Week 8 FInal Post for Issues and Trends

I have gained a magnitude of valuable resources through this course.  I am thankful for all the insights I have been exposed to through the resources, my international contact as well as through my Walden peers.

1        1.  Poverty is a growing concern in my community.  I have researched my community and learned that many families are in need of food, clothing and shelter.  More importantly, I have gathered a plethora of ideas on how to ensure children and families have access and knowledge of the help that is available.  It is my job as an educator to ensure children and their families are aware of help that exists.  Some families may have too much pride to admit they need help.  Providing subtle aid to families may be necessary.   

2       2.  I have learned lots from having an international contact.  I was hesitant in the beginning to make contact and now I am so glad that I did.  It is very interesting to obtain knowledge about an education system across the country and learn that their struggles are very similar to ours here in the US.

T      3.  The web resources that I have begun to follow have truly enriched my profession as an educator.  I have found many websites that I have used to train the teachers I work with as well as continue to build my own knowledge further in the field of early childhood education.

My goal is to continue to utilize and research websites further for my continued education and experience and to stay current with issues and trends affecting the field.

International Contact - Part 3

As I continued to exchange my thoughts about excellence and quality in early childhood education, I also asked my professional contact her thoughts and opinions. Jodie shared far more than I thought I was going to receive.  She is a fantastic resource that I has helped me learn much more about the education system in Australia as well as about her own hopes and dreams.

·         What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed where you live and work?

Issues  - staff qualifications are always being discussed. In our early years child care centers (prior to formal school) obtaining staff that are suitably qualified is always an issue. Here in Queensland all staff are required to have a qualification in child care to work with children. You can find the list of approved list of qualifications for child care staff here in Queensland, can be found here http://deta.qld.gov.au/earlychildhood/service/qualifications.html    They are also required to have a "Blue Card" which is a card they have to apply to have which shows they have no criminal history. Info on this can be found here - http://www.ccypcg.qld.gov.au/bluecard/index.html    Retaining appropriately qualified staff in centers which are high quality is a big issue also. Staff turnover is high and often we are left with a young inexperienced (yet qualified or close to completion of study) workforce. A concerning trend is for qualified child care professionals to leave the profession due to low pay, long hours and the large amount of paperwork involved (compliance, curriculum, quality assurance and accreditation). You can find a copy of the Queensland Child Care Industry award here -  http://www.fwa.gov.au/consolidated_awards/an/AN140060/asframe.html  You can also find information on our National Quality Framework for Early Childhood Education and Care http://www.deewr.gov.au/earlychildhood/policy_agenda/quality/pages/home.aspx. This framework is compulsory for all centers, family day care etc. to be involved in, it is law here in Australia that all care facilities be licensed and a requirement of licensing (and funding) is that they are involved in this framework. If centers are deemed poor quality and not meeting minimum requirements over a period of time (they will be given a time frame to improve) then they will be shut down. This law is strictly enforced and it is not unheard of for the government to shut down centers due to poor quality.

·         What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

There are many consultants which offer the child care industry professional development for a fee. That is the issue though, as the majority of our child care centers are privately owned, then funding for professional development of staff isn't as high a priority as it should be. Often professional development is self-funded, and although I personally see this as a commitment to furthering oneself personally and professionally, there are some that can not financially afford to do this on a regular basis. There are some community based organizations which run child care centers that run their own professional development in-house and invite others from the wider profession to register for these opportunities as another source of income. The child care award here in Queensland states that "Teachers will be provided with 5 paid days per annum professional development leave in addition to annual leave." This doesn't mean that the professional development will be paid for itself, rather the teacher will get 5 days of paid leave to engage in professional development. I should also mention that only applies to teachers, which by definition here is a professional which has a 4 year education degree. The child care award states "The parties commit themselves to continuing and upgrading the training provided to employees. It is agreed that the parties will co-operate in ensuring that training is maintained and improved and that qualifications within the Community Services Training Package will be utilized and accessed where appropriate.  This training will form the basis of an enhanced career structure in the industry."  You will note that there is no specifics about how many days of training staff other than teachers are entitled to, or if employees other than teachers will be provided paid time to complete training. So often the other staff do not get professional development unless they do it at their own cost on their own time. I should also mention that as a general rule (I'm sure there is an exception somewhere I've just never seen it) there is only one qualified teacher per center, as they are so expensive to employee in comparison to other staff. 

·         What are some of your professional goals?

My professional goals are 

• to complete my Master of Science and then progress onto my Doctorate;
• to design a framework to improve the quality of teachers existing in our workforce
• to advocate for high quality education for all
• to improve the quality of education for each individual 

·         What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges?

My professional hope is one day, every teacher a child encounters in their formal education will be a high quality teacher.

My professional dream is that every teacher/educators' moral purpose is to educate the whole child, for every child, and as a by-product to this, they will ace any standardized testing. 

My professional challenges?

• Getting educators/teachers on board the train of change of self-improvement professionally for the benefit of children worldwide. 
• Getting organizations to be brave and recognize teachers that are mediocre & below, and either work with them to improve or pay them out to leave the profession so they can retrain and start a new career.
• Encouraging and empowering professionals to speak up and demand excellence in their peers and organizations.

Sharing Web Resources

I currently subscribe to several newsletters and find them all filled with various, valuable resources for education.  One email in particular jumped out at me this week from Learning A-Z.  The email contained a link discussing further about core standards that have been adopted by forty-five states and the District of Columbia.  These core standards help educators prepare students to compete with not only their American peers in the next state, but with students around the world.  Since every state had their own set of academic standards, the core standards aim to be comparable with high-performing countries and the best existing state standards.

As we are discussing quality education at all age levels, this struck my interest.  It provides educators with valuable resources needed to successfully implement standards in order to build children with a strong foundation in English, science, and writing so they are prepared for college and future careers.

The Learning A-Z website is:   http://www.learninga-z.com/

Catherine Thome wrote a supporting article, Bringing Common Core Standards to Life, that dove into additional detailed about the common core standards and how they are spreading the value of the standards throughout the United States.

Both the website and the article contained information that added to my understanding of common core standards.  I believe that having a set of standards that is derived from the best of all countries, we can set up our children for future success.  I still think there needs to be room for children to be children, but educators need to be able to support balance in the classroom.

Another insight that I found interesting on the A-Z website was Bob’s Blog.  It contains, "What's new, what's in need of change, what's improving, and how can we make it even better?"  There were many interesting bogs that give common topics a different perspective.  This is a blog that I know I will frequent to keep up to date on changes. 

References:

http://www.learninga-z.com/ , n.d.

Thome, Catherine, Bringing Common Core Standards to Life, Retrieved from

http://www.learninga-z.com/downloads/bringing-the-common-core-standards-to-life-in-the-classroom2.pdf

International Contact - Part 2

For this blog assignment I was communicating with one of my international contacts, Jodie Riek, a pedagogy teacher from Australia.  We discussed equity in education and what quality education should look like.  Riek shared a little about the education system in Australia as well as information about her thoughts and feelings on quality education and our role as educators.

Jodie Riek shared the following about equity in schools:

We have a national curriculum that is being implemented for the first time this year, so that is being met with lots of conflict and of course different state education departments have their own interpretation of it. Which means that the true intent of the documents have been watered down significantly. 

The issues are generally the same as what you have there in the US. We need high quality teachers - not enough of them. The unions tend to protect and support the lowest common denominator in quality of teachers unfortunately.

In our early years centres (child care) qualified staff is an issue - there's just not enough of them out there. The staff turnover is very high too, with many of the staff very young and inexperienced. 

In regards to quality education Riek shared her personal opinions:

Political agendas should not be the foundation our educational visions are built upon rather they should be there as scaffolding supporting the vision designed and developed by those who hold the expertise, the educators themselves. Accountability should still play a role in our education systems, but it should not be linked to funding, nor should standardised testing be our only criteria of accountability. We need to look at the journeys taken of not only our children during their learning periods, but also that of our educators. Our future, our children, are not identical beings and as such require different considerations, different approaches, and different learning experiences. They too have a vision, they want to be treated with respect, they want to learn in a way meaningful to them as individuals, and they want to be able to express themselves and be heard. We need to seriously consider our clientele, the future, our children when writing the narrative which will formulate the vision for our education systems. What is the end product, the vision we hold for them? Do we want them to become citizen which have developed a love of learning and therefore are lifelong learners; or do we want to ensure they have been taught only what is on the political agendas? We need to be united in our vision, we need to move beyond political agendas and write narrative with the inspirational change we know we can achieve WITHIN Education.