Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

I am working on reaching out to some contacts via The Global Alliance of NAEYC http://www.naeyc.org/resources/partnership/globalalliance.  I have unfortunately have not had much luck finding an email address that works.  I also went to the links for the World Forum Foundation and those did not work either.  I was able to go to their actual website http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/ but the link that had the podcasts posted did not work for me.  I will continue to try and reach out to resources.  I did find a section on the World Forum website with videos that can be watched.  

Expanding Resources

One website that I will be exploring over the next 8 weeks is http://www.zerotothree.org  This is an organization/site that I have heard of in the past but became more familiar with during my studies at Walden in another class.  I was glad to see it come back up again in this class because I really have not found the time to explore it like I would have liked to already.  There is so much amazing information to be found here and I cannot wait to dive in and learn about all they have to offer.  Some of the topics that are covered on the site include behavior and development, brain development, challenging behaviors, mental health, nutrition and play, maltreatment, public policy and childcare information as well as information on school readiness.  And this is just some of the information.  It definitely seems like a resource that all parents and childhood professionals should have access to.

The other website/organization that I am going to use to expand my knowledge and explore is http://www.icrichild.org  This is the International Child Resource Center.  Just having explored it briefly, it seems to be full of wonderful information on early childhood issues and trends from many different countries/continents including but no limited to the United States, New Zealand, Kenya, India, Africa, Europe.  Each area of the world that they have links to also have blogs that have past and current issues that are discussed.

Supports in My Life

I think that many of us, on a daily basis, take for granted the people and things that we have for supports in our life. For example, when I first read this assignment I immediately just thought of people in my life that support me (my husband, my parents, my friends). I didn’t even think about things like money, my house, my daily to do lists, my phone or computer. I guess I didn’t realize how much those things do support my life and allow me to do other things that I enjoy or need.

My wonderful, supportive husband 🙂

My husband is my absolute #1 supporter in my life. Exactly one year ago (this week), I made the most difficult decision of my life and that was to resign from my career that I had for 10 years. I love my job as a Center Director for an ECE center and loved the children, teachers, families and fellow co-directors that I worked with on a daily basis. I made a good salary that contributed to 40% of our family income. However, I was not happy anymore. I was overly worked, overly stressed, not supported by my direct supervisor and the company I worked for was going down a path that just did not fit into my beliefs about Early Childhood Education and what it should look like. My husband supported me 100% and although there have been some financial struggles we have truly learned to appreciate each other more, our children more and that money absolutely does not create happiness!!! We made sacrifices, cancelled cable TV, contracted cell phone services, paid off our vehicles with my 401k and I would not look back on that day if you handed me a check for $20,000! I feel like the luckiest wife in the world even if I can’t have that big house I wanted to build someday and the brand new minivan that all my friends drive!

Since I have been home, I started my Master’s Degree (this is the 3rd attempt for me). This program has become a daily support for me because I look forward to learning new things, it has helped me to deal with my own young children in a more positive manner and it is supporting me with my new career hope to become an early childhood education instructor and trainer for NYS.

My silly children!

My children support me every day because they make me realize what is important in life. They support my faith in humanity, my love for education, they simply support the reason I get out of bed every day! They are my life!!!

Clearly money is a support in our lives but I have proven that you can still survive and be happy with out as much of it. I will be honest (just to put it into perspective) and tell you I was making $55,000 a year plus bonus. I typically made about $8-10,000 a year in bonuses. That is a huge income (where I live) to cut out of a family budget. Money is clearly a support we all need but you would be surprised what you can do without in your life and still be a happier person for it!

My phone and my computer— I COULD NOT live without those. You can take away my money, ha-ha but not my phone and computer. First of all, I couldn’t be in this amazing program without my computer. I also do a lot of online selling to help supplement our income. I really would be lost without my computer. I need my phone because it is my sanity to the outside world. Being a stay at home mom, I need to be able to have communication with adults on a regular basis. That is my support to keep me sane! I am sure I would learn to live without it but it will not be anytime soon. I did downgrade my smartphone and monthly cell service to a prepaid phone because it was a $60 a month difference.

If I was to tie this altogether when looking at young children and those that are in inclusive classrooms, children need us. They need certain tools, people and curriculum to help them learn and grow. Just as we adults need certain things in our lives, children are even more vulnerable to the need of supports. So just like I said I could absolutely not live without my phone or computer; think about a young child trying to live without his toys, books or parents. These are all supports for him and we need to make children our priority. We need to find out what the best supports are for them and provide it to them.