need supports.

The greatest support I have from my childhood up till now is Almighty God. Though I cannot see him, but I so much depend on him especially when there is no one else to turn to. I lost my dad when I was 7 years old, and my mum will always tell I and my siblings to see God as the earthly father we do not have, and learn to trust him for every little thing. As funny as it may sound, if I need something from my mother, for example, a pair of shoes or my school fees, I usually ask God first through prayers to provide for my mum even before I go to her ask. He has never failed me in anyway and I have never regretted my depending on him for supports.

My family, especially my mum has also been a wonderful support to me, financially, spiritually, socially and in every area I have ever needed her assistance. All through my years of growing up without a father, she has always been there to provide my needs and instruct me on the right path to flow. Though I no longer live with her, she always gives me her support even from a distance. I have grown to be the woman I am today because of her. In fact she's a role model to me. My siblings have also been very supportive even though they are my younger ones. We always had each others back in every situation,and that bond still exists up till now. Life without my family support may be disastrous.

Career wise,my colleagues are the supports I have. I ventured into early childhood sector as a novice. Though I have love for children, but it was not enough because there's more to just loving children. My colleagues especially Ms. Daminee, Ms. Faizah and Ms. Sarah showed me the professional ways to go about my practice even before I joined this early childhood studies program. They supported and shared educational activities and practices that worked positively for them with me. If they were not there for me, maybe I would have backed out of the field a long time ago.

One non-human support I also have is the internet. It is a well of knowledge for me in all my dealings especially when I've exhausted my own knowledge. On a daily basis, there is always something new to learn pertaining my career, and life in general through the internet.It just make life easier to me in terms of communication and gaining knowledge. Shutting out of the internet is like shutting out of the entire world, and living an isolated life and that will be very boring and awful.

The greatest challenge I have always imagined is becoming a married woman one day. The thought of living my family and then move in with a man that is in no way related to me is very fearful to me. It seems to me as the most difficult task. Firstly, I know we will need each other's support as husband and wife to pull through. As my mum will always say, in order to make your marriage work, you need to look for a family whose marriage will inspire you. That, I must do. Books on successful marriage can also be helpful in order to learn some other marriage tips while we practice our own working formula. Above all, God factor is the most important. Marriage was instituted by God, and there must be need to look up to him for the greatest support even when the going gets tough.

TESTING FOR INTELLIGENCE

Through this course "Early Childhood Development", we have been learning about various developmental changes as it pertains to children of various age range. Some children develop rapidly, while others are quite slow in developing in certain areas. Early childhood assessment can be very challenging because of the way they learn. Children learn through experiments, interactions, handling concrete objects, acting out things they have seen and playing. A low percentage of their learning depends on abstract reasoning and paper and pencil activities.

Though it is important to focus on how much a child can read and write, there are other important areas that educators need to focus on in  order to come up with the right development evaluation and test of intelligence on the child. These area are:

• Communication and Language: This includes the child's ability to listen and pay attention for a reasonable period of time, understand and speak and communicate confidently.
• Physical development: In this area, the child's ability to move and handle objects is observes especially during indoor and outdoor play. Also, the educator also finds out how much the child under her care can take care of him or herself. For example, Can the child tie his or her shoe  lace? etc.
• Personal, Social and emotional development: It is also important for educators to access children's confidence, self awareness, ability to manage feelings and behavior and how much they can make relationships with others.
• Expressive arts and design: Is the child imaginative while exploring and using media and other materials?

The reason behind the above mentioned areas of assessment is to ascertain their biosocial, cognitive and phycosocial development respectively. 

In Nigeria, school age children are accessed through formal testing. There is more concentration on testing children's ability of reading and writing. Most times, teachers do no carry out personal observation which is a kind of informal test on the children, especially in the public schools. Because of this, some children's level of creativity cannot be ascertained as they are not exposed to hands on activities.

It is very necessary that educators should focus on informal personal observation for children. While doing so, proper documentations should be made after every observation session in order to keep record of the speed and level of development of the child. This will also enable the educator and the school administration to know when to advocate for intervention where there is a case of abnormality.

CONSEQUENCES OF STRESS ON CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENT

Stress is one of the major factors that has lasting effects on children's development. The early negative experiences a child goes through has a way of manifesting in the later years of the child's development. Some of these stressors includes poverty, violence, hunger, etc.

I am going to look at how violence in the home affected development of my aunt's children. I have an aunt who got married some years ago, and the marriage has always suffered violence right from the beginning. Her husband was always very violent and never saw anything good in the wife, which led to his hitting and beating her at every slight thing. The children grew up in this environment and always felt rejected and unhappy because they never received any form of love from their father. While their friends at school had fantastic stories to tell about their parents, they never had anything to say.  As they were growing up, they felt a great bitterness for their father.

As time went on, my aunt lost her job, and that affected the children because their father was no where close to helping them. My aunt could no longer afford their school fees, so her first son (Godwin) had to drop out from school and engaged in some menial jobs in order to support the younger ones. This experience caused him so much pain and even more hatred and anger towards his father. When his mates were going through school, he sees them and will  always tell himself that he can't make it further any longer, so depression also set in. Not only has this situation affected this child's development, especially in the aspect of gaining formal education, it has also left him with an inferiority complex especially when he finds himself among his mates.

Apart from the stressors mentioned in this week's study, another stressor that has adverse effect on child's development is divorce. Parental separation/divorce is associated with increased risk for numerous psychological, academic and social problems throughout the life-course.The effects of divorce on children can range from mild to severe and from short-term to long-term. Millions of children who see their parents divorce are nonetheless affected in serious ways by that act of rejection. Over the years there have been high cases of divorce in the United States of America. This goes along way to affect the child's development. Some of the problems that are associated with divorce is remarriage, emotional imbalance. In America, most divorced or separated parents, end up remarrying because single parenting is more of an enduring condition. By so doing, the children end up entering into step families. when this happens, it takes time for the child to establish a bond and attachment with the step parent which has a great effect on the child's emotions and development. Some of the children turn out to be morally handicapped because of lack of some necessary training and love from both parents.

Stress, if not handled properly, can affect child development especially ion the early years.

My Early Childhood Studies with Walden

This blog is all about my journey through my Early Childhood Studies Program with Walden University. It is really going to be an exciting learning period, as I gain more knowledge on how to do what I love doing best.