What Resonates With You About Early Childhood Public Policy and Advocacy?

To be truthfully honest I had no clue what this Specialization was going to hold for me. I knew that I wanted to go into the early childhood field, but did not want to be a teacher in the classroom as a part of a school system. I have always aspired to be an educator, but little did I know in what form. I started as early childhood teacher in a child care program. I then I did personalized early childhood as a nanny in the home for four years. I then finished my undergrad in child development and said that the place to be is in administration of a program. This way I will have the control over how the programs focus and response to the parents and community will go.  I want to be the person that makes the difference in the life of a child, and I was going to do so by influence those who come in contact with them daily. As I started my new career as an Child Care Resource and Referral Specialist I realized that it is not the people who come in direct contact with the children who have a say in the outcomes of their life. Then I started to see how rules and regulations began to affect the childhood community and the barriers and limitations that were placed on them. This is when I came to the realization that I was the person who wanted to advocate for children and the professional working with these children on a daily biases.

I think advocates are essential in the early childhood community because someone who has a broader view of the field can help policymakers understand the perspectives that those working in the field have on the issues they face. I have started to say that it is unfair that people who sit in these offices and make laws, policies, procedures, regulations for situations that some have never faced. I am all in favor of guidelines and rules but sometimes things that are imposed have unrealistic qualifications. It’s along the lines of asking a child to stand up and walk and they cannot even support their own body weight yet.

I hope to learn about how policy are adopted, adapted, and executed to the different environments and agencies. Three professional goals will be that one I want to get a better understanding of how true advocacy is demonstrated. I think I have only reached the tip of the iceberg. Two I want to be able to create policies that are fair but, still hold a level of caliber to other standards that are put in place. Then finally I want to be able to give an account that is truly based on experience and knowledge as to why certain policies exist. I have always been able to give a general account of “well of course because health and safety is a priority.” However a more in depth reasoning would be better to explain. 

A Professional thanks.

Thank you for all your input and collaboration. We have all done what I consider to be my mantra, “If you take the time to invest in the life of a child then, you have used time well spent. By doing so you have made the richest investment of a lifetime. This will be worth more than all the dollar bills in the world”! - unknown

We have taken the time to invest in the life of a child by learning how to communicate our needs we have to better serve them and their families. We all possess the tools in order to effectively communicate with others, so now we have the charge to go forth and show others.

Adjourning Phase

It always hard to say goodbye and that is exactly what our team had to do. At my job we all work in the community serving families and children in some form. Well we all work on grants and one of our affiliated teams grant was not renewed. They worked in child care centers song side of us offering them assistance in behavior management and building relationships with parents. The adjourning phase was reached when we had one last project to fulfill for all the local Head start teachers and getting them trained on the model they used. During the forming stage of this program things were not connecting, it was the perception that the new team was infringing on the past teams territory. However we all had the same goal of to train and assist child care providers in their classrooms.

               The group has worked together on the past but this time was more cohesive than before, we knew we had a small window of time to organize this training and then the fact this would be the last time we all worked together on a project like this. We knew this project was going to take some thorough planning, and implementation because of the time constraints little time for mistakes or figuring it out. As I said we all down this before but nothing of this magnitude. It took the cooperation of all involved and someone had to take leadership of our practices although there was someone whom our group reported. One of the behavior specialist took the leadership roll, organized and designated what needed to be done, it was meet with some resistance because of her short time with the program. However as the team began the performing of the task things began to fall into place.

              The project was a success and was greatly appreciated from the Headstart teachers and committee. As we came to the last meeting we were met with gratitude from our management and self-gratification from providers implementing things we taught them. As colleagues making adjourning easily is a hard thing because of how the process works sometimes, however when you find the goal or need and work towards all things will click on the communication process.

Problem Communication

A huge part of my job hinges on communication. I the specialistcommunication communicate with the child care provider the changes that have recently taken affect before their upcoming yearly assessment or evaluation year. We the specialists get our information from scale books and their interpretation was given to us by colleagues who are titled assessors. They assesors come in and observe  classroom based on the scale books for each age group. As the specialists I come in and teach the provider about the scale book and how yo interpret the bookmark. This becomes an issue for us the specialists when the assessor comes in and sees things from different perspectives. The other part of this communcation triad is where we the specialists help maintain the order and safety of the child care facility as it is suggested by the Department of child care licensing office.  We the specialists are left in the middle with the provider when licensing tells them one requirement and assessment requires another. I had a discussion or actually a challenge from a provider who asked for documentation on a issue. I made a visit and was discussing with them that when it comes to assessment this certain practice is frowned upon, whereas in the documentation from licensing it was also frown upon but not prohibited.  In the past I have usually met challenge with documentation but in this case my documentation on partially cemented my claim. The first thing I learned I could have used would be to have given the teacher the tools to empower her to make the best decision for her classroom, from the NVC model. The next thing I learned this week would be the 3R's I was respectful but I could have been more reciprocal instead of shutting down when she did not see my reason.