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.
I look forward to keeping in touch with you and hopefully having more classes together. What you said about being a lifelong learner is true. Though it is difficult as our lives are often so busy, it is important to make the commitment for ourselves and the children we work with. Thank you for sharing!
ReplyDeleteSissi,
ReplyDeleteIndeed we do have many resources around us and all we need is to utilize them to improve our teaching and support our professional growth. I enjoyed reading your reflections and I have no doubt that you will put the knowledge you have learned about diversity to work with your ELL families. Best of luck to you and hope to work with you again soon.
What a great post!!! One thing that this experience with international contacts is the need to communicate and build relationships. Everyone classroom around the world has had to deal with the same issues in one way or another and many of us have used various techniques to solve the problems. Some techniques proved to be short term solutions that cause awareness of other issues and some where long term solutions that had very little backfire. But the main issue to me is our lack of ability to form those connections with educators around the world. I am decided to continual to make build relationships with different educators. I believe that it is through the experiences of our that we gain solutions.
ReplyDeleteI have enjoyed reading your blog throughout the course of this class. You articulate the consequences so well and have such a well rounded view of early childhood. Thank you for sharing!
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