Establishing
Professional Contacts
For our blog assignment this week we were challenged to make
contact with two early childhood professionals outside the United States. I began wracking my brain for individuals I
knew before moving on to the resources provided. The first person I contacted was a professor
I had in my undergraduate studies at Eastern Michigan University. Her name is Dr. Baiyee and she is originally
from Cameroon, Africa. She knows many people
from many different backgrounds. It is
my hope that she will be able to help connect me with individuals who many help
with the blog assignments for this course.
I am waiting to hear back from her.
When I was unable to think of anyone else, I delved into the
weekly resources. I used the OMEP
website and emailed a woman from Finland and another from Sweden. I have heard great things about the
educational systems in these countries and would be interested to learn
more. Neither woman has contacted me
yet, but I am hopeful that even if they are unable to help they may be able to
point me in the right direction.
Expanding Resources
This week I explored some different resources and finally
decided on one that I’d like to look at throughout the course. I chose the Society for Research in Child Development. I chose this organization for two
reasons. One is that I am a firm
believer that we need to stay current with information regarding best practices
and what works for children. The second
reason I chose this organization was that often Early Childhood makes people
think of fun, play, and little ones. While these are parts of Early Childhood, I
think it’s important that we still present ourselves as professionals. I had a very close family friend tell me this
week hat she thought it was crazy I had to get my Master’s degree…who needs a
Master’s degree to teach Kindergarten? I
think if we were able to present more resources and research to back up our good
practices people may take our field more seriously.
Allison
ReplyDeleteI first want to say that you picked a good website for part 2 of the assignment. The Society for Research in Child Development is a great site. I also want to say that I hope you hear from the ladies from Finland and Sweden. I would really like to find out how they run their early childhood programs. I lived in Sweden many years ago for about 5 years, but I don't have children and I wasn't working at that time.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteI was excited to see the countries that you could potentially be exploring and I am eager to learn more. I just got word that there will be two children joining our program next fall and both are from Africa (not sure what part). I am curious about what practices they have established in regards to early learning. I couldn't help but to drop a quick a line about the comment you heard regarding your degree...AHHH! I hate when people say things like that to us. Our field is so important and yet there are so many people out there that just don't understand that yet...
Penny
hello Allison
ReplyDeleteI can't wait to learn more about the Society for Research in Child Development. The organization sounds really interesting and I look forward to reading your posts every week. Good luck with your research .