NAEYC

NAEYC has been involved in my work since I started working with young children, their goals and mission have guided my career to a level of excellence.  I have a firsthand account of how the criteria and standards that NAEYC upholds improves the daily quality of young people in my different programs.

 

ZERO TO THREE

Zero to Three organization has many facets of training and education.  The goal of Zero to Three is to educate families and caregivers on early care practices of all children birth to age three. The Zero to Three work in child abuse and neglect prevention training and awareness is very important to my work.  It has given me many strategies and techniques to help identify early warning signs of abuse and to get families help and education to care for their young children. 

HEADSTART

Headstart is a national nonprofit organization that provides quality educational and health services to more than one million children nationwide.  To be able to provide quality education to all child regardless of circumstance would allow for me to use my education to give back to our community.  Reaching children that may never have the means to seek a better education without programming like this inspires me to educate families of all resources.

 

Job Opportunities:  I would love to have the experience to work as a NAEYC validator/assessor. This job would give me an opportunity to travel and see the different levels of early childhood education available and the progress our field in making. 

Assessor Qualifications

 •            A minimum of a baccalaureate degree with; o Credit bearing hours of specialized college-level work addressing both:

o Child development and learning from birth through kindergarten. Courses may be in early childhood education, child development, elementary education, early childhood special education; and administration, leadership, and management.

 

•             Relevant professional experience in a setting serving children from birth through kindergarten;

•             Understanding of the NAEYC Accreditation process gained through experience or training;  

•             Demonstrated observation skills, including ability to use observation tools; 

•             Demonstrated interpersonal and communication skills;

•             Demonstrated technological skills, including the ability to use tablets for data collection;

•             Basic administrative skills and professional communication utilizing technology. 

 

Career Opportunites to Enhance my CoP

Onslow County Partnership for Children

·        Board Member

Onslow County Partnership provides a wide variety of services that improve early education care and health care in the civilian sector of my community.

Board member would allow for me to vote in ways the funding of the state funded program are spent.  Being able to have a voice for families that need improved civilian care would be very satisfying.  This position would also challenge me, as I only have a limited experience in working in the private sector.  Military childcare world is very different than that of civilian care.

Marine and Family Program Division Camp Lejeune

·        Director of Marine and Family Programs

This is my ultimate goal career goal.  Being able to enhance the quality of life for active duty families with lasting directorial decisions that truly make a difference.

I would need a wide knowledge base of services that are provided to Marines and Families. 

This would include; Behavioral Health and Wellness, Career Assistance, Exceptional Family member program, Children, Youth , and Teen Programs, Libraries, Personal Finance, Marine Corps Family Team Building, and Transition Assistance. I would need more experience in the area of services provided to exceptional family members and extensive knowledge and understanding of the behavioral health piece.

Butterfly Effects

·        ABA Therapist

You would need an educational background in special need education services along with occupational therapy and physical therapy needs of children that require additional modified care.  The psychological piece would be very difficult for myself to understand and would not interest me.  I become very emotional attached to children with special needs and struggling with the impacts of war on the child mentally and physically would challenge me.

 

 

 

 

 

Week One

Countdown to the Finish Line!!!!

This looks to be a very good class!
I am excited to see what our project journey has in store each of us!

Thank You Week 8

Thank you to all of my fellow colleagues.  This has been by far the most difficult course for me personally in this program.  I have been dealing with major hardships at work which have lead to personal illness and personal inner conflict.  I have been challenged both professional and personally on my ability to communicate.  I realized early on that I can talk but I can not communicate.  Thank you to everyone who has shared and encouraged me through this self discovery process.

Union Conflicts

The organization that I work for is regulated by a local Union.  The Union has an established contract that has been abided by or given guidance in the regulation of fair labor practices.  In the last six months new officers were elected to the local post and have begun demanding respect and inquiring into the way I have carried out my recent decision to terminate employment and have a caregiver investigated for allegation of mishandling a child inside the classroom.  These events have drawn attention to my management style and practices and have led to several violations and citations.  In order to try and diffuse the conflict and refocus the attention of Union officers elsewhere, I have deployed several non violent tactics to resolve the conflict between my management team and the Union.  Though I really would like to drive a Mack truck through the branch office, I have been respectful and tried to take the third side approach to get a better understanding for all of the perspectives involved.  Through many mediations, deliberations, arguments and successions I have realized that I will not compromise on my principles.  I will not allow an employee to jeopardize the safety and well being of a child and I will not allow an employee’s performance to jeopardize other employee’s safety or well being.  I have learned through this excoriating process that I must follow the rules and the policies that have been established in order to support the fundamentals of my principles I want to uphold.

The Big Test

I chose to send the surveys to my spouse and my closest co-worker.  I was hoping to see that I am different in a professional mode from my personal life.  I was surprised to see the results.  Both people were very close to my own results.  I was hoping that the people that are closest to me get to see a more relaxed and calm version than my co-workers.  It resulted that I am a passionate and empathetic communicator.  I express myself aggressively in certain situations and end up being so compassionate to those I am listening to that I can be fooled. I want to work on varying the different perceptions and hope that this class will give me strategies to do just that.

Delicate Dance

Communicating within my home and professional life.

I am completely two different people when it comes to communicating at home and at work.  I have to really challenge myself and use my educational strategies to communicate on the level in which is expected at work.  I have such a diverse group of staff and families to interact with daily that usually deals with highly emotional subject matters.  From a child being sick, to a parents divorcing I find myself using my counseling hat to help those around me.  At home the family unfortunately gets the short end of the stick.  Being a single mother for so many years, I have found myself being with my children all the time but rarely present.  I have had to work in the past few years really listening and using better communication skills to create a two street with my children.  As they have gotten older it has become even more important to tell them how I feel, and hear what they have to say.  Looking from the outside in, some might observe that my children cross the lines of respect and appropriate behavior.  I have worked very hard not to impede the communication with my children, even though sometimes it can be very challenging.  Our rules of engagement, if you will, are that if they are upset  and the challenges they face as children that they will use trial and error with the types of response they receives and to be able to learn the benefits of responding verses reacting.  Communication for me is a work of art that is a delicate dance between emotion and strategies that yield the anticipated outcome.