“My Own Capacity”

     The issues impacting young children and their families and/or the early childhood field that fuel my passion are providing high quality early childhood programs for all children ages 3-5.  I truly believe if we are going to turn around our failing education system in the United States that we have to reach children at younger ages.  With the current state of our economy, there are going to be more at-risk children that will be in need of services in the future.  I am also passionate about these high quality programs identifying children with learning or other developmental disabilities at early ages so that they can receive services that may improve their abilities and their rate of success in school in later years.

     The skills that I have that contribute to advocacy efforts are that I am a people person, therefore I love to talk to and listen to people, I also am willing to devote time working with organizations and committees to improve the circumstances for children, I am a patient person and finally I have great communication skills.  All of these skills can help me as an advocate because you have to be able to listen to people and determine how you can best help them, you have to have the patience to work through an issue by meeting smaller obstacles and achieving them in order to make the path for your goal to be accomplished, and you have to be able to communicate your thoughts and ideals effectively with everyone that you meet and those that can assist you with accomplishing your goal.

     I also believe that I have experience working with professional organizations that will help me when necessary to make contact with different organizations.  Past experiences and relationships are always learning experiences but also are a valuable way to expand your support for an issue. 

     In order to be a more effective advocate I hope that I will continue to learn strategies, procedures and policies that will help me to know the best way to accomplish the objective or issue that I choose to pursue.  As a professional I am aware that there is always room for growth and improvement and I seek daily to improve myself in all areas.  

My Role as an Adovocate

What motivated me to start advocating for very young children I believe was my experiences in school and those I observed with other children made me passionate about helping children learn.  However becoming an advocate for young children began to truly blossom with the birth of my oldest child and has become more prevalent as I have proceeded on my professional journey.

It is essential to acknowledge and foster advocacy efforts at the micro level, as well as the macro level because without communication or feedback from the micro level the macro level has not ideal of the impact they are making on the population.  It is the advocates at each level that work together across the grid to ensure that the best interest of a certain group or population is being maintained as policies are being made or changed at the macro level.

To be a community leader it takes passion for an issue and being able to “move public will and promote community-wide investments” in that issue. (Zero, 2008) 

The resources that it takes to be a state leader on early childhood issues according to Robin Roberts is  that as state leaders on early childhood issues you have to be open to working with other organizations at the state level.  Collaboration is key to the success of state leaders because you “cannot be effective unless you are collaborative” says Roberts.  The article also shares that there has to be a partnership from the “grassroots level all the way to the state level”.  Without collaboration work at the state level is ineffective and individuals at the local level feel unsupported in their work. (Zero, 2009)

Strategies and tactics to mobilize others are uniting community, organizations, parents/families, teachers, local, and state officials to discuss issues and support policies to improve early childhood education.  Public education about early childhood development and education is also a strategy to mobilize support for early childhood issues.  Other strategies include passing on information through mailings, emails and other sources.  Newsletters that highlight advocacy events and strategies and proposing opportunities for action on issues can be passed out and forwarded to local and state officials.  Workshops also provide a strategy for mobilizing support, through workshops others can get information about programs and clear up any myths they may have.  Also, organizations can hold meetings to update others on advocacy opportunities and discuss successes they have had with advocacy to help others with future advocacy efforts.

To advocate for young children and their families one should take on a leadership role by being a facilitator for families and stakeholders. According to Brian Spicker  “bringing all the stakeholders together to support the face-to-face work with children and families” is key to being an advocate.  Robin Roberts suggest that building relationships is key to advocating for infants and toddlers.  Once you have determined what goals you would like to achieve you should seek out people and groups that are working to achieve the same issues or goals.  By working with others and maintaining an open line of communication, the work you do will be much stronger.  She also recommends creating a common message to present in order to prevent confusion or conflicting information when presenting information in public.

Zero to Three Policy Center. (2008). Advocacy strategies to improve outcomes for very young children: Interviews with leaders at the state and community levels. Retrieved from
http://main.zerotothree.org/site/DocServer/AdvocacyLeaders_final.pdf?docID=1882

Personal Advocacy Reflection

Thinking back over my life time there are many instances where people have advocated for me, when people were willing to go the extra mile to help me achieve goals or dreams.  I believe that I have been fortunate.

For this assignment, I believe it would be most fitting to share my earliest recollection of advocacy.  Being a minority in an all white school in Warren Michigan in the late 1970's was probably one of the best opportunities that I have had in my life.  The advantage I had was being of mixed race where it was difficult to tell my race, unless you had met my father in person.  My teachers were the best teachers!  They were patient, polite and dedicated.  As a child I probably wasn't as appreciative as I am today for all of the times I had to stay in class and redo or complete work while my classmates were outside playing, but I know today it is because of these ladies that I am who I am today.  They identified that I had a speech problem and referred me for services, although I am not sure if I had a speech problem or if it was a dialect issue, but either way I was given the opportunity to learn to speak proper English.  They did whatever it took to make sure that I had the same opportunity as every other child.  No excuses.  Mrs. Mabry and Mrs. Thompson were my Kindergarten and First grade teachers and I truly feel that they went beyond their teaching duties to make me successful as a student. 

It is this spirit that I would like to offer my students. I want every child to have the best opportunity possible, and that means that early childhood educators have to identify developmental delays or neurological impairments and help the families get the children the services they need.  The first five years of life are so vital to the development of children, if we can identify delays or problems with development there is time to correct or improve the issue.  

Tools for Policy Makers and Advocates

Hello classmates. :) Here is the blog page for this class as well.  I look forward to hearing your thoughts of my posts and to reading your blogs as well.

Jennifer

Collegial Experience

Being a part of a caring, collaborative learning community while promoting my professional growth and development has been encouraging, informative and enlightening to me as an individual.  While on this professional journey there have been many times when I have felt that I had bitten off more than I could chew.  My peers and my professors have always been right there to offer words of wisdom, comfort and motivation to ensure me that if I step back for a moment I will see that I had made the right choice in pursuing my Masters and that I did have the ability to handle the situation.  This last class my health has not been good. I have been in the hospital and had to start taking medication daily just to stay safe.  Although the stress of the whole situation has been overloading, when I shared my situation with the professor and my advising team they were all willing to assist me and to ensure me that everything would be okay.  Sometimes we all need to be encouraged and uplifted, and as a professional there will be times when it is our job to make others feel encouraged.

Another great aspect of this collaberative learning community is that we all come from different social, economic and cultural backgrounds so we have a lot of insight to offer one another.  We also have different professional backgrounds that allows us to provide one another with information that we may not be privelaged to have otherwise.  In this class in particular, Debra was very informative about the Head Start system and offered us a lot of insight into the practices and routines of the center she was familiar with.  It is great to hear from someone who works in these systems daily and can share freely their opinion about matters.

Finally, the whole experience has been enlightening. The perspectives of others, the backgrounds of the professors, resources that we were introduced to, it all comes together to provide us with professional connections, information and resources to take with us as we proceed on our journey.

A goal that I have for using my collegial experience to enhance my system development and advocacy work on behalf of young children, families, and the early childhood community is that I intend to become employed in an agency where I can make an impact on the lives of children. I would also like to find a local advocacy group that I could become involved in so that I can begin to utilize all that I have learned on my collegial journey, I hope to make contact with some local agencies this summer when I have completed my course work and I am on vacation from my current profession.

I have truly enjoyed working with and meeting all of my peers and the professors that I have been fortunate to have during this time.

Until we meet again,
Jennifer

My Hypothetical Family

Who Are You?

     My hypothetical family consists of two young parents who already have a two year old daughter and have just found out they are expecting again.  The twenty year old parents struggle to maintain the household and their relationship is like a roller coaster.  The young lady is very unstable emotionally. She is very over protective of her daughter to the point that the child has no independence from the mother.  The mother has completed her classes for her high school diploma but has put on hold her plans to further her education in order to work.  The husband works in construction with the wives family member, but does not work regularly.  He is often sick, or they wake up late and therefore he misses days of work because he cannot meet the work van.  The stress of the financial situation adds further stress to the young relationship. The husband is a high school drop-out, has no driver’s license and smoke marijuana daily.  He loves his children and his wife but has difficulty with meeting the expectations that she has for him.

     The daughter attends child care while the mother goes to work.  The department of social service pays the majority of the fee and the parents are responsible for a small portion.  The daughter is perfectly healthy except that she has eczema. She is developmentally on target and at times appears ahead of her peers.  She is happy and loving.  She appears nervous around loud noise or people arguing, and often needs comforting or reassurance that everything is okay when she has encountered such a situation. 

     The young couple cannot foresee that the child that they have conceived will later be diagnosed with autism.  According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, autism is a “developmental disorder that appears in the first 3 years of life, and affects the brain’s normal development of social and communication skills”. (National, 2010) 

     Of the comprehensive systems, Health would offer the newborn the best chances of being diagnosed early and therefore being set on a path to receiving services that would improve his development, social experiences and education in later years.  Health and observation of the parents will be key to diagnosing this child with autism.

     Early Learning and Development programs will be able to provide him with developmental, social and communication skills that are modified to meet the needs of an autistic child if he is diagnosed at an early age.  Autistic children require a staff that understand that they are distracted by visual and audial clutter and therefore the environment in which autistic children are in has to have clear and defined boundaries and must not be cluttered with “distractions” such as art projects, student work, PA systems, music, computer sounds etc. that the children are not supposed to be attending to or may be distracted by.  Autistic children, depending on the severity of their autism, require modifications to their environments in order to promote their development. (Stokes, 2011)

     Family Leadership and Support can take place when parents are informed on the needs of their autistic child.  They take leadership in informing the educational staff of practices that are working at home and allow the staff to share practices that are working in the classroom setting.  The family and school staff should work together to create a relationship that encircles the child with emotional, developmental and social skills that will enhance their well being. (Stokes, 2011)

Questions that I have at this point are if autism will work for this assignment, should I say "I" in the assignment instead of the wife/mother or husband, and am I doing this correct????  Any feedback would surely be appreciated. 

Also I appreciate the patience you all are having with me during this time.  I am working hard to get back on my feet, but I know that this leaves Debra working alone for the most part. Thank you all for your patience.

Jennifer 

The Political Will to Improve Early Child Care

During this week’s studies I have been examining the Pre-Kindergarten strand of the Early Child Care System.  What I have learned throughout this experience is that there are many advocacy groups and organizations that have an interest in improving the early learning programs in America.  The two most influential groups in my opinion have been the researchers on child development and best practices, and the support of the educators across America.  These two groups, along with many others, have worked hard to show Congress and the American political system just how important it is for young children to have a high quality early child care program to attend.  The foundation of a child’s learning is constructed during these very important years, however over the last few decades the American economic and social status has made it virtually impossible for parents to provide their children with the basic needs they require, much less their developmental needs.  Parents are in no position to provide the learning experiences children need to develop cognitively, physically and socially. 

As I researched the NC Pre-Kindergarten program I was able to review the website of the Children’s Defense Fund.  On this site I was able to view a link for Advocates and Family Resources.  Earlier in our program I was concerned that I had not gained a good understanding of the Advocacy strand of the program. On this link there was a list of organizations and programs that are influencing the policies that are currently being made.  I have been a follower of the Harlem Children’s Zone for the last few years and I was aware of the work that they are doing in their community.  However, I never considered the fact that they are advocates for children everywhere and are advocating for the necessary changes that are needed to improve not only their own programs, but the programs everywhere.   Pre-K Now and Educator Sector are two other groups that I will be investigating to find out more about. 

As an educator I feel very strongly about what can be done and what needs to be done to improve the opportunities that children have.  I feel frustrated and lost at times as to what I can do on a larger scale to help improve the lives of children. This link has helped to give me at least a few options to research to see if they are options for me to become a more active advocate for children.

Children’s Defense Fund

http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy-priorities/

http://www.childrensdefense.org/policy-priorities/advocate-family-resources/child-advocacy-groups/early-childhood-development.html