Podcast Alternative

   I went to the web site UNESCO. org and one of the stories that had caught my eye was Early Childhood Care and Education: "the earlier the better". The link I read was about a First World Conference that took place in Moscow, Russia on September 27, 2010. The conference focused on Early Childhood Care and Education. The three important messages I have learned is the UNESCO's message, the early years being important to development and the goal of UNESCO.
   According to the UNESCO, the message of the summit is, "is that education is essential for reaching each and everyone of the development goals, from reducing extreme poverty and fighting hunger to imporving child and maternal health, preventing disease and ensuring environmental sustainability" (unesco.org, 2010).
This is a great message and I wish that more of our politicians would listen to this message carefully and would realize the importance of early childhood education.
   The second message I learned from this conference is the importance of physical and intellectual development for children between the ages of birth to age 8. This is the time of their lives when young children learn language, comprehension skills, reasoning and expressing ideas. It also focuses on how young children learn to relate to each others and how they discover the world. This is the time where children are vulnerable and in times of crisis such as conflicts and natural disasters has a negative impact on them.
   The third message I learned from this conference is the importance of early childhood education and how all countries are expanding their early childhood programs. All countries are making it their top priority and at the same time they are reaching out to those who are at a disadvantage. According to the article, "

But even today, only 15 percent of children are enrolled in preprimary education in sub-Saharan Africa, 19 percent in Arab States, 28 in Central Asia and 36 in South and West Asia" (unesco.org, 2010). When I had read these statistics it had sadden me how there are other countries are working hard to improve education while the politicians here in the United States want to cut the eduaction spending.

Source:

Early Childhood Care and Education” webpage (http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/

Sharing Web Resources

The website I had gone to was PACER. PACER is an organization that focuses on children with disabilities and acts as an advocate for children with special needs. The site has articles about bullying, parent training and information center, the benefit that the organization will be having on May 7th and a health information center. One of the newest articles it has is an update e-booklet called Possibilities: A Financial Resource for Parents of Children with Disabilities. All these links took you to stories about these topics.
   The one area of the site I had searched thouroughly was the The National Bullying Prevention Center. One of the stories I had read was called Tangled Ball. The story talks about what people can learn to do to prevent bullying. The PACER organization got involved in the bullying issue because more people with disabilities are getting bullied and it is a sad situation. The organization knew that they needed to take action so they could educate and bring awareness to people about this horrible topic. The organization was invited to the White House to discuss bullying and talk about their journey to help kids with disabilities and to discuss how bullying diminshes lives. It also gives links to the sites Kids Against Bullying and Teens Against Bullying.
  The only thing I could find that is related to early childhood is about Health Care. One of the missions of the PACER Center is to give out sources to families with young children who need special health care and have disabilities so they can get the support and advocacy they need. According to the site "Children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN) are those who have or are at risk for chronic physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional conditions that require health and related services of a type or amount beyond that required by children generally. PACER promotes family-centered care and family and professional collaboration at all levels of health care. The F2F HIC also has a strong commitment to promote and support the needs of families from racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse communities" (pacer.org).
   The website gave me some great insight about children with disabilities and how they deserve to be treated the same as everybody else. Children with disabilities need someone to stand up for their rights and to help them achieve their educational goals. I think it is great that there are many organizations that help stand up for children with disabilities. The other insights I have learned about is that this group helps kids stand up for bullies and how parents can make sure that their child is receiving the proper medical care.


Source:
PACERS Center-Champions for Children With Disabilities. http://www.pacer.org/

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

I am still trying to get a response, but had no luck. I feel as though I am missing out on a great opportunity talking to others who are in my field on a global market and finding out what they are doing to help young children.

  I had gone to the Harvard website where I had read about Global Children's Initiative. The center has built activities in early childhood education, mental health, and children in crisis and conflict situations. In the Early Childhood Development, the center wants to apply knowledge to address the topic of health and development needs for young children by doing the following things: "Assessing quality in early childhood environments and programs in diverse global contexts; Piloting assessments to measure child development outcomes linked to malaria control strategies in Zambia; and Expanding effective interventions to improve preschool quality in Chile" (Global Children's Initiative).

  The second thing I have read about was mental health and how it is a concern that has significant implications for the broaden health in society. The faculty at Harvard is writing an agenda for research, education, and public engagement. The project wants to launch the following provided there are sufficient funds: “•Assessing the state of child mental health services in China; Developing and evaluating family-based strategies to prevent mental health problems in children affected by HIV/AIDS in Rwanda; and Addressing child maltreatment and mental health outcomes in three Caribbean nations (Barbados, the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, and Suriname)” (Global Children’s Initiatives).

   The third thing I read about was Children in Crisis and conflict situations. The Global Children’s Initiative is working with Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health to help with the research because both schools are more experienced. The common goal is to collaborate with the sciences to assess and manage the child’s well-being so they can focus on long-term adaptations. “Two issues are the initial focus of activity in this domain: Exploring comparable approaches to surveying child status in post-earthquake Haiti and Chile. Bringing the science of child development into strategies for addressing acute malnutrition” (Global Children’s Initiative).

    The center’s main mission is to have education and training programs in the fields of early childhood education, mental health and crisis and conflict situations. The center wants to build a sound infrastructure to support diverse global issues and they also want to provide leadership training for researchers, policy makers and institutions in the majority world.

Education and Play

   I had chosen to focus on the importance of play in early childhood classrooms. I had gone to the Zero to Three web site and looked up the importance of play and how play teaches children activities such as litertacy, story telling, vocabulary and mathmatics. In the political areana many politicans feel that play should be taken out of the curriculum and we should only focus on standardized testing in order to measure a child's success in school. On this web site there is a link that lists age-appropriate toys for each age group.

Childhood Poverty

I had done the alternative assignment which was go to the CHIP web site which focuses on children and poverty. Reading the information saddens me because poverty is all over the world and how 1 in 4 live in poverty. It saddens me that young children who live in poverty can grow up to live in poverty as well, that it can pass on from one generation to another, and how it can affect long-term health.
  The country I have selected was India. A close friend of mine is from India and her parents had moved to the United States one year after they had gotten married so their children could grow up having many opportunities that the parents could not have in India.
  After reading about the poverty level in India I have found three things that have interested me. The first thing that had interested me is that 260.2 million people live in poverty. I had always thought that India was a richer country and when I had read about the number of people who live in poverty it had surprised me. I think it is sad that many people have to live in poverty and miss out on a lot of opportunities. The second thing that interested me was that in the last 5 decades there has been a lot of effort to alleviate poverty by increasing economic growth and provisions of basic skills so people can get out of poverty and make their lives better. The last thing that interested me is that children under the age of 5 suffer from malnutrition and are significantly underweight. According to the web site "Almost half of all children (about 62 million) under the age of five are malnourished and 34 percent of new-borns are significantly underweight.⁸ Important achievements have been made in health and education. Infant mortality fell from 80 per 1000 live births in 1990 to 69 in 2000.⁹ The enrolment of primary school-aged children rose from 68 percent in 1992/1993 to 82 percent at the end of the decade.¹⁰ But India still accounts for 20 per cent of the world's out-of-school children. It has the largest numbers of working children in the world, with nearly a third of children below 16 years working" (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/).

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

Sharing Web Sources

   The newsletter I signed up for was the Pacer Center. The Pacer Center is an organization that focuses on training children and adults about technology amd how it can be used to help students with disabilities learn. Their mission is to give opportunities and to enhance the lives of children and young adults with learning disabilities. One part of the newsletter I read was about bullying. The month of October is National Bullying Prevention Month and there are 160,000 children who are afraid to attend school because they are living in fear. It is sad that a lot of children are teased, tormented and picked on because they are different. Another thing that was mentioned on the newsletter is that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) celebrated their 20th anniversary in July.
  The way that I see this can relate to what we have read this week is that there are some people who are bullied because of their religion or race. I think it is sad that now in the 21st century many children are still teased because of their race.


web address is:
http://www.pacer.org/

Establishing Professional Contacts

This week I had sent out emails  to unicef in an attempt to try to set up communication to learn about teaching in other countries, however I have had no luck. I sent out the first email  I sent was to bucharest@unicef.org on Monday and waited a couple of days. When I did not hear back I had sent another email to portauprince@unicef.org  and had no luck. By Friday I was getting worried and I have decided to do the alternative assignment instead. The website I will be researching is  Save the Children. I have always wondered about this organization and like the type of work they do. I love children and am a very strong believer in the importance of education and always making sure that the children are well taken care of. It always saddens me to see a child starving or to see a child not have the same advantages as everyone else. These children remind me of a family in my community who had lost everything due to a fire in their trailer. It had happened two weeks before Christmas and the family lost all their belongings. The community had really came together to help the family. Many had made extra food to bring over while I had gone out and bought a couple of new toys and a new board game to help these kids get through a difficult time. It was sad the family lost everything, but it made me realize how lucky I am amd to always be grateful for what I have instead of wishing for things I cannot have.