Strengthening Bonds With Professionals
One consequence of learning about the international early childhood field is how other countries are facing the same issues that the United States early childhood field is facing; poverty, training of high quality early childhood teachers, quality early childhood experiences, and language barriers. The Children's Defense Fund website gave me many articles on how advocates can help families in poverty by investing in early childhood.
Another consequence would be culture. With all the different races and languages, quality early learning opportunities are a must for any child. There must be a liaison advocate for parents of immigrants for help with the language barrier and help them secure resources that are available.
A third consequence is the knowledge that I received from my contact in Africa. He wrote a lot about inequity for African children, especially for poor children who usually get less quality nutrition, less appropriate leaning opportunities, and generally less resources for early childhood education.
One of my personal goals is to hopefully stay in touch with my contact in Africa. I will continue with online research learning about the differences, commonalities, and inequities with other countries and the United States. I have enjoyed the discussions with my peers as we all have interpreted these discussions in different ways. Teaching young children is one of the most altruistic professions as we give so others can benefit.
Dear Jill,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing the information from your international contact. I see most of us are not lucky to get connecting directly with international educators. That the insight you had learned from your Africa contact and the information you had shared with us, deepen our understanding of the issues and trends. I agree with you. One of consequences of learning from international early childhood professional is that we can have various view points from other countries regarding the same issues in our country.