Thanks for a great course!

Hello all,
I am relieved to be concluding this course as the holidays rapidly approach.  I do think there have been some great discoveries and conversations this course.

Learning about the international early childhood field has been extremely beneficial throughout this course.  It has served to:

1. Emphasize that questions of equity of care affect children all over the world.
2. Teach me that the training of early childhood educators in the field is incredibly important throughout the world.  Teachers in other countries often have less preparation than teachers here in the United States.
3. Show that there is an opportunity in less developed nations to prepare families and teachers in the early childhood field to appropriately utilize play as an early childhood strategy before more traditional pressures of assessment and standardized testing take hold.

I hope to further my international contacts and continue to develop my knowledge of international strategies and resources.  Building international connections could only help to further the early childhood education field.

Concluding Conversations with my International Contact

Having the opportunity to engage in conversation with my friend Becca regarding her experience teaching Kindergarten and preschool in Huehue, Guatemala has been extremely rewarding.  The conversations she's encountering at the school and orphanage in Huehue are so different, and yet remarkably similar, to those we have been having in this class.  Ultimately, conversations in Huehue come down how to best use resources to create consistent, quality teaching and relationships for the children attending the school and living at the orphanage.  Resources, obviously, look very different in Huehue, but the relationships hold the same importance in both settings.  As a school run by an international nonprofit organization, questions of politics and government policies bear little impact on Becca's school.  Questions of equity, however, bear a lot of weight on the minds of the teachers and administrators of the school.  Limited resources mean limited enrollment, but of course there is always a hope that they could be reaching more children and providing a wider range of care.

Becca has found a strong network of support among the current and former teachers with More than Compassion.  Learning together the best ways to teach in early childhood has been a challenge and an exciting adventure.  The team is constantly striving to provide better education for the children, but doesn't always have access to opportunities for professional development.

Becca isn't sure that her professional goals will always keep her in the realm of early childhood development, but that she will remain in the world of missions and international aid.  At least for now, she and her husband plan to stay in Huehue to teach for another year, then reevaluate their opportunities.  She hopes to see the continued growth of the school in Huehue and continued development of relationships in the community and among the parents of her students.  I look forward to seeing her continue to grow in this role and hope that she can see what a beautiful impact she is having on these young children.

Revisiting the ICRI

It has been a pretty cool assignment to spend multiple weeks combing over the website of the International Child Resource Institute (ICRI), especially alongside my expanding understanding of current issues and trends in the field of early childhood.

The ICRI website has hardly any links to outside sites. There were a couple links to outside fundraising sites on their blog, but even most of their fundraising is done internally. They also do not have any kind of resources page linking to outside sites.

The area I chose to explore thoroughly was the page explaining the ICRI's consultation services. They offer needs assessments, program and facility design services, cutting edge curriculum, branding services, and even offer to raise net income of centers by 20%. They consult for child care centers, large corporations, non profits, and international leaders. Past projects have included work for the WHO, IBM, the University of Nairobi, and the education ministry of Croatia. Consulting is an interesting business, and the breadth of the work that the ICRI does for such a wide range of organizations was really interesting.

The ICRI in the United States is based out of San Francisco and has come awesome projects in motion focusing on equity and access in disadvantaged communities. They've have opened a devoted Spanish/English preschool in addition to their two English schools in the area. They also have a physical development and mobility projected called Project Commotion that has a dedicated staff to provide special education support and advocacy. Perhaps most interesting to me, their Family Daycare Support Network program reimburses home childcare providers in the area for the expenses related to preparing and serving meals that meet the appropriate nutrition standards.

International Child Resource Institute (n.d.).  Retrieved from http://www.icrichild.org/ourvision/