Stages of the team work

Three months ago, I started to learn driving in a driving school. I went to the driving school and got to know the instructor that I was going to work with. In the following three months, we were working as a team to learn the skills. There were other two girls learning with me at the same time. We were like a team. We helped each other, when we had some difficult time at doing certain things. Including the instructor, we were forming a very strong team. However, it took us a while to get to know each other and became friends. 

For me, the most difficult time was the adjourning stage. After three months, we had been practicing together everyday, and we helped each other. We became the real friends. By the time to say goodbye to each other and the instructor, I got very emotional with tears.

I think the reason it is so hard to leave this team, as we were really supportive to each other, and we were open to others’ opinions and thoughts. One of the girls had to go back to her hometown after the graduation from driving school, but we made the promise to keep in touch with each other to maintain our friendship.

Adjourning stage is the stage to end the project, but it is also the time to say goodbye. In my opinion, this is the essential stage in teamwork, as it gives us time to close the project, reflect on what we did, and can be a new beginning of a new relationship with the team members that we worked with.

Conflict Solutions

One of the conflicts that I had recently was with my cousin. He is a teenage, and goes to a local school with the Austrian program. He is meant to go to Australia to finish his college degree. He is a nice boy, but he cannot compose English paper to pass his exams. One day he came to me for help. He gave me all the resources and materials in hope of letting me write a paper for him as a draft of speech. I was shocked, as that was a heap of resources to study. I asked him if he knew anything about the topic and the assignment. He knew nothing. Absolutely nothing. I was disappointed, as he came to ask me to write his homework without knowing anything about what the homework was. I refused to do it for him, as it was his responsibility to do it. I wouldn’t mind correcting and polishing his work, but I wouldn’t want to do it for him. He was unhappy and couldn’t understand why I did not help him.

After that conversation, I had a reflection on what I had done with the boy. I figured out that actually I should have done it in a better way to solve the conflict with him and to make a compromise. I think there are some strategies that I could have used in this case. For example, I could be an active listener to listen to his needs and the reasons of why he needs help. I needed to clarify his requests by asking him more questions to dig out his real needs. Secondly, I should have created a supportive climate ( O’Hair & Wiemann, 2012). Once I made the clarification of his needs, I could make the compromise to gain a win-win situation. Instead of working for him, we actually could work together on the assignment. We could be like to team. The third thing that I should have done was about empathy. I care about that child, and I care about his emotions and feelings. I should have shown more respect to his feelings, as he must have been very struggling about that assignment.

The 3 R’s communication model means responsive, respectful, and reciprocal. In that sense, I think in my case, I should have given enough information of what I can do for him, and what I wanted him to contribute to the assignment too. 

Therefore, the compromise that I finally made with him was to work together as a team to work on that huge exam assignment together.

References:

O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication: An introduction. New York:Bedford/St. Martin’s

Communication Evaluation

After the evaluations, I was surprised to see the differences of the results between my one and the ones from the other two. I used to think I knew myself well enough to make other people feel the same way about me, but I am wrong.

The insight that I gained in the evaluations is that the two people and myself all agree that I have the anxiety of talking and speaking in public in a big group or in public, and I am glad it is well presented in front of me now. Since I had a fuller picture of what worries me, I can do more things to change it and improve myself.

The other insight that I have learned is about if I am aggressive or not when I am communicating with others. I was surprised to know that my closest friend thinks that I can be very aggressive when I am speaking. I always thought that I am an easy-going person with the consideration of others’ feelings. Right now, I realize that I can go too far with my temper when I am with the people whom I feel comfortable with, such as my childhood friend, and my family. I really appreciate my friend’s evaluation, as she told the truth about how she feel about me. In that way, I can have a correct impression of who I am, so I can control my temper better in the future to be a more effective communicator. 

With those two insights in mind, I think in the future I will be a more effective communicator , as I have known the areas that I need to improve. I believe I will control my temper better when I am talking with children, colleagues, and families, as sometimes I will not be aware of losing control. Meanwhile, I do believe that I need to improve my public speaking skills, as I am really nervous talking in public or within a large group. That is my goal for sure. As a teacher, if I can feel freely talking in a group or in public, it will benefit me in the future, if I am going to be the host of the grade level meeting for the parents, or when I am giving the workshops to other professionals.

Communicating with people from various cultural backgrounds

As I have many colleagues from various cultures, so I do feel that I communicate with people from different cultures differently.  For example, in my culture, touch is very common among girls. We can hold hands, or put the head on the other’s shoulder. It is not the culture of expats at school, so I pay special attention to it. When I am talking to Chinese girls at school, I will put myself in the touch culture to be friendly. On the other hand, when I am talking to expats, I will not touch them at all. I will keep a polite distance while we are talking. I think this is one of the differences that I have found in communicating with people from various cultures. The other thing that I have noticed is the word choice.When I am talking to young children, I prefer to use short and clear sentences to highlight what I want to express. Meanwhile, when I am talking to native English speakers at school, I will use formal sentence structures and longer sentences. I will not use slang, as I am not good at those yet. The most relaxing moment would be the time that I am talking to my Chinese colleagues and friends in Chinese. I use slang and dialect without worrying about confusion or misunderstanding.

From what I have learned this week, I think the following strategies may help me. For example, I should not fall into my schemas to have prejudgements of others when I meet someone for the first time. First impression is important, but it cannot be the only evidence for us to know others. It will be better for us to step out our schemas to have a real conversation with others to get to know people. Meanwhile, I should realize my cultural myopia to avoid stereotyping and prejudice (O’Hair & Weimann). 

References:

Dan O’Hair & Mary Wiemann (2012), Real Communication

The sound makes the difference in communication

The show that I chose to watch is “ Louis C.K.”. It is a show about a comedian. When I turned off the sound, this was what I thought. The episode that I watched, Louis was having a conversation with his daughter. The daughter was telling him a story and she seemed to like her story. Louis was listening while fixing some boxes. He stopped working for a second to look at his daughter with a confusing facial expression. Then he went back to work, and the daughter continued her story. In the afternoon, Louis was cooking, and made a mango popsicle for the other daughter, and the one who told him the story in the morning came to ask for one. Louis was rolling his eyes while the little girl was saying something constantly to him, and finally she got two pieces of chocolate and was asked to leave the kitchen. I think Louis was surprised to see how verbal his little daughter was, when she told the story, and he was impressed by the words that she chose to use. In this afternoon, I thought it was the other girl’s birthday, as there were a lot of food on the table, and that was also why she got the popsicle. The little girl begged for something, and she made Louis upset and impatient any more. That was why Louis gave her two pieces of chocolates and sent her out of the kitchen. I assumed the plot based on their facial expressions and their behaviors. Louis was rolling his eyes, looking at his little daughter with a confusing expression, he was busy making the dinner, and he was sending his daughter out of the kitchen with no patience by pushing her. The little daughter liked her story as she kept smiling when she was talking, and she was upset when she did not have the popsicle by frown his eyebrows. She smiled again, when she got the chocolate. 

I think my assumption will be more correct, if I watched a show that I am more familiar with. The reason for that is I know the personalities and the relationships of the characters better. I watched a show that I was really familiar with without any sound, and it was so much easier for me to know what was going on, and the reactions of each character.

My aha moment was when I turned on the sound I figured out why only one daughter got the popsicle, and why there was a special scene of all the yummy food on the table. The reason for that is because the story that the little girl told to dad in the morning. She missed her mum, thought her mum was a better cook, and wanted to go back to stay with mum. Dad was upset about what she said, and he made a feast in the afternoon. It was not anybody’s birthday, but was an effect of a little girl’s comment. 

I believe it was a good lesson to learn that communication is a combination of verbal and non-verbal expressions. Sometimes, we will be involved in our schemas that will not see or hear the truth. It is important to get out of our schemas to give ourselves opportunities to get to know people without any biases or prejudgements.

The competent communicator

Jing is my cousin, and I always like how she communicate with others. I believe the way she communicate with others brings her many true friends. Here is an example of how she communicates with others. 

One day, we went shopping together, and sometimes you have to bargain when you shop in China. Two of my other cousins went with us together, so there were four of us. Jing was furnishing her new apartment, so she was looking for some new curtains to go with the furnitures. We were at the curtain selling area, and we started to look around. All the sellers tried to talk to us to draw us to their shops, and finally we went in a shop with the curtains of her preferences. We went in, looked around, Jing had the eye contact with the owner, and they smiled to each other. I saw that, and all of a sudden, I felt a relaxing and friendly relationship has been built between Jing and the owner. While we were looking at the materials and the styles of the curtains and talking about our thoughts of the qualities and colors of the fabrics, the owner went up to us and started to introduce the materials and the styles. Jing was not saying anything, but listening to what the owner said, and after a while, she looked at the owner, repeated what she said about the material, and asked questions to the owner. In this way, back and forth, Jing gradually had an idea of what materials would be good for her curtains and what color and style would be suitable to match her furnitures. During the whole conversation, she was an active listener to listen, paraphrase, and ask for the verification. The communication between the seller and Jing went really well. When it was time to discuss the price of the curtains, there was some intense moments. The seller asked for a price that all my cousins thought was a ripe off. My other two cousins started to bargain for Jing, and they used loud and aggressive tones to show their anger of being ripped of. Meanwhile, the seller felt that she was attacked, and she started to argue back to say why she asked for so much. Before the seller could finish her explanation, my two cousins stopped her and were ready to take off. Jing stopped the intense conversation with a soft and calm voice. As China is a country with touch culture, she held my cousins’ hands to show them to calm down, and meanwhile, she turn to the own to give her a smile to say“ Let’s start to talk again” in a friendly tone. Since she stopped the intense conversation, and opened a new one, everyone seemed to calm down to sensible manners. Then Jing started to bargain, instead of using loud and harsh words, she used soft but clear words to show her positive intention of making the deal with the owner. On the other hand, the owner was much softer in her temper and started to have real conversations with Jing. Jing bargained, and the owner compromised. In the end, they made a deal without aggressive words or actions.

Jing’s eye contact and smile were the good start to give the own the nice first impression on her, which was the base for the success of the business with a decent price. She listened and asked the questions which meant that she had the interaction with the owner. It gave the owner the picture that Jing was interested in shopping in her shop. It encouraged owner to give more details of the materials and qualities. When Jing calmed down all the others, she used a soft but strong-willed tone to show her sincere to owner that she wanted to have a deal with the own, but the price was not that reasonable. Soft but strong-willed voice and tone was a signal to owner that she wanted to shop here only with a reasonable price. Jing was not aggressive or loud, but she has strong personality. I believe all those helped Jing make a good deal of the curtains with the owner.

What I thing will be good for me to become a more effective communicator in this scenario are the positive body language, correct grammar, the control of the situation, and listening. Eye contact and smile are the best tools for us to make friends and loosen the intensive moments. They also give out the signals that the respect and value we hold for the speaker. What’s more, active listening is a way to build up the relationship with others. Listening to others, paraphrase what others said, and make the verification. In this process, we processed the information that we get from others to form our own understanding, and then we propose our own opinions or questions. It is a great way to make the conversation go on. Last, it will be better for me that if I can control the situation of the communication, so I can make sure everyone is on the track, and I will know when to stop the communication, when it goes off the track.

Thank you for all your support in this course

The hope that I have when I think of working with children and families from diverse background will be more resources available for them to use to support their home culture in a new culture, and children and colleagues will value diversity and equity as a natural thing in their lives too.

The goal that I would like to set up in early childhood education field is to make sure children from various cultural background have the equal rights and treatment in school environment regardless of their differences from the dominant culture.

Thank you for all my colleagues and the profession helping me through the course. I liked this course a lot, as I have learned many new things that can benefit myself and children in my class as well. Thank you for the comments that Professor Tammy made for my assignments, which inspired me doing a better work later on, and thank you for all the postings, interesting stories, and comments from my colleagues as well, you broaden my horizon of the knowledge and the world around me. I hope I can work with you all soon again.

Indian family

The family in my scenario are from India, and the setting is a child care center.

The first thing I will do is to make their culture to be seen or felt in the classroom. As a new child in a new environment, if he/she can find something that is related to his/her culture, he/she will feel safe and comfortable in the new school setting. The culture of India in the classroom can be some posters of their culture’s celebrations, dolls of their skin color, the language display, the story books of India or Indian folk tales. In this way, the child will feel that he/she is related or bound with the new environment to help the child settle in school. Meanwhile, it is a good sign for parents to know that their culture is respected in school, and their family is welcomed by school.

The second thing I would do is to get to know some knowledge of India and Indian culture about children. I want to find out if there is something special in Indian culture about children. In China, children will wear jade and a red string when it is their zodiac year, so I would like to know if there is something similar to that in India too. It helps me answer the questions from other kids about India and their culture as well.

The third thing that I would do is that I would like to reflect on myself to see if I have any bias or prejudice about people from India. I have to make sure that I treat this child equally.  Meanwhile, I am the model for other children to copy and follow as well. It is important for me to show my equity and justice to everyone.

The fourth thing will be cultural related activities. I hope my children in the class can be open minded and caring to people around them regardless of their skin colors, cultural backgrounds, or languages. As a teacher I will organize and plan some cultural related activities for children to engage in to get to know other cultures better, and to offer a chance for others to get to know the new comer.

The fifth thing that I would do is to get to know the family. Only knowing of the Indian culture is not good enough to help me understand the family better, as each family has their unique home culture. I would start and take the initiative to talk to parents to have some specific knowledge of this family to figure out the best way to support their home culture at school.

Doing the above five things I think is a win-win strategy. Family and the child can settle down in the new environment with my help, and they will feel comfortable to talk to me anything that they want to share with me. They will feel respected and valued at school. They also will know that their home culture is supported by school as well.Meanwhile, I build up a good relationship with the family, so I have their support to help the child to integrate into the new school setting. For me, I have a chance to practice and respect diversity in my classroom, and it helps me rich my teaching activities. I hope the five strategies work out, so I can have a general idea of what do to with new students from a different cultural background, and I can help the family out when they need my help. 

My own experience of bias and prejudices

I was interested in dancing when I was in 6 grade, so I volunteered to be a member of dancing club. When I was signed up, nobody said no to me or was upset about my presence. By the time, it was my school’s 60 years anniversary, so we were supposed to have 3 dances to be performed in that celebration. I was practicing and learning with all other children all the time for six weeks, and I knew the three dances by heart, and I was one of the best ones. Until one day, a teacher came, looked at us, and told the coach that I might not be able to perform at the celebration, as I am not tall enough! I admitted that I was the shortest one among the girls, but I was the best one among them as well. The teacher even did not have a look at my dance to make the decision to kick me out. I was working so hard on practicing for the whole 6 weeks. I was really sad and disappointed. 

The teacher had the bias to say all the dancers must be slim and tall, and if I was not as tall as others or I was the shortest one, I should not be even in the club at all. She even would not give me a chance to see how I danced to decide if I was qualified or not. She did not give me any chance to prove myself. I could not have my voice heard either, as she was the authority back then.

The incident made me feel really sad, upset, and angry. I felt I was treated differently and I was not even able to say anything for myself. Meanwhile, I felt like in the future I should be a person of sympathy, and I should respect and value others and give them the chance to prove who they are, and avoid having prejudgement and prejudice on people.

I think there were many things could be done to turn this incident into an opportunity for greater equity. For example, all the dances that we practiced were a group dance. Dancers should be of different height to make sure everyone could be seen by the audience. I could be easily arranged to be in the front row or somewhere that I would not block anyone behind me. Meanwhile, the layers of the dance makes the dance more beautiful. In this way, I think equity was shown, and I could tell people were trying to involve everyone to be in the community. 

That is to say, as long as people try to respect others and to be flexible, there will be more opportunities for them to turn prejudices, biases, or oppressions into equity.

Microaggression

This week, at school, one of the Chinese movie star’s son was enrolled. She came to have a pre-visit before the first day of his son’s enrollment. Expats did not know who she was, and just bet she was one of the new moms to walk around the school. However, Chinese working and teaching staff, they all recognized her, and went up to her to talk to her. You could tell the excitement that they would have. While people walking by, especially expats, you can tell from their facial expression and eyes that they were actually saying: You Chinese just block the corridor, yelling and making nonsense. Some expats even asked about what happened and why Chinese were also getting together, talking in such an excitement. I feel the disrespect and misunderstanding among two different cultures when I was observing it. In Chinese culture, people believe that it is important to show your happiness by smiling and talking to people with excitement, and socialization is significant in our lives too. We are close to all of our family members, as well as to our friends, and colleagues. However, expats are more willing to keep the distance with others, and talk and smile in a quiet and gentle way to show the politeness and manners. I do believe this micoraggression happens due to the misunderstanding of how people express their happiness in different cultures.

This is the microaggression that happened in our school. Chinese staff, as local staff, are not paid or respected well enough in our school environment. Sometimes, expats just do not know that why Chinese people always stick together and talk in an excitement. 

From the observation, I feel that discrimination, prejudice, and stereotype on people will hurt people’s feelings, especially will make people of subculture feel they are inferior. I believe I would be more careful about the word choice when I am talking to a person who is different from me, and I would like to get to know more different cultures and traditions. At the same time, I feel like if people do not communicate about their confusion or what upsets them and really get to know each other, the misunderstanding will just continue, and microaggression will not be able to eliminated in our community. 

Microaggression

This week, at school, one of the Chinese movie star’s son was enrolled. She came to have a pre-visit before the first day of his son’s enrollment. Expats did not know who she was, and just bet she was one of the new moms to walk around the school. However, Chinese working and teaching staff, they all recognized her, and went up to her to talk to her. You could tell the excitement that they would have. While people walking by, especially expats, you can tell from their facial expression and eyes that they were actually saying: You Chinese just block the corridor, yelling and making nonsense. Some expats even asked about what happened and why Chinese were also getting together, talking in such an excitement. I feel the disrespect and misunderstanding among two different cultures when I was observing it. In Chinese culture, people believe that it is important to show your happiness by smiling and talking to people with excitement, and socialization is significant in our lives too. We are close to all of our family members, as well as to our friends, and colleagues. However, expats are more willing to keep the distance with others, and talk and smile in a quiet and gentle way to show the politeness and manners. I do believe this micoraggression happens due to the misunderstanding of how people express their happiness in different cultures.

This is the microaggression that happened in our school. Chinese staff, as local staff, are not paid or respected well enough in our school environment. Sometimes, expats just do not know that why Chinese people always stick together and talk in an excitement. 

From the observation, I feel that discrimination, prejudice, and stereotype on people will hurt people’s feelings, especially will make people of subculture feel they are inferior. I believe I would be more careful about the word choice when I am talking to a person who is different from me, and I would like to get to know more different cultures and traditions. At the same time, I feel like if people do not communicate about their confusion or what upsets them and really get to know each other, the misunderstanding will just continue, and microaggression will not be able to eliminated in our community. 

What I know from the people I know

Amanda, my Chinese colleague and friend, she believed that culture is where a person comes from and what religious belief that person holds. She thought diversity means the mix of different cultures, and as a teacher, diversity means to use various strategies to meet children’s various interests and needs.

Chris, my husband, he told me that culture means the daily practice of people, and what has happened in a country’s history. His point of view about diversity is that diversity is happening everywhere around us. Race and language are the only two basic diversity that we can tell, but diversity means that anything makes a person different from others.

Grace, my childhood friend. She thought about it for a while and said that culture is about the festivals, food, and dress-up. It is also about the ways that how people feel comfortable to live. The answer of diversity was that diversity is why people are different from each other, and the different social identities that each person carries with them.

Reading through the answers, I found out that the talked about the surface culture differences like festivals, history, language, and races, social identities like where they come from, religious beliefs, and daily practices, and early childhood educators responsibilities for diversity at school, such as how to meet various interests and needs of children from different cultures. 

The aspects that I have learned from the course, but not included in the answers are deep cultures about culture diversity, culture discontinuity and continuity about culture diversity. They did not include the equity in their definitions either. When they were giving me the answers, they did not think any further than surface culture diversity that we can see. At the same time, they were talking about diversity, but they did not think of the consequences of culture discontinuity, and actually culture discontinuity happens quite often in nowadays.

The answers that they gave makes me realize how I thought about culture and diversity before I learned this course. I probably only saw surface culture as well, and I did not realize the culture discontinuity happening around me either. The definitions influenced me on having a deeper thinking and better recognition of diversity. I also realize that I should avoid some bias and assumptions that I would have before, when I am facing or working with children from various culture differences. Children are all different and we should treat them as the experts in their own world. What’s more, no matter where children come from, they should be treated equally.

What I will take with me

I will take those three items with me. The first one is a Chinese doll, the second one is a puzzle that I made for our first year anniversary, and the third item is the computer. 

I chose the Chinese doll, as it was my favorite toy when I was a little girl. I talked to it, played with it, and slept with it for a long time. I made her clothes and did make-up for her. It is not only a doll to me, she is my friend that I can tell her all my secrets, happiness, and sadness. She will always smile back to me, which makes me feel relived after talking to her. I cherish her accompany, so I will take it with me.

The puzzle was made by me, and it recored all the places that my husband and I went together in the past year. We visited some places in China and in America, and we blend in two cultures well in our lives and in this puzzle. It witnessed our happiness in the first year of our marriage, so I will take it with me too.

The third item is the computer, as I would like to know about people who have the same experiences like us, and how they are doing in another country. I would like to know what is going on in the world as well. Computer will keep me in touch with the world, so I will take this item too.

If I could only keep one personal item with me, I would feel I am not a whole. My Chinese doll is the memories from my childhood,my puzzle is the witness of my current family, and the computer is the tool that I can keep in touch with others in the world. I would be very upset and sad, if I only could keep one item.

I feel like I am going through a transition from a pure culture to an international culture. I should be open-minded to accept the differences happening in my life. Things and people are different in the world, and we all share various diversity of family and social cultures. What we can do about diversity is to accept it, face it, and adjust ourselves to it. One more insight that I have gained is that diversity is changing by time and place, we should realize and respect the different forms of diversity around us. Sometimes, we are among the dominant culture, but sometimes, we can be out of it. No matter if we are or not, we need to remember who we are and blend in our unique family culture into the dominant one.

When I think of research

Before this course, I did not believe that I can conduct any research. I did not know any skills or knowledge of planning, designing or conducting a research project. However, after this 8-week-course, I have the knowledge and skills about the research, and I am able to have my own research simulation going on. I am very proud of myself, and I really appreciate the guidance for the professor, and the support from my colleagues. 

I used to think research is so hard that I have to be a full time researcher to be able to do it. Now I realize that as long as we know the rules and guidelines of the research, I will be able to conduct a research project or simulation on my own.

One of the lessons that I learned is about the topic choosing. I used to think the research topic must be something big, but now I know it should be very precise and delicate. In this way, researchers can focus on the aspect that they are choosing to work on. At the beginning of the course, my topic was very general and the topic was different from my explanation of my research. With the help from the professor, I started to narrow down my topic, and finally I came up with a good one. This process taught me much of how to plan and design my research. The other lesson that I have gained is about designing. Every week, we need to finish a chart, and with the help of those charts, we started to have a clear picture of our simulation design in front of me.

The challenge that I met was the definition of technical terms. I tried to read through more carefully in that paragraph to get the idea of the term, I read through other colleagues’ discussion posts to correct my understanding or prove mine, I looked up the resources on line to help me have a better understanding too. I grew a lot in this course. I also consistently had the problems about my APA format in the course. I had the support from the writing center and the professor, which I hope I am getting better at it now.

The perceptions of an early childhood professional is more profound for me now. Professionals in this field is not a stand alone group. Professionals and researchers should work closely with the participants by being involved in their worlds, using their languages, getting familiar with them, and asking the consent from those children as well. All above is not that easy to do. I have the respect for the professionals in this field, as children and power relationship can be the biggest challenge in the process of research.

Thank you for Dr. Dartt and my colleagues for sharing and supporting me through this course. I do appreciate the comments and suggestions from Dr, Dartt, which helped me modify and polish my research simulation to be a better one. I also appreciate the comments and posts that my colleagues were sharing during the whole course. I hope we can work closely again to help and support each other to finish our Master Degree.

The international research

The websites that I was exploring were http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/index.php and http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/major_reports.php.

I am interested in those websites as I am really want to know what the situation of early childhood education in Africa, and I would like to know more about what we can do do help children in Africa, and what are some projects and programs are set up there too.

When I was exploring the websites, I found the current international topics are about the quality of early childhood education, the access to the early childhood education in developing countries, the awareness of the importance of early childhood education to parents, and the framework to help orphans and vulnerable children in their early years.

While I was exploring the websites, I was surprising to see so many programs and projects are planned and practiced in a worldwide way to help children and their families to have the knowledge of the importance of early childhood education, to help the families from the natural disasters and their children to move back to their normal lives, to support orphans and vulnerable children in the other part of the world to help them have the access to education in their early years, to strengthen the quality of early childhood education to help   social and economic development in that area in a long term.

One more thing that I found very positive is that some programs and projects are complementing their early years programs with local community resources. There are programs talking about and planning on the curriculum for early childhood education, and people also realize they cannot just plant American or European curriculum into a third country. Each country has its own characteristics, and the best way to work out a curriculum is to make full use of local community resources to meet children and their families’ needs.

Reference

http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/index.php

http://www.ecdvu.org/ssa/major_reports.php

If I had the means and the knowledge...

If I had the means and knowledge, I would have a study and research on the importance of emotional development in early childhood. I believe children have to have a balanced development in their life to keep themselves competent. Many families only care about the cognitive development of their children, and they do not pay enough attention to their children’s emotional development. The consequences for that is those children will probably have a better academic performance at the beginning than other children, but in a long term, the children who have better social skills will do better. Therefore, my research will benefit families and their children in the following ways. First of all, I would like to draw a time line for parents to know golden time of emotional development in their children’s first years. Then, I would like to give some information of different strategies and methods to parents, so they can support their children’s emotional development. Third, I would like to address some problems that most families will have during their children’s emotional development, and to highlight some solutions to those problems. Last but not the least, I will give out some examples and some data about the importance of emotional development in a child’s life to help parents and schools realize the significance of emotional development in their parenting and teaching.

My Personal Research

The topic that I chose to focus on is the ways to engage ELL families and their children into school life. I chose this one because I am working with a large population of ELL students and their families. I have seen some really good practices of engaging those families and their children into school life, and the progress that ELL students make when they are fully engaged in school activities. 

As I am interested in helping ELL families and their children, so I chose a general topic about implementing diversity into curriculum, and later on I came up with three subtopics. Among the three subtopics I preferred to have a research on the ways of engaging ELL families and their children into school life, as I believe it is one of the major issues that many schools are facing at the moment. I read some articles about this subtopic, and I used the way that I learned in week 1, which helped me save a large amount of time and understand the articles better. When I was constructing my research chart, I had an idea of the contents of different parts in an article. I also knows the various ways of doing research as well. I wrote a literature review about the three articles that I read this week about ELL families and they ways to engage them. I have gained some really new ideas that I did not know before. 

This is my first time to do a real research on a certain topic, and I chose the topic by myself. I used the Walden Library to help me find some really good articles about my topic, but I still wonder if someone could help me find some more articles, journals or speeches about this topic. In that way, I can gather more information to understand my topic better. 

The summary of learning this course

  The consequences of learning about early childhood field in this course are as following.

First, I start to think and consider the issues and the trends in a broader way. I used to keep my eye on the students in the class and in the school, and I did not have the international picture of the trend in early childhood education. Now I know the class and the school that I am working at is just a miniature of the global trend. There are many nations are having the same issues and trends as we do, and they have got their own solutions to the issues. Most of solutions can be used to solve the problems that we are having in early childhood as well. There are many researches done in this area to give suggestions to help early childhood professionals to deal with the issues in this field. I have realized that I have so many resources that I can refer to to support my teaching and myself development. 

Second, I will pay a closer attention to those ELL families. I learned the barriers that a migrant family may have in this course. I have many ELL families in my class. I start to figure out more ways to communicate with them to ensure that they know they are welcome to come to talk to me, to visit school, and to ask any questions or concerns that they may have. I believe it is really helpful for me to build up the positive relationship and partnership with parents. Helping families engage in children’s school life is one of the key points to support children’s development in early childhood.

Third, I need to be a life long learner. It is easy to say, but hard to do. I need to keep myself updated to the trends and issues in early childhood field, if I want to serve children best. Early childhood field is totally different from what it was 20 years ago. If we still treat and teach children the way that we were taught, it is not going to work out in nowadays. Children are different, the information that they can access to is different, and the way they grow up is different. We have to make sure that who we are teaching, which means we need to be learning and be trained regularly to have enough knowledge of the nowadays. 

Since we are here to learn more knowledge and resources about serving in early childhood field. I should say I have met so many wonderful colleagues here, and I would like to keep in touch with them in the future as we can help each other and share the experiences and resources based on the same understanding of the importance of early childhood education. We also can share our observations and new insights that we gained in this field with each other to keep ourselves updated.

More things about my professional goals

I had a thorough read of the website  http://www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/strengthening-education-systems/early-childhood/quality/. I found a couple of things that are related to my professional goals.

First of all, it has a section about quality in early childhood education. There is an article talking about the language in Papua New Guinea. I am the person who respects and values the diversity in my community, and in this article, it talks about the education reform in PNG. The official language in this country is English, but there are only 50,000 people use English as their first language, while 5.2 million people living there. PNG is the world’s most linguistically diverse nation. Government has realized the problem, and the education reform has started too. The key elements of PNG’s education reform are the encouragement of early education in the vernacular languages and a gradual bridging to English as a language of wider communication. It also includes the development of a culturally relevant curriculum and materials. It emphasizes on the importance of teaching vernacular language in the formal education system, especially in early years education. I believe it shows the great respect to the minority groups in the country, which is good for the country’s development. Once people in the country feel they are respected and valued, they will be more open-minded to accept new languages and things. People also can reintegrate themselves back to their villages’ education system if they fail in the secondary entry exam. I should say this is a great step for PNG, the authority shows the respect to the diversity in the nation. I think all the other nations with many minority groups can refer to what PNG does to consolidate the education in their nation to make more people feel respected and valued.

The second insight that I have gained from this website is about the curriculum. When I said that I would like to be a life long learner to provide high quality teaching to children, in this website, I found something new to me too. We used to design our curriculum about early childhood education very detailed, and we put emphasis on the content and cognitive goals, now it summarizes the key points of being a good program. It is more like a concept based guidelines instead of a content based one. I think in this way, it gives teacher more space to try out various teaching methods to apply to their teaching and adjust the ways of teaching according to children’s age and learning progress.

The third insight I have gained is about the workforce in early childhood education. There is a demand of qualified teachers, but there are challenges to get those teachers too. Early years teachers are not respected as a professional as other professionals, so many experienced teachers move to a different career. They are not payed well, and they do not get enough training to integrate themselves. Those make the high quality of early childhood education is so hard to reach. No qualified workforce makes high quality education impossible. Therefore, many people have realized the importance of certified workforce in early childhood education, but who is going to pay for their training, salary resources and so on is another question to be answered. Early childhood education is becoming more and more popular in all countries, but the quality of curriculum and the professionals are the big concerns in the communities.

Sharing more resources

http://www.issa.nl/index.html is the website of International step by step association. I keep exploring in this resource this week, and I have another look at those two following links too. One is http://globalchild.org/new/, and the other one is http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/.

When I was going through the first website, I know the mission of the organization to to help children who suffer from the war, the violence, or the natural disasters to have access to education,  and health care. I am very interested in what they do. They have different programs to help children around the world in various ways. They have summer camp for children with a safe and healing environment. They also have the programs to offer enough high quality opportunities for play, creative self-expression and friendship. Children from the suffer, most of time, feel unsafe, violent, defensive, and cold, but the aim of the programs and camps that they are holding is to let participants live and learn alongside one another in a safe, nurturing environment, hearts, minds and souls are opened to understanding, trust and hope. 

When I was exploring the above website, I started to think and reflect on the current situation. As a teacher in early childhood field, we need to be observant to know our children, and we are responsibly to help children if they have any difficult times. The high quality education is not only about academic performance, but also about the emotional attentional that children are gained. We need to support children to develop healthily physically and mentally. Those are the two important elements of a high quality program.

The other website that I explored is about all the newest news about early childhood. It has news section for us to know the information of this field, it has teaching ideas section to give teachers some inspiration in their teaching, and it has resources section too. I found a very good article about diversity in this website. It tells me what diversity is, and what is not. It is not a curriculum, not a lesson plan, not Chinese New Year, not a dress up time. It is more about making sure children can learn about their own backgrounds and the backgrounds of people who are different from them, and see themselves, their families, and their communities represented throughout the center. At the same time, children are supposed to be exposed to activities, materials, and concrete experiences that destroy stereotypes. The last important thing about diversity is to make sure children learn to enjoy, appreciate and seek out differences. It also gives many other ideas of how to make diversity learning happen in the classroom and the curriculum. What’s more, it also suggests the activities that we can do about diversity in our communities. I think this is a brilliant article. I like this link a lot.

References:

http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/default.aspx

http://globalchild.org/new/

Francis Wardle Diversity in Early Childhood Programs http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=548

New insights

I studied the website Center on the Developing Child. From the learning in this course, I know the relationship between early childhood education and the country’s future economic prosperity. The center aims at using science to enhance child well-being through innovations in policy and practice. 

Scientific facts can be the most powerful tool to explain to policymakers, professionals, and parents about the importance of healthy development for a young child. Most of time, I would like to talk and share the things from my experiences, and now I know more and more people and organizations are advocating to explain early childhood educational field in a more scientific way. The center is committed t building a unified science of health, learning and behavior, leading the design, implementation, and evaluation of innovative program and practice models, catalyzing the implementation of effective, science-based public policies, and preparing future and current leaders to build and leverage knowledge. Above are the commitment that the center wants to do in general.

The center also focuses on the developing countries, like African countries, and Asian countries. When we talk about all the wonderful resources and practices, most of those happen in developed countries, and the voices that we often hear are from those countries too. All the children in the world have the equal right to access to early childhood education, and they should have the right to grow up in a healthy and safe environment. However, they are so many countries are suffering from diseases, natural disasters, and poverty. All those make early years education difficult to be practiced in those countries, as they do not have resources or budgets to take care this area. The center cares about children in those countries too.Recently the center has lunched Global Children’ Initiative which focuses on three strategic objectives. First, they want to reframe public discourse about the early childhood period by educating high level decision makers. Then they would like to support innovative, multidisciplinary research and demonstration projects in selected countries to expand global understanding of how healthy development happens.And the last objective is to build leadership capacity in child development research and policy among individuals and institutions in low-and middle-income countries.

They lunched many different projects in many other countries to help them fight against their own issues. For example, the center has a project in Zambian to help children there fight against malaria. The project started in 2009, and it is an ongoing one. The collaborators of this project hope the effort that they made can improve the understanding of child development in this context, and also can help identify key interventions towards improved outcomes in a rapidly changing developing world.

Web Resources Sharing

The website that I have studied in the past weeks is called International Step by Step Association(ISSA).

The section that interests me the most lately is the section of the newest news in early childhood field. It shows the clear picture of the trends in this field, and issues that are closely related to this topic too. This week, when I was looking at it, one article caught my attention. It is about the new publication on diversity and social inclusion. The theme of the article is “All children and adults have the right to evolve and to develop in a context where there is equity and respect for diversity.” (ISSA) It addresses the importance of everyone in the early child care communities should be open-minded, be communicable, be respectful, and develop their own identity. I think it is really importance for the professionals in this field. If we want our children to respect the diversity, we need to be the good examples to show how we behave when we are dealing with the diversity issues. 

It also redefines the definition of diversity, competence. I would like to talk about the definition of competence that it mentioned in the article here, as I think it is a really good point. I used to think competence means someone has certain knowledge or skills to perform a task, now I know how narrow my thought was. In early childhood education, we want children to be competent which means we want children to gain the knowledge and skills that they can apply for the usage in their later life in a long term, and the quality of it depends on people working with children, families, and communities. Therefore talking about practitioners, competence is a continuous process that comprises the ability to build on and contribute to a body of professional knowledge, acquire both practical and reflective skills and develop a professional attitude. I am glad I can have a better understanding of what competence is, so I can integrate myself in the future. Learning is endless.

The website has the information of the meeting that ISSA hosts in Turkey to discuss about the quality in early childhood education field. All the members from 15 countries share their own ideas and concerns about the quality of early childhood education programs. They all agree that high quality early childhood programs need the politicians and economists to support. We need them to give more funds to this field to gain more resources, to train more qualified teachers, and to make early childhood education more accessible to every child in the world.

The trend that I have learned from the website is more and more professionals see the development of early childhood education as a mission of the whole nation. It is no longer just a task that a group people can handle. Children are the future of our country, we need support from various people, organizations, and communities to work together to make the early child care a right for every child, and make it affordable for parents.

References:

Diversity and Social Inclusion-Exploring Competences for Professional Practice in Early Childhood Education and Care. Retrieved from http://www.decet.org/fileadmin/decet-media/publications/Diversity-and-Social-Inclusion.pdf

http://www.issa.nl/index.html

The insights of poverty in India

I might have no luck at contacting my contacts, so I have to do the alternative for this assignment.
I visited the website www.childhoodpoverty.org and there are four countries in particular for me to choose from. Since I come from China, so I would like to know something else about some other countries. I chose to study India.
India has the second largest population in the world, but it is the home for the majority of poor people in Soutted  Asia too.
In the past five decades, India has tried various ways to eliminate the poverty in the country to meet people's basic needs, and the poverty line declined from 54.9%to an estimated 26%. However, India's social services are facing major challenges. A growing population, industrialization, and a globalizing economy are stretching the education system in India. It is getting harder and harder for them to provide effective and high quality education to children.

There are more or less 400 million people in India are between 0-18 years, and many achievements have been made in health and education for those children. However, India still has the largest number of working children in the world. Their living condition and health care should be paid more attention in the future.

The poverty situation differs from the state to state. Some states are really rich, so they do not have a severe poverty problem, but some states are struggling with the fight against the poverty. The gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger. In India, they do not have enough middle class families to keep the balance of the society. It is kind of the dangerous for a steady developing country. The government is practicing the policies to create more job opportunities for citizens, paying more attention to the people in the poverty by offering them more education programs and the health care. The government has the anti property program which aims at increasing the rural employment, self-employment, and food subsidy program.

From all those, we can tell the India government is not dodging the problem of poverty, and they are doing their best to solve the problem.

The website and the association that I chose is International Step by Step Association. Here is the link: http://www.issa.nl/.

This association focuses on promoting the equal access to the high quality education and care for all children, especially in the early years of their lives. It was established in the Netherland in 1999, and the core members are the 29 nongovernmental organizations. ISSA supports a wide range of programs that provide a comprehensive set of educational services and advocacy tools intended to influence policy reform for families and children, with a special focus on the years from the birth through primary school.

One thing caught my interest is the equal access section of this website. It talked about the Roma children in Europe who cannot have the equal access to the high quality education, and what the organization does to offer the high quality programs to those children, and they turn out to be the great students as others at the same age in the mainstream programs. When I was reading it, I realized that the difficult of accessing to the high quality education for minorities happens everywhere. Since the demographic changes and the cultural diversity, instead of burning the bridges for those people, we are supposed to build the bridges for those children to be involved in the mainstream society and education. We should consider the diversity in our teaching and programs to cater to the cultural diversity to make children and their families realize that they are respected and valued. We do not have to learn all sorts of different languages, but we can have the assistance from the people who speak the minority language to help us teach and know the children better in our class. One point which is significant to me, and it mentioned in the article too is the high expectations for all the children. Although more and more children in the classrooms are sharing various languages, we need to give the same high expectations for all of them to let children reach their full potential. I have experienced the high and low expectations for children with great language and cultural diversity. The children with high expectations from the teacher perform one year ahead of the others with the low expectations from the teacher. In this case, I learned that children’s potential is great, and as a teacher we should not have any bias to low our expectations for them. Children can learn the best under the teacher’s high expectation.

In this section, it also provides some suggestions for the early years teachers to teach effectively to the classes with the cultural and language diversities. For example, it encourages the multilingualism in early childhood education. In my current school, English is the official and teaching language, but Mandarin, Spanish, German, French and Korean are offered to the students as home language activities. Children can learn their home language by doing those activities twice a week to reinforce their home language skills. It points out the importance of training the new teachers to be familiar and flexible with the new situation that is the cultural and demographic diversities in the classrooms. Teachers should be proactive to the situation of the change in the classroom in the past 20 years. The curricula and programs should change according to the change of the students as well. 

after this week’s study, I noticed the difficult for the minority children and their families to access to the high quality education, especially to the early years education programs. At the same time, schools are facing the huge change of the demographic and cultural diversity in the world now. Not a single culture can dominant the school now. In this case, the curricula and the programs should adjust themselves to the new environment and situation in the world. We should be more open-minded to the children with a different culture or language background. We need to be the models for the students to see that we respect and value the children with diversities. Actually cultural diversity offers the teachers more resources and materials to make learning through fun.  

The process of contacting the contacts

I have tried to contact the representatives of some organization from the different parts of the world, but I do not know whether I will have a chance to hear from any of them any time soon. I tried to contact the people from Cambodia, Czech, Netherlands, and Hongkong, but I have not heard any responses from them yet. To this point, I think I should go the the second option, but I am still crossing my fingers to wait for their e-mails in the next a couple of days.

I had a look and study at the World Forum, and I noticed that I can be more open-minded and be more involved in the early childhood field. I am no longer only caring about the children in my class, in my school, but also I start to realize that early childhood education is a global issue that all the professionals need to work together to improve its quality and exists in the world. 

The organization that I chose to research is International Step by Step Association, it aims at improving the quality early childhood education to all the children in the world. I chose it, because it has the sub links about other countries too. I can have the general idea of the situation in the world, and also I can learn the situation about the certain country that I am interested in as well. As I  am studying the early childhood education, and I am really into the children’s age between the birth and the primary school, I found that this is a great website for me to learn the newest trends in this field, and I can have the access to learn from other professionals in this field too. It has quality resources that I can refer too, and it has its online shop that I can choose the books that are relevant to my teaching.

I think I will keep waiting for the emails, but I also value the option two to have a global view of the early childhood field.

My Supports

In my daily environment, I have gained the supports form various aspects. 

My first language is not English, so during my study, my husband, and the Walden university help me through my writing. I appreciate it a lot.

I am doing a full time job, so my teaching partner is very knowledgeable about the children and how to teach little ones. I have learnt many new things from her. For example, I knew that I should write something about children’s work, but I was not sure how to do it properly. She told me that I should focus on what the assignment is and what children have done to finish this task instead of writing the subjective comments. 

We have special needs teachers and Korean liaison in our school to help teachers communicate with the families when we have some special concerns about their children. Korean students are the large population in our school, and most of the parents cannot speak English. Korean teachers do a great job of translating for parents and the teachers to build a bridge between Korean community and the school. Without their help, communicating with the largest population in our school would be a disaster. I appreciate their help for me. 

The challenge that I imagine that I had now is I have a Down syndrom Swedish boy in the class who can be violent from time to time. I think I would like someone to give me some suggestions of how to deal with the children like him professionally, some advise about how to calm and explain to the children in the same class, and I might need a person to be with him, so we can make sure that he is on the task. It would be really challenge, as I did not have deal with such kind of children on my own before, and I did not have enough knowledge to solve this problem in reality. Fortunately, I have some colleges who are good at it, and the special needs teachers to help me at school if I come across with this situation.

Without those help in my life, the children will not be taken care carefully as I would not be able to meet his needs individually all the time. With the help from the professional colleges, the child can be taken care of and be treated respectfully to meet his full potential. The special needs child can be taken care of, the other children in the class can focus on their study better, and the teacher can have the partner to help and guide the child through the learning. However, sometimes, those children’s age is older than their mental age, we should allow those children to go to the lower grade level to learn and to have fun. In this situation it would make them feel better involved in the class.

Play

Quotes:

If animals play, this is because play is useful in the struggle for survival; because play practices and so perfects the skills needed in adult life-------- Susanna Miller

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.------Plato    

I chose those two pictures as I loved pretend play when I was a child. My parents were very supportive, as when they noticed that I loved doing role play, they bought me many toys so that I can pretend to be various roles at home. I think pretend play had a very substantial influence on me. During the pretend play, I beams more and more familiar with different roles of people in my life, and I tried to talk and to act the way that they did, and I became to dream of what I would like to be when I grow up. I thought about being a teacher, and I am a teacher now. My parents did not only give me the toys, they also played with me together, especially my mom. She played with me to cook for the bear, and to be my student when I wanted to be the teacher at home. It was just so much fun. Whenever I think of those moment, I want to give my mom a big hug. I loved my childhood.

Children today they play more indoors than outdoors comparing the childhood that I had. I played outdoors a lot, but children today they prefer to sit and play more video games and watch TV. I should say this is the biggest difference than my childhood. I did not have a chance to watch TV until I was 8 years old, as we did not have TV at home before I was 8. However, I find out that children today they still love to play pretend play, the blocks and the stuffed animals. I believe as long as parents and the educators have a good modeling for children , they still like to play the traditional games and talk to their peers in the play.

I hope children can have more opportunities to explore on their own and I hope board games can be well-introduced to children as well. I think board games can help children solve the problems in the future in their real life.

I agree with most educators that play can have a long-term influence on a person's life. Children can develop their cognitive and social skills through play, and their motor skills can be enhanced in the play as well. All those skills can make a person success in their later life, so I should say meaningful and well-moniored play should be encouraged.