More About My International Contacts

This week, only one of my international contacts got back to me. I so appreciate Chris Hussey of The British Association of Early Childhood Education. He has taken time out of his busy day week after week to assist me with my assignments for school and I can't thank him enough.
This week I asked him about issues related to excellence and quality that his area is currently facing, and he sent me a number of articles that we very helpful and informative. One thing that the UK is currently debating is the question: Should early years teachers have qualified teacher status? Some people think that they should be on the same educational level as primary and secondary school teachers, while others think that it is not necessary.
Another hot topic in the area involves child:teacher ratios. A proposal was recently submitted to increase child:teacher ratios and as you can imagine, professional in the field are not very happy about the idea.
Much like in the US, school readiness is an issue that continues to come up. Many think that early educators should push more academics to ensure children are prepared, while others prefer the learning through play approach.
You can read more about the topics currently in the news in the UK here:

http://www.daynurseries.co.uk/news/article.cfm/id/26/Debate-should-early-years-teachers-have-qualifed-teacher-status

http://sheila-nutkins-author.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/debate-about-ratios-and-qualifications.html
 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/10307682/Failure-to-acknowledge-the-concept-of-readiness-in-education-this-is-the-tragedy.html

 Regarding the requirements for educators in the early childhood education field, it is my understanding that a minimum of an associates degree is required. Chris did inform me, however, that Finland and a few other countries are requiring a masters degree and that more and more countries are moving towards that requirement.

Chris just completed his masters degree and is currently pursuing his PhD in early childhood education! He told me that there are very few grants and scholarships available so most people must pay for this education themselves. Therefore, most people, himself included, work full time while attending school and will take around 4-5 years to complete. I admire him so much for his dedication to our profession!

This assignment has really allowed me the opportunity to expand my professional contacts and I have enjoyed learning so much about my profession in other areas around the world. It has helped me see that a lot of other countries value early childhood education so much more and that we need to get our country on that same path!

More About CCW

This week I got the opportunity to further explore the Center for the Child Care Workforce (CCW) website. They provide a lot of outside links that are really helpful, most of which are regarding rules/regulations/laws in the child care industry. They also have links to educational sites and child advocacy groups. Many of the resources that I use daily as a preschool director, such as the website for NAEYC, Zero to Three, and NACCRA are listed on the CCW website.

I chose to take a deeper look into the News to Use tab on their webpage and looked at Latest News. It led me to an article in American Educator titled The Economics of Inequality. It also led me to the CCW newsletter, which I didn't realize that they had, from May/June 2011. This tells me that this website is no longer active/relevant since they do not update their information. This is really unfortunate because I enjoy this organization and appreciate what they stand for.

While the information on the website is not current, I still find it to be a very good resource. The links that it provides contain some excellent resources for early childhood education professionals. And in the News to Use section of the site, there are some superb articles. There are several articles regarding the standards of preschool, incorporating Pre-K into the public school system, and a very good NAEYC article about the importance of quality preschool education.

More About My International Contacts

I have talked about one international contact that I have made, Chris Hussey, who works with the British Association for Early Childhood Education. I'm sure that he is very busy and I have not heard much from him in the last couple of weeks.
Since then, I have made another international contact named Martina Carter. Martina is an early childhood specialist who works with Early Childhood Ireland. Martina informed me about the different subsidy programs available for families in Ireland. She explained that preschool aged children can attend preschool for 15 hours per week for one year, free of cost. I found this really interesting and it is similar to what the UK has in place. Early childhood education seems to be valued higher in both the UK and Ireland than it is here in the US.
I currently have messages to both Martina and Chris regarding the standards that their preschool programs use, school readiness, and their opinions on the achievement gaps in their countries. I look forward to seeing how their achievement gaps rank against ours here in the US. I suspect that they are much lower since the children in both countries receive free preschool. I will update as soon as I hear back from them.

The Center for the Child Care Workforce

As I mentioned previously, I am currently following the website for the Center for the Child Care Workforce. I really like this website because it not only advocates for ECE professionals, but it provides readers with valuable research and a list of ways that you can get involved.

There is a tab on the website labeled Public Policy - State Initiatives. Under that tab there is lots of information that I find relevant to my professional development. There is scholarship information that I find useful, as I can distribute this information to my employees. There is also wage data that I can use to help my school stay competitive, attracting the most qualified teachers.

While surfing the site, I learned that only a small percentage of ECE professionals receive fully paid health care benefits. When comparing pay rates and health care benefits of ECE professionals to public school teachers, ECE professionals fall to the bottom. I believe that ALL teachers deserve to be paid well. We need to increase the pay of our public school teachers and begin to pay ECE professionals on the same pay scale as we do our public school teachers. Paying them all on the same state level I believe will bring recognition and respect to ECE professionals. It will also attract more people to work in our field and in turn, we will receive more educated and qualified teachers.

We learned this week why economists, scientists, and politicians support the ECE field. CCW states the same information under their tab titled Research and Resources - Early Childhood Education Facts. Here is where you will find statistics proving that children that have access to quality early childhood education have higher graduation rates, more economic productivity later in life, and less dependency on welfare later in life. The increased economic productivity is exactly why economists, scientists, and politicians want to invest in ECE.

Overall I gained a lot of valuable information from this site. Unfortunately it is not regularly updated. The latest wage data is from 2010. I'm hoping that I can bring more traffic to this website so that they will continue researching and collecting data, helping ECE professionals everywhere.

International Contacts

I have successfully made two international, professional contacts. The first is Chris Hussey who is a researching practitioner for The British Association for Early Childhood Education. Prior to his current position, he was a ECE teacher for several years. He was able to provide me with information regarding government assistance for child care in the UK. He also informed me that all 3 and 4 year olds in England are entitled to 15 hours of free early childhood education for 38 weeks per year.

My other international contact is Martha Friendly. Martha is the executive director of the childcare resource and research unit for the National Alliance for Children and Youth, a Canadian organization. Martha is a contact that I just made so I do not know much more about her nor have I had the chance to learn from her. I do, however, look forward to sharing more information with you as soon as I can!

On a different note, this week we studied poverty and its affect on children. Not only did I look at poverty on a national level, but I also got to research poverty in my home town. When looking at poverty as a nation, I was shocked at what I saw. I was so blind to how much poverty is actually in my country. My state, the state of NC, actually has a higher poverty rate than the national average which is saddening. Not only did this fact alarm me, but the demographics of families and children in poverty was also very eye-opening. Latinos make up a large percentage of families in poverty and I think that we as a state and a country need to work at helping these families live better lives.

The Center for the Child Care Workforce

The Center for the Child Care Workforce is an organization that I am currently following, found at http://www.ccw.org/. Their mission is to "improve the quality of early care and education for all children by promoting policy, research and organizing that ensure the early care and education workforce is well-educated, receives better compensation and a voice in their workplace."

One main issue that CCW addresses is the low compensation for early childhood education teachers. They began a campaign in 1991 called the Worthy Wage Campaign. The National Worthy Wage day is May 1st and CCW provides you with ideas on how you can act in your community.

 CCW works with and promotes many other organizations such as Family Initiative, NACCRRA, NAEYC, and many others. I really like their mission statement and their involvement within the early childhood education field.

Establishing Professional Contacts & Expanding Resources

This week we had the task of setting up international professional contacts. I am so excited about this assignment and feel it will give me valuable insight. However, I didn't know that it would be so difficult! I researched various organizations and sent out what feels like 50 emails, to only received one reply back, so thus far, I have one contact. His name is Chris and he works with the British Association for Early Childhood Education. I have not had a chance to gain too much information from him yet, but will update as soon as possible. 
As for any other contacts, I'm waiting for responses and am still hopeful that I will hear back from someone.

Aside from attempting to set up international contacts, I have also been researching various organizations, both within the United States and internationally, to see which website I will study. This was a very difficult decision for me, as there are so many great organizations out there! I decided to go with one that I am not familiar with, the Center for the Child Care Workforce. Their mission is to promote quality early childhood education, encouraging highly trained and educated teachers while providing better compensation for early childhood education teachers.

Anyone with tips on how to gain more international contacts, I would greatly appreciate it!