Sharing Web Resources 2

Under the Care & Education tab there is a section called School Readiness Interactive Birth to 3. This is a great tool for educators and parents that encourage early learning experiences. Now that I work in an elementary school, I am constantly hearing the term school readiness. I am going to share this tool with my supervisor since she is in contact with so many families. I am also going to share the tool with our principle and staff so that we can share it with our families. As a professional, I will be using this tool as I have many three years old in my classroom come this fall. As I keep investigating the Zero to Three website, I have begun to understand just how important education is for those children. I think that many times society feels that children from birth to three are so young and often think, “what could they possibly be learning?” This website has really opened my eyes to the world of education from birth to three years old. I hope that as an educator I can begin presenting the importance of educating children in this age bracket. When looking around the website there is a tab called Public Policy. Within this tab there is information about federal, state, local, and community policies. My favorite find was the Zero to 3 Policy Pocket Card. Found at http://www.zerotothree.org/public-policy/policy-toolkit/5x12-card-trifold-final-12-1-10.pdf This is a great way to advocate for young children. This demonstrates the importance of informing our local policy makers. In the search bar for the site I typed in neuroscientist and economists and many articles came up that had very good information in them. I learned about the Rally4Babies which is a petition that you can digitally sign that supports early childhood education to start from birth. There is also a video that you can view. It is a very enlightening video, I personally enjoyed viewing it. Zero to Three. (2012). Retrieved from http://www.zerotothree.org/

Poverty in India

I researched poverty in India from the Childhood Poverty website and here are some of my findings. In one case study it talks about a seventeen year old named Banwari who lives in a village in what is called the Tonk district. He is a part of a family of ten that includes his six brothers and they own a farm in which they grow crops to make money. Because of the size of his family, the farm does not produce enough to support all of them. Banwari had to drop out of school because his family could not afford to pay and also because his father became ill and he needed to get a job to help support the family. While Banwari wanted badly to go to school so that he could make more money, his family needed him to get straight work because without the income the family would probably become homeless. I had heard plenty of stories about children having to drop out of school and work to help the family out with money. My grandfather had to drop out of school in the 8th grade to help his mother and father with the farm and animals. Another case study I read was about Nanuram, who is a twelve year old who also lived in the Tonk District with his father, mother and two siblings. One thing that I have found out from reading is that these children have to pay for school even in their young ages. I think that this is so unfair that getting an education is based on how much money your family makes. Nanuram started selling ice cream at the age of ten with his uncle, who had been doing so for some time. Nanuram would make money from selling ice cream and give the majority of the money to his mother. The rest of the money he used to get clothes made for him. Nanuram also had to deal with the fact that his father was an alcoholic and sometimes abused his mother. He blames his father’s drinking and frustration on their poor living conditions. Children should not have to bear the burden of working and trying to help keep the family from being in severe poverty. This child has a lot to deal with but he seems to have a strong will to get his family out of their current situation. The last case study was about sixteen years old, Laxmi, who is the most educated girl in the Tonk district. She is also the first girl to learn how to ride a bike. Laxmi has a daily routine that includes getting up extra early to get ready for school. Once school is out she comes home and makes tea for her family with water that she hand pumped. She then studies and goes to bed to start the routine all over again the next day. Laxmi has 3 siblings and their family is better off than a lot of the other families in their village. She was married at the age of ten to a young boy that lives in another village in the Tonk district. Even though Laxmi is married she still continues to go to school. Laxmi wants to continue her education and become a teacher. Having an education gives Laxmi self-confidence. She still lives with her parents until her husband is able to get a job with the police force. Even though her family is not one of the richest they do the best they can and have instilled in their children the importance of education.

Sharing Web Resources

I chose the Zero to Three Organization, whose link is: http://www.zerotothree.org/. I subscribed to their newsletter but I have not received it as of yet. Zero to Three is a nationally known nonprofit that provides knowledge and know-how to nurture early development for parents, professionals, and policymakers. Their mission is to ensure that all babies and toddlers have a strong start in life. I haven’t received the newsletter yet but I did look into their podcasts and watch one of the videos. They were talking about the emotional life of young children and how hard it is for parents to understand that children have a lot of emotions. They talked about how parents know that children have hungry cries and tired cries but they also talked about how babies experience sadness and anger. My job is to train childcare providers on teaching children social emotional skills and also understanding when a child expressing their feelings. I really enjoyed reading this because it just let me know that my job is needed in the world. We have to teach children social emotional skills just like we would teach everything else to them. I also found on their page Journals from 2001-2012 and I will be reading some of them for future assignments and also to better my understanding of the issues that they tackle. Here is also a link to their podcast with videos that I will be watching throughout this course to learn more about this organization: http://www.zerotothree.org/about-us/funded-projects/parenting-resources/podcast/

Making Connections & Expanding Resources

I was unable to contact any professionals for other countries. I sent out emails to various people and I hope that sometime during the semester they will respond. I would love to be connected with other countries on the early childhood field. I am going to study Zero to Three Organization because I have used resources for them for papers and they have really good information. I was an infant teacher for 2 year and then I became a preschool teacher so this age range is interesting to me. I subscribed to their sites newsletter and hopefully it will give me some good information.