Communication Skills to Enact Change

I strongly believe that communication must be HOT-honest, open and two-way.  I loved this quote by Dan Oswald because we have shared beliefs.  I think if you are going to use your communication skills to be effective at enacting change it must be honest.  As an early childhood advocate, you have to be considered an honest and reliable source of information.  You must be open to speaking your mind in a variety of settings that include large groups, small group, peer groups, and one-on-one with others.  Policy issues by definition are controversial (Fowler, 2013, p. 14). 

The policy process is the sequence of events that occurs when political systems considers different approaches to public problems, adopts one of them (Fowler, 2013, p. 14).  It is critical to enact change in a policy process you have to be able to effectively communicate your perspective in order for the political system to accept your approach as the best one for the public.  Early childhood has become more political with the release of brain research, but as a field we also have to ensure that we are equipped with the communication skills necessary to share our story effectively, honestly, and openly.  Everyone should have their elevator speech about the value and importance of early childhood quality so if you are trapped in an elevator with the right person your prepared to effectively share your message.

Are you ready to communicate change?

References

Fowler, F. C. (2013). Policy Studies for Educational Leaders An Introduction (4th ed.). New Jersey: Pearson.

Social Media's Influence on Policy Issue

The social media platforms I would use to support my issue of increased teacher education, and its influence on quality child care would be Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.  I am considering Facebook and Twitter as one platform and YouTube as a second platform.  Indeed, values and opinions are shaped and shared because digital posts spawn commentary sway views and spur action (Auer, 2011, p. 711).  Facebook and Twitter will help to reach a large group of users.  Many ealy childhood policy organizations use these platforms to get messages out to the early childhood workforce.  These have been effective in the past.  Child Care Aware of America uses both Facebook and Twitter to get policy information out to the field daily.  As an individual wanting to get the word out about high quality, these are quick and simple platforms to use.  Using social media for political discussions between citizens and their governments (Lampe, LaRose, Steinfield, & DeMaagd, 2011, p. 2).  Facebook and Twitter are good platforms to disminate material, but not the best for gathering data from the participants.

YouTube will be great to publish short messages about teacher education and high quality.  These could be embedded into various websites supporting ealy childhood workforce development.  Including testimonials from teachers that have utilized scholarship programs to increase their education will be included in this YouTube effort.  Additionally, the YouTube videos can be linked with the Facebook and Twitter effort.  It is important to identify technology that meets stakeholder needs, and match tasks to channels in a way that takes advantage of the interactive nature of the social media (Lampe et al., 2011, p. 12).  The barrier for YouTube is connecting with the agencies to embed the information into their websites and to identify individuals to participate in the project.

References

Auer, M. R. (2011). The Policy Sciences of Social Media. Policy Studies Journal, 39, 709-736. Retrieved from https:waldenlibrary.edu

Lampe, C., LaRose, R., Steinfield, C., & DeMaagd, K. (2011). Inherent barriers to the use of soical media for public policy informatics. The Innovation Journal:  The Public Sector Innovation Journal, 16(1), 1-17. Retrieved from https://www.waldenlibrary.edu

Course Goals

Dynamics of Early Childhood Policies and Systems is the course that I have patiently been waiting for in this degree program because my daily work is around early childhood comprehensive system building.  My early childhood master's degree specialization was public policy and advocacy.  I am an early childhood advocacy junkie.  I subscribe to about six different advocacy newsletters to stay up to date on early childhood issues in Washington, DC.  The reauthorization of the Child Care Development Block Grant (CCDBG) was finally passed last November after more than ten years of trying.  I have included a picture of President Obama signing CCDBG into law!!

I am very excited to share with my classmates my experiences of working within a statewide early childhood comprehensive system.  Child Care Aware of American is non-profit that works to improve the quality of child care and conducts a variety of studies on the levels of quality in each state and each type of care.  I am also proud to say that my daughter that is getting ready to start her last year of law school is doing a legal internship at Child Care Aware of American doing policy writing.

I am currently analyzing environment rating scales virtual subscale data compared to our early learning guidelines to determine if the implementation of the guidelines has made an impact on the quality of care for children in child care programs in Oklahoma.  I am hopeful that some of the system research for this course will provide some insight to this analysis.

My three professional goals are as follows:

1. Attach scholarly literature to my practical application of early childhood systems to give me a more robust understanding of the total system.
2. Expand my knowledge of each of the critical components within a comprehensive early childhood system to ensure that all sectors are represented and accounted for to improve the lives of children birth to age 8.
3. Strengthen my skills as a policy writer to use my knowledge to evoke change in my state as well as nationally.

I am so excited about this class I just can't wait to get started.

Family Culture and Society Final Thoughts

Starting this course it seemed like it was going to address content that had previously been apart of other courses about culture; however, having to conduct a deep investigation of a particular societial issue changed everything.  Digging deep in to the topic of homeless has changed me.  It has become a passion that I must support and help others to know more about.

I started this project to learn more about homelessness because our state was going to have to write in our state plan for the Child Care Block Grant how we are reaching out to this population as well as provide a description of how we would train the child care workforce to be prepared to meet the needs of these children and families once they started attending the program.  I learned a wealth of information that needs to be included in the training, but I also learned that I had a very stereotypical view of the homeless population.  I had not idea that 1 million children were homeless.

I would be interested in learning more and do some data collection once child care programs begin to enroll homeless child and families to see if it improves the education outcomes for these children.  The research states that experiencing a homeless episode during the early childhood years relates to increase potential for poor academic outcomes.  How do we break the cycle?  How do each of us make a difference in the life of a homeless child?

The Interview Process

The interview process has been challenging because both of the people that I am interviewing have been extremely busy and have been difficult to schedule.  They are both scheduled for this week coming up causing me to have a very short turnaround for my paper.  I am interviewing a Principal of a school that serves both families of domestic violence and who are homeless.  Additionally, getting the information about where to come was really interesting because of the population they serve the address is not known.  When emailing back and forth I was sent the address with directions on how to get to the location, but was given strict orders not to put the address even on my personal calendar.  It became very real to me about the population they served when scheduling this interview.

The other person I am interviewing is the director of professional development at the Department of Human Services and she is going to provide clarity on the new Child Care Block Grant requirements for states needing to service homeless families.

I am very interested in both of my interviews, but wish that they could have been sooner.

My Course Project has challenged me and pushed me to learn about a new concept that had never been a part my daily work or even crossed my radar.  The articles found for the bibliography have been interesting because they have been a mixture of research articles and surveys of research because it appears to me that this is a new topic area of research.

I think it would be helpful to know how others interviews have gone so that I can see if I am on the right track or not.

Introduction of Course Project for EDUC 8853

Introduction to Course Project

The challenge I am going to study for my course project is helping early childhood teachers understand how to best meet the needs of children from homeless families.  In the Child Care Development Fund requirements for the states there are specific questions states will be required to address in the state plan for child care.  One of those questions is how are you as a state preparing early childhood teachers with understanding the homeless community and recruiting them for child care services.  Most early childhood classroom teachers are ill prepared supporting children growing up in homeless families.  

Nearly 1 million preschoolers and school-age children were homeless in 2009-2009 (Hanson & Lynch, 2013, p. 35).  This is a crisis in our nation and the federal government with these new 

reporting requirements are attempting to engage states with supporting these families with both enrollment into high quality early childhood programs, but also ensuring they are benefiting from child care subsidy to help pay the costs of the child care.  Poverty and homelessness are examples of risk indicators (Hanson & Lynch, 2013, p. 61).

The questions I have initially are as follows:  Have you had any children from a homeless family in your classroom?  How will you support the children and families that are homeless?

I think more research will need to be reviewed to ensure that the questions asked of teachers are supporting and do not cause greater stigma to the homeless population. 

References

Hanson, M. J., & Lynch, E. W. (2013). Understanding families supportive approaches to diversity, disability and risk (Second ed.). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co.

Final Thoughts on Global Perspectives Class

One of the resources from this class that was really thought provoking was the watching the movies Babies because it really made me question what I thought was best practices for young children.  I still believe in best practices in the child care setting, but I think it is critical that teachers have a deep understanding of culture and family values in order to meet their needs.  Watching this movie caused me to really begin to think about what is most important in the life of a child.  It is relationships with the family, being loved and cared about, and lastly developing holistically.  the children in this movie all end the first year of life with similar development skills, but they had very different journeys.

My inspiration in this class was directly linked to my research project.  Linking the research to the knowledge base about the amount of time children spend outdoors was absolutely inspirational.  Children need 120 minutes outdoors and in Oklahoma children rarely get more than 30 to 60 minutes most days.  I am linking my Childhood Obesity Power Point here to share some additional information about outdoor time and the potential to preventing childhood obesity. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/aeg2ihdjbea29pu/Childhood%20Obesity%20Power%20Point%20with%20narration.ppt?dl=0

Here is the link to the Let's Move Child Care website.  Great information as well as resources are available here for both teachers and parents.  http://www.healthykidshealthyfuture.org/welcome.html

Please take a look at this information it is really inspiring.  

The current research that most challenged my thinking was the information I read about the government choosing in Spain to ensure that all children have access to universal pre-K in the setting the parents choose so it is not just in public school settings, but also in child care programs.  This is something that is not happening in United States and it is critical that we make some hard decisions about access and quality in this country.  Here is a great article about access from the Office of Administration on Children and Families, Office of Child Care http://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/occ/supporting_working_families_report.pdf

Here are few great quotes 

It is our role as scholar practitioners to be advocates for all young children!!!