My Support

I am so lucky to have such a support network around me.  I live in a community that values early childhood education and the collaborative work that we do to ensure our youngest learners are ready to be successful in school and life.  I work in an environment where we truly love what we do and consistently support one another in our careers.  I have children who are proud of me for how hard I work and the values and standards I hold and am passing on to them.  My parents live in the community and have supported me in whatever adventure I sign up for and have for my whole life.  I have felt emotional support as well as physical support as they are very involved in my life and my children's lives as well.  My husband is definitely my rock; he is a sounding board, a sympathetic ear and my cheerleader all the way.  The animals in our home definitely support me as a stress reliever and source of great relaxation and satisfaction.  My church family supports my family and my faith in many ways.  Being in school and being able to attend trainings supports my yearning to be a life-long learner.  I also think my hobbies of music, reading and working out support me physically and emotionally on a daily basis.  They are good for the mind, body and soul! 

In some ways new challenges motivate and energize me but the unknown can also be very scary.  Our family is considering a move towards my husband's family a few hours from my home town.    For me this would mean new job, in a new city, away from my family and friends.  It may mean picking our children up and moving them away from the only community they have known.  It would mean being a supportive wife to a husband in a new area with a new job.  Because I have lived in the same town my whole life, I am not sure how I would respong Not only have my children had the same friends most of their lives, but I know the parents of the friends my children are spending time with. Careerwise I know it would be important to find a positive environment to work in, a team atmosphere.  I have experience working in a negative environment, and it makes it very hard for me to do my job well.  I also would love to work under supportive leadership.  It is important to me to do a great job and I would appreciate training, staff development as well as collaborative time.  I would hope we would feel the community was supportive and would fit our family right, as well as a place our children would thrive and feel a part of.  I realize much of the responsibility would fall on me to ensure I was making a informed decision and access to resources in that instance would be imperitive, whether it be resources provided to me or ones I seek out on my own.

My Connections to Play

                                 PLAY IS A CHILD’S WORK. PLAY CREATES THOUGHT!

 “When you asked me what I did in school today and I say, 'I just played.' Please don’t misunderstand me. For you see, I am learning as I play. I am learning to enjoy and be successful in my work. Today I am a child and my work is play.”    Anita Wadley, 1974.

I believe that play enhances language development, social competence, creativity, imagination, and thinking skills and see how play is the chief vehicle for the development of imagination and intelligence.  It needs to be self motivated, valued by the player, freely chosen and engaging.

As a child, and as a parent I have loved playing games with my family.  Whether it be a game night with extended family or a simple game of cards with my parents I love games. I also remember playing outside all the time.  Whether it was creating a fort, riding bikes or playing kick ball we played outside with friends, family and neighbors.  We knew we had to come in for dinner as a family but would go right back out after for more play time.  I also really enjoyed playing with other children, whether it be helping in the church nursery or babysitting around the neighborhood I have fun playing with children.  I think there were less demands placed on children when we were young, it was expected that we would have responsibililties yes, but one major one was to play.  My parents took time to play games with me and encourage good old fashioned outside play by letting be be creative.  I would use materials in many different ways depending on my elaborate life of the day.  I enjoyed having babysitters over that would bring fun and new things to play with and so when I became old enough I too brought a treasure bag along with me when I babysat.  As I continued to work with children I would bring fun game ideas from my childhood into the classroom and saw how that slowly changed.  In our busy society we are expected to go, go, go and do, do, do.  To me that means there is pressure for children to do their best at everything (not just enjoy the activity and process) and be involved in as many activities as they can.  There is much more expected out of children at school today and the time it takes outside of school to be prepared to be a successful student takes time away from play.  Add that to the pull of electronics and we have no chance.  We take my children to our cabin up North, play fun car games on the way and talk about what our weekend is going to be like.  We get there and it takes quite a while for my children to remember how to play outside.  They continuously ask if we can have a TV in the bedroom at the cabin (NO!) or can they bring their computers and playstation along too (NO!).  After encouragement and brainstorming with them to come up with ideas of things to do outside, I almost will resort to additional chores if I hear the word BORED one more time.  I think it is sad the lack of creative, imaginative play skills our children have today and think it is important to remember that just because their agendas may be different than ours, does not mean they are not benefitting greatly from good old fashioned play.

        

RELATIONSHIP REFLECTION

Reading this week’s resources has reiterated what I feel and have seen as the most important part of why I am doing what I am doing and what I continue to strive for: relationships.  As I think back to my childhood the memories are full of experiences, but more importantly are the relationships I held with the people I created memories with.  Sure I remember the special event when looking back at pictures but when I really think about what I remember most about childhood is the feelings that came along with the close relationships I held.  This is why I continue to work at relationships with my family, friends, colleagues and families I work with.  Because I know the difference a relationship can make.  I was lucky to grow up in a close family where I felt loved, supported and validated by my parents.  I continue to feel that consistent love and support today.  I have one sister who is 4 years younger than me, and although we had a few rough years growing up (who doesn’t?!)  I consider her my best friend.  Not only are we honest, respectful and loyal but loving, supportive and reciprocal in our relationship.  I have learned so much from her.  In becoming a wife and mother I have learned as much about myself as I did about relationships with others.  My biggest fan and supporter is my other best friend, my husband Tony.  I feel blessed to be able to spend my life with him and through lots of hard work we have the relationship I hoped for.  As a mother of 3 it is very important to me to continue to have a close personal relationship with each of my children individually and accept, love and cheer them on for who they are.  The relationships that are most positive for me personally are those that are consistent, trustworthy, supportive but also respectfully honest.  This leads into my professional life where I consider myself a lifelong learner.  I learn from others and appreciate being able to bounce ideas of others and share knowledge.  I appreciate honesty through respectful and caring interactions.  I realize the importance of cooperation, collaboration and compromise in a true partner relationship.  In my married life and my professional life I have seen the challenges of keeping open communication with others as we work together in diversity.  This may mean different ethnic, family or area cultures as well as different personality and learning styles.  What I continue to see though is, if we go in with an open mind, a positive attitude and a respectful nature we begin to take the steps to developing a positive relationship.  Relationships are the foundation to my professional career as a teacher I develop those relationships with students, family and staff and as a leader I hope to develop those relationships with other professionals in my community as well as policy makers and other leaders in our field.

Week 8 Blog:  a few favorite quotes:

“Let’s all break out the rainbow parachute, hide under piles of leaves, and howl like wolves more often.”  Quote from Laura Warner in “You’re It!” Thoughts on Play and Learning in Schools from Horace Summer 2008 Vol. 24 No. 2

One Hundred Years from now: an excerpt form "Within My Power" by Forest Witcraft

One Hundred Years from now, It will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money was in my bank account nor what my clothes looked like.  But the world may be a better place because I was important in the life of a child.

I find the topic of assessment very important as a teacher and as a mother.  I am frustrated by the amount of standardized testing and assessment done that does not take individuality into account.  When my oldest child started school, he was scoring below average in the standardized testing they use.  We struggled with this year after year; we would work with him all night at home, drilling, doing extra work with him and he just wasn't making progress. This was effecting my son's overall experience in school and how he felt about himself, he was starting to give up.  Luckily  his 5th grade teacher recommended a charter school for him.  That was the best decision we ever made for our son.  He was finally looked at as the whole child, where they built on his strengths, gave him extra support in his areas of weakness; they did not see him as being behind but a different learner.  He is now doing absolutely amazing in school and is deciding where to go to college!  I looked into the assessment practices of Canada since it is so close to our state.  Like the United States, Canada is increasing their focus on early childhood programs and centers to nurture the aspects of early development.  They are beginning to focus on a child's individuality and supporting an early identification or screening movement.  While staying accountable for educational excellence, the goal is to evaluate the child while respecting their individual differences.  That is what I want for our community and school system as well; assessment that is authentic and trully represents the individuals we work with!

Source: http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/

Early Childhood Stressors

This week's blog was hard for me to think about.  On one hand I felt incredibly blesses that I didn't have an overly stressful childhood.  I had 2 very involved, loving, supportive parents and my needs were well taken care of.  I feel that my husband and I are providing a very similar childhood for our children, and are lucky to have many of our extended family in the area to support us and our children as well.  My husband's upbringing was a different story, and one that is hard to talk about with him because he prefers not to think about it.  I had the chance to talk with him and his brother this weekend about what their biggerst stressor was growing up.  I went into the conversation thinking the stressor would be the poverty the family experienced during and after his parents divorce, but to him that wasn't the largest struggle.  He said they had food provided by the government and his mom was a wonderful cook that could put things together with very little resources.  He also had other family members around that would help provide clothing if needed and both boys got jobs very young to help provide for the family.  The biggest stressor for the children in the family seemed to be the chaos.  The divorce was very hard on his mom and she didn't deal with it well.  For a few years she was an absentee mother, as she was out most nights until very late and would come home drunk.  The boys were required at about age 10 to take care of the 4 siblings for sometimes days at a time.  Many times they look back and wonder how they didn't burn the house down when they were trying to make food or keep the house warm.  Keeping the house safe was another issue that got forgotten for much of their childhood.  Most often the flat roof was leaking and they had no door knobs to keep the animals out.  He remembers pushing the table in front of  the door to keep a hungry bear out.  I can understand why the responsibility to care for siblings along with the fear of being safe and having the resources to provide for the siblings had a large effect on my husband.  That being said, his school work suffered.  He didn't have anyone to help or keep him on task with homework, and many times he was up late worried about his mom and would fall asleep at school.  Luckily for their family the school was small enough that staff knew the family and would help out as much as they could; this meant letting the boys work as custodial help at 13, and allowing them to sleep in class when they needed to.  It makes me sad to think about that and then to compare what kind of father he is to my children is just amazing.  In comparing this situation to that in other countries I went to the unicef website (www.unicef.org) which talks about how the severe maltrition issue in Africa isn't because the mother doesn't care, she is busy in the fields and will take the time to feed the baby with her only if he cries.  It is important to provide these families as well as families all over the world with education about nurturing and supporting your child and the ways to do that with the resources available in your area.  I wish the county would've stepped in to help my husband's family.  It wasn't that she didn't care, but she couldn't even take care of herself, let alone her 4 children for a time.  In looking at early childhood stressors I think it is important to understand that even though the specific stressor might look different, the end result is similar: What happens - or doesn't happen - to children in the earliest years of their lives is of critical importance, both to their immediate well-being and to their future.  As I have said before, if the child isn't getting their basic needs met, they will not be ready to learn.

I chose to focus on child malnutrition because as a teacher I have seen the negative effects on families.  For the adults in the family it is very hard to provide educational support to children if they are concerned with getting basic needs met.  We have had cases where the child comes to school with such behavior issues, and once we figure out that they were hungry we added an extra snack in to the daily routine and the behaviors vanished.  When a child is hungry, he or she is not ready to learn in other areas, sometimes part of being a teacher is meeting basic needs.  In our district we have a weekend backpack program where children can pick up a backpack full of food for the weekend.  It was expanded from the free and reduced lunch program because they realized students were dreading the weekend because of the lack of resources.  It makes me sad when we think about how wasteful many of us are on a daily basis.

I was interested in looking into malnutrition in  Central America because I work with families that have moved from there.  Malnutrition is not usually thought of as a Latin American problem, but much of Central America there are cases of chronic child malnutrition as preveleant as it is in Africa or South Asia.   In Guatemala 50% of children under 5 are chronically malnourished and in El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua 1 in 3 children under 5 years old are affected.  Good Nutrition is imperitive to survival, health and development of our future generations.  With well-nourished women there are fewer risks during pregnancy and childbirth, and well-nourished children perform better at school, become healthier adults and can offer a better start to their own children.  It is important that we not repeat the cycle.

Check out the full article at:worldbank..org,

Fighting Malnutrition in Central America