Zero To Three

Zero to Three

Last week I chose to explore the organization Zero to Three. http://www.zerotothree.org/ 

I thought this would benefit both myself professionally and my family.  This organization is dedicated to providing a place that informs, trains, and supports professionals, policymakers, and parents.  Their mission is to promote the health and development of infants and toddlers.  They do this by providing a monthly newsletter and many pages of research and support for the positive influences that need to be present in a child's life. While exploring the website this week I found many of the trends that we have discussed.  It was very hard to choose just one trend to explore.  

Good Health

I choose to look at what the site offered for families on good health and nutrition for their families.  There were many different articles for what to do with childhood obesity to how to feed children in the 21st century.  I was surprised to see so many different resources available to families and professionals. It is really important for our families that they are aware of the differences in healthy nutrition today.  http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/health-nutrition/professional-resources-on.html

I think that it is so amazing that we live in a world with so many resources right at our figure tips.  

Starting Up

We are starting a new class this week.  I am very interesting in learning about the trends in early childhood education.  I have learned so much already and I am excited to jump in and learn more.  Can't wait to see who everyone else gets connected with from other countries.  I am also excited to learn more from the organizations in our country that can help us to change the reality. 

My Supports

In my life I have many supports that keep me going each day.  First I have my family, Allen my husband, my children, and my father-in-law.  Also I am very close to my mother, brothers, sister, and my grandmother.  These people on a daily basis provide me with the supportive atmosphere to continue to try even in the worst of times.  This past year especially, we have really needed each other.  We have had 2 deaths in the family, cancer diagnoses, and job changes. Of course this is the year I decided to go back to school. Without these supports I wouldn’t be able to survive all of these struggles. They give encouraging words, wisdom, and affection as ways to support me. 

Second, I also have great friends.  I have been blessed to have friends that I have been through a lot with and they have been there for me during times of great struggle. My friends support me in much the same way that my family supports me.  If I need someone to talk to or vent with they are there to listen to me.  They help me to work through my problems.  When I need encouragement they are there to cheer me on to success. Without them life would be so much more difficult.  I would have nowhere to turn to when I needed a different perspective. 

Last, I have my church (this is a more recent addition).  I have found great comfort and encouragement in the church.  I have always been a very spiritual person, but I have a new value for fellowship.  They provide me with support that my family struggles with and I am limited on this type with my friends.  I need people that are walking the same direction with me to support me in my spiritual walk.  Without them I wouldn’t be able to continue to guide my children without this support.  I am so grateful for these supports because without them I wouldn’t be able to continue to strive for better in my life without these supports. 

If these supports were gone from my life I would be a very different person.  I would not have been able to try my best at perusing my education or even finish school without my support systems.  These helped me when I didn’t think I could go on anymore.  I have had my share for rough times like most so it has been great that I was able to succeed with so much.  I am the first to graduate from college in my family and now to be perusing a master’s degree is amazing. 

I chose the challenge of depression.  I chose this challenge because I don’t fully understand how someone can be so down that they can’t get up and move on.  I can only imagine that somewhere along the way they have a break down in their mind of their support systems.  Somewhere in their brain they believe that they aren’t worth supporting and they just can’t deal.  I would need support for…

• ·        My  housekeeping
• ·        Childcare
• ·        Job
• ·        Physically care

My family would help me with my home and children.  My friends would help me with my job responsibilities and my family.  My church would help me to overcome these difficult challenges that would come with this illness.

If I didn’t have these supports I can only imagine that my children would be taken from me because I wouldn’t be able to care for them.  I would lose my job and become homeless.  I wouldn’t be able to make myself follow through without my strength from the Lord and also from my church. 

I would probably just withdraw from society all together without my family and great friends.  It is hard to say what would happen next.  I think it would just continue to get worse.

Moving Forward

As another class comes to a close and we move forward on our journey of learning and self discovery I would like to to say thank you so much.  I have really enjoyed the help and input from my colleagues and instructors.  This class has been very informational and meaningful for me. I have learned a lot about myself and my own children, plus things that will help me to become a more successful parent and educator.  I am looking forward to moving ahead to a new challenge with this next class.  Thanks again.

Assessment Oh, Assessment

I think that it is important for us to understand first what assessment means.  Assessment is typically defined as evaluating the quality or ability of an event or a person’s knowledge.  I think that in many cases we are very focused on assessing a child’s academic knowledge.  We often forget that our students are more than test scores.  I think that if we are going to assess our students’ academic knowledge then we need to think also about their psychosocial and biosocial development as well.  I feel that many times our expectations for what we want our students to do academically are misguided.  Our nation is very focused on making sure that we aren’t falling behind other countries in the race for knowledge; however are we paying a price with the development of our students as a whole?  Our students need to be educated and our assessment needs to be used to improve their learning not just for the sake of assessing and receive funding. 

A recent article in Educational Leadership stated that assessment around the world does vary but many of the concerns are still the same.  In the U.S. the biggest complaint is that teachers are teaching to the test. Many feel that we aren’t holding our students to the right standards and thus we can meet their goals. “ In most other countries, however, including the Czech Republic, England, Canada, Japan, and Australia, teaching to the test means teaching the curriculum, because the same agency that develops the test also develops the curriculum. In fact, the test is often seen as a mechanism to promote the curriculum,” (Levinson, 2000, p. 60). If only there was a way to assess students for the benefit of instruction and not for the monetary punishment of failing schools. 

The idea of assessment is a very tricky one for me as an educator.  I think that assessing our students is a very important part of our job; however I also think that many times we are just testing for monetary gain and not for the true purpose of guiding our instruction.  If instead of making our testing high stakes maybe we should make them more like high learning and fund the time that it takes educators to evaluate an educational attack plan to aide struggling students. 

References:

http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/pdf/journals/ed_lead/el200002_levinson.pdf

Stressor

This week we were asked to write about a stressor that had affected either us or someone we know.  I chose to write about the stressor of poverty and how it affected a friend of mine.  I will call him “A”. Before I begin I would like to define what poverty is just to give us some perspective.  Dictionary.com defines poverty as “the state or condition of having little or no money, goods, or means of support; condition of being poor” or “deficiency of necessary or desirable ingredients, qualities”.

My friend “A” grew up in poverty.  When my friend’s his father lost his job because the company moved to Mexico where they could make their products cheaper; it through his family for a loop.  His mother was mentally ill and unable to get disability and unable to work, so his father was the sole bread winner.  They were barely getting by while he was working and loosing his job did not help the situation at all.  They struggled with knowing where their next meal would come from and working whatever jobs they could get to make enough to eat.  Many times their only meals came from school.  Sadly this affected my friend in many ways but the ways that it has affected him the most have been biosocially and pychosocially. 

Due to the fact that they ate what was cheap and easy to make he formed poor eating habits.  Also having very little to eat he would over eat when there was food.  This later in life has caused “A” many problems.  He is very over weight and has a difficult time knowing when to stop eating, even though his situation has improved.  Also due to his extreme poverty he was never able really to learn how to interact with other correctly. This also still causes him many problems because it is difficult to know what is appropriate for different professional and social situations. 

I think that he used laughter and education as a means to help him cope with their poverty.  He read a lot and learned how to use his hands.  Through that he was able to maintain some form of spirit until things got a little bit better. 

I found this stressor of poverty something that is so widespread throughout the entire world.  Even, here at home, in the United States we are struggling with high amounts of poverty.  Our numbers are not that of countries like African; however they are just not acceptable for a developed country like America.  The U.S. Census Bureau reported for 2010 the national rate of poverty was 15.1% and has been on an increase for the last four years. http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/income_wealth/cb11-157.html

There are many reasons for the rise in poverty. Loss of jobs due to the economic downfall, resulting in a lack of income, segregation due to race and lack of income and many others.  Being in poverty typically will mean that you are then going to have a lack of food.  This would then speak to the problem of hunger in America.  Thousands of adults and children are going hungry every day in America. 

America isn’t even the worst of it though; places like Africa have situations that are even worse than ours.  According to worldpoverty.org many places are experiencing absolute poverty, “Absolute poverty involves people and their children having extreme difficulty in merely surviving. Such poverty at its worst can involve hunger amounting to starvation, often combined with inadequate shelter or housing and clothing. Absolute poverty has been common in more primitive societies, and is still common in many Third World countries in Africa, Asia and South America especially where it can afflict the majority of the population.”

Just as mentioned above hunger in these places usually ends in starvation.  Children in this type of stressor have little means of coping.  Their brains will cease to develop once the starvation has progressed far enough.  Our bodies will steal all the nourishment that it can for our brains to continue to develop until it can steal no longer and then our bodies start to break down.  If a child is starving their biosocial development will cease and the child physical and mental growth will stunt.  This will also begin to affect their cognitive development and well as psychosocial development. 

There are many things that are being tried to help stop these issues of poverty and hunger.  However, with the economical down spirals of so many countries aide is becoming scarcer.  There is one organization that is trying a new approach in hopes that it will have more permanent results.  The Hunger Project (THP) is a global, non-profit, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger. They have recently started trying to teach the people how to take care of themselves more and provided them with the resource but are making the people responsible for making something out of them.  I think that this approach is one of the best ways to begin to combat hunger and poverty.  I would encourage you to check out their website. http://www.thp.org/

Breastfeeding in Public

This week I chose a topic that is both important for our future children but also very close to my heart; Breastfeeding. I breastfed both my children, and I was very lucky because I had enough milk and minimal problems.  I think that to breastfeed is one of the most wonderful gifts of nature ever, however not everyone is as lucky as I.  I researched a lot before I had my children and I also had planned out that I was going to nurse my children so I was ready when the time came.  I took classes at my hospital and spoke with their lactation department.  I think that part of my success was having so much information at the tip of my fingers. 

My family was supportive, but they were supportive in an apprehensive way.  I made it clear that I was going to nurse and they didn’t have a choice in it and that I wasn’t going to be ashamed either.  I think that in the US we are encouraged to do what is best for our babies, but you better not let anyone see it.  I think the biggest thing in the US is that people don’t think of breasts like they should… Mammary glands.  They are more of a sex symbol and you can’t have that just flashing everyone.  Sadly I think that is why so many of our young women just give up or don’t even try.  I can say that over the last five years things have improved.  When I started nursing my son you couldn’t find a nursing station anywhere.  You were just supposed to go to the bathroom, sit on the toilet, and figure it out from there.  When I had my daughter there seemed to be more popping up all over the place.  I think that as a society we are starting to change. It is slow and steady.  My hope is that in the next few years it will be taboo to feed our children formula unless you medically can’t or there isn’t enough milk in your system. 

In other countries it is vastly different from here.  Many women nurse as long as their baby wants to, which is sometimes even to the age of 4 or 5.  In many countries it is expected and frowned upon if you are not able.  In several countries England, Scotland, and Ireland to name a few, it is illegal to ask a nursing mother to stop nursing in public.  That is completely different than here, because if you aren’t covered completely in some parts of the US, the law will allow you to be arrested for indecent exposure.  It isn't illegal to breastfeed in public however it is illegal to expose yourself in public.  Women have been charged with this; however many times the charges are dropped.  The point is that we shouldn't even bee bothered with this silliness because it is what is best for children.  I personally think that whoever thought up that law was just one sex starved person because there is nothing sexual or indecent about breastfeeding. 

I try whenever possible to influence others that I know to nurse.  I will continue to do this but I will also have more reason to help others understand its importance and acceptance around the world.  

I have included a link about breastfeeding in other countries.

http://www.007b.com/public-breastfeeding-world.php