Sharing Web Resources

Sinc I have not started my career, it is hard to choose sections particularly relevant to my current professional development. But I think the section called the latest research is useful. It includes data and results of new programs all around the US, scientific research on child development, public policy and funding, and so on.  

A controversial topic I found in the newsletter is about mandatory retention at third grade. Advocates for it argue that third grade is the line that changes form learning to read into reading to learn and children without enough literacy skills will fail in school. They point out positive outcomes such as that “reading scores for kids who repeated third grade went from way below average to well above average” and “Florida's Hispanic students alone are ahead of 31 other states' total student populations in fourth-grade reading”(Smith, 2012, p. 1). Opponents for it argue that better scores of children who spent another year at the third grade is natural because they are older than others and those gains faded by 8^th grade.  They think holdback is traumatic and stigmatizing. They suggest that schools should spend the money it takes to give children another year for other resources such as tutoring.

There was an article about a conference where Nobel prize-winning economist James Heckman told business leaders and policymakers the importance of investment in child education. He insisted that quality early education makes a productive workforce and remedial investments are excessively costly while investments for early ages have high returns. I feel that supports from economists are very meaningful not only because support from other fields make the issues open to more people but also they could appeal to policymakers and businessmen who can actually make ideals into real practices.   

The new insights I gained about dual-language programs are that they are beneficial for English speaking children in language, literacy, and mathematics and they learn Spanish without losses in English language learning. I think every child should be given the opportunities to learn two languages

References

NIEER. (2005). Nobel Laureate Economist Calls For Major Investment in Public Pre-K. Retrieve on March 24, 2012, from http://nieer.org/psm/index.php?article=96

Smith, T (2012). Schools Get Tough With Third-Graders: Read Or Flunk

Retrieved on March 24, 2012 from http://www.npr.org/2012/03/05/147980299/tough-love-reading-laws-target-third-graders?ft=1&f=1013

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 1 (Poverty)

I joined a community of preschool teachers in Japan. This site is managed by Lina who is a preschool teacher there. I can send emails to members as well as make posts. I’ve been trying to engage with people about academic topics but nobody has responded yet and I have begun to feel this site is not good for academic topics.

So, I went to the podcast website. Barnabas Otaala's episode tells a story about a village in Namibia. The villagers were in need of a lot of things because they were so poor but more importantly, they found that a girl was HIV positive. Her father didn’t want to tell the fact to the villagers because they might dispel him. I believe his phenomenon is based in poverty, but I learned that poverty doesn’t only mean not having enough food, supplies, and money to go to hospitals. It also influences on how people think and what they think of as their priorities.

Since I haven’t got a reply from my podcast, I studied about poverty in India at the website of the Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre because a lot of Indian people live in my neighborhood. India had been suffering from poverty but a lot of programs reduced the rate of poverty there. Yet, “[a]lmost half of all children (about 62 million) under the age of five are malnourished and 34 percent of new-borns are significantly underweight” (CHIP, 2012, p. 1) Improvement is that infant mortality rate has dropped and the enrolment of primary school-aged children rose. However, India still has 20 % of the world’s out-of school children. Caste, class, ethnicity and gender inequity impede improvement in certain groups or states. While urbanization has been supporting their economy, it “result[ed] in new health problems, such as HIV/AIDS, which is placing greater strains on society and the health of the poor in particular” (CHIP, 2012, p. 1). Even though improvement is obvious, they have more places to help, fields to help further, and new issues to solve. I think that the cooperation of government and international organizations is the key for India’s future.

Reference
CHIP. (2012). Country Overviews. Retrieved on March 16, 2012, from http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/index.php?action=countryo

Sharing Web Resources

I selected the National Institute for Early Education Research (http://nieer.org/) and have subscribed their newsletter.

Their focus is to show facts related to the trends and issues in early education and child development that are the result of research. So, they include information about a wide range of topics but their information is always based on science and not just opinions or anecdotes.

The article which caught my attention shows the result that student who lack of oral proficiency have significant disadvantage on reading and math through 5^th grade. The gap is serious especially for Hispanic students and students in the lowest socioeconomic quintiles. It is critical for preschool teachers to know that “oral English proficiency at kindergarten entry has a significant impact on students’ math and reading achievement during the elementary school years” (Galindo, 2009, p. 26). I think this is another indication that child- centered, play-based curriculum brings better outcome than curriculums focusing on early literacy.

Another topic which caught my attention is from the newsletter. One of the various topics they offered is that there has been an increase of Kindergarten redshirting in recent years. Parents who are in favor of it discuss the benefits of their children’s being more mature, better skilled, bigger and stronger which are factors that are known to lead to confidence and success. However, there is an argument backed by research that says that these children are more likely to become bored in the class, cause disruptions and dropouts. I think this topic is difficult because their success is not only dependent on when they start kindergarten but also on a child’s future personality, as well as his or her peers and teachers.  These are factors which parents cannot know when they have to make decision.

Establishing Professional Contacts & Expanding Resources

Since I would like to help children at a Japanese preschool or an international school in the future, I tried to find web community for Japanese preschool teachers. I found one called “youchien no sensei"(Preschool teachers). This is a private community managed by Lina, a preschool teacher in Japan, and to be accessed by only mixi(It is like facebook for Japanese people) members. This website is not so formal but I expect I will hear honest opinions and daily classroom issues at preschools in Japan. I posted a greeting and explained why I joined them. This is the address for the page. (http://mixi.jp/view_community.pl?id=197768) I believe that I will get to know more people there.


I could not find the second contact, so I am thinking about using World Forum Foundation Radio(http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php) too.

Sincce I have read an article from them, I chose National Institute for Early Education Research( http://nieer.org ) for my resource. The website looks useful to gain the knowledge about current developments in the early education field because its articles are based on research. I subscribed to the newsletters.

I am also interested in The Montessori Method. So, I went to Japanese Association Montessori(http://montessori-jp.org/index.html). Even though this website does not carry much information, I found The Association Montessori Internationale(http://www.montessori-ami.org/) from their link and this one is very activate and looks useful.

My Supports

I thought about supports related to my going to school.  I get emotional support from my family. My husband shows understanding about how hard it is for me to do this because English is not my first language and we have two young children who need extra efforts from me because they are learning two languages and two cultures. My elder daughter cheers me up and waits for me when I am doing my assignments.  For practical support, I get school loans and my husband works two jobs so that I can stay home while doing my school work and raising our children. For physical support, my husband proofreads all of my assignments.  All of these support systems make it possible for me to go to school, stay motivated and keep my grades up.  If I didn’t have this support, my studying would have become a torture.  I would have forgotten why I wanted to start this program, and I would have lost my passion for early education. It means my life would have been a life without a career goal.

If I had weak sight, I would want every reading resource to be transferred to a clear and big font, or converted into braille or audio recordings. Emotionally, support from family would mean more. They would cheer me up and give me encouragement when I finish each assignment. Practically, a text-to-speech tool and a key pad with braille would make assignments easier to complete. Physically, my husband would support me and make sure everything goes OK for school and for our family in general. He would read out instructions for assignments, arrange what I need for my assignments, proofread and finally turn my homework in for me. This kind of supports would make an impossible thing possible. If these supports were not available, I probably would not be in the program and even if I was, I would fail. My life would be a life where I gave up on something I have really wanted for a long time.

My Connections to Play

Two quotes that I feel summarize what play represented for me in childhood are following.

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today. Stacia Tauscher

Children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything. ~Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone Scelto

I chose them because they contrast who I was in childhood and who I am now.  I in childhood was all about “now” and so busy finding out what I wanted to do with things I had around me. I never got bored and always felt I needed more time to play. My favorite items were old mattresses I was able to build forte, walls, a house and beds, and leaves and petals which I was able to use to make juice and chemical liquid. Another important thing was my legs and feet. It was just fun to run around, walking on the rocks and jumping from the gates.

When I was little, people supported play letting us play freely. It is unbelievable now but children were allowed to play alone in the park, run around and ride a bike in the neighborhood and take trips of up to a couple of miles to look for adventures. But adults and communities were watching us to be safe from criminals and they trusted us to find out what dangers were around by ourselves.

 I feel that plays are different now and when I was a child in regards with what we play with. I do not remember having many toys. I played outside a lot. Things like leaves, dirt, rocks were toys to me and finding out what I could do was the fun part.  But children nowadays have many toys. However, my daughter sometimes uses them in the ways which are not made to use so. For example, puzzle pieces becomes vegetables when she plays kitchen and becomes money when she plays shopping. I feel that the nature of children hasn’t changed much but the environment has changed.

I remember play was the fun of thinking and challenges when I was a child. I believe what I involve with is different now but I still like thinking and challenges because I know the fun of them and it enriches my life. I worry that environment surrounding children might not be various and wide enough to satisfy their curiosity and potential since adults limit where children go and what they play with because of the safety issues.

Relationship Reflection

Relationships are important because we can have fun together, support each other and learn together. I have positive relationships with several Japanese mothers.  The factors that contributed to developing and maintaining these relationships are that we have common backgrounds and common interests.  We are Japanese women living in the U.S., we have children who are similar ages, we are concerned with our children’s bilingual education, we sometimes want to have fun together without children, and so on.  I think it is important to have similar standards for disciplining children and similar personalities. A challenge I have experienced are that it is hard to keep motivated to maintain the relationships when we have very different standards for discipline.  I lost my motivation to maintain a relationship with a friend who did not watch her child in the park, let her child do violent actions to other friends and let the child do things that are not allowed such as cutting through somebody’s yard.  I was stressed for a long time with this relationship because I didn’t know if I was being too strict or caring too much about small details. But I found out that it is better to be with people with similar values when it comes to raising a child because it is too important.

My experiences with relationships with a lot of mothers allow me to understand each parent has different ways of raising children. They will also lead me to have occasions to promote parent-parent relationships and I will try to solve issues with relationships between children because I understand that parents care about peers’ influences as much as teacher’s teaching skills.