There is no way to even begin listing how very much I have learned from my Master's of Early Childhood Studies program.  There are monumental elements that I have been learning for the last two years.  Although the most recent aspects of my education are still fresh in my mind, the things that I have learned before now have also had a profound effect on shaping me into who I am, even if I cannot remember specific lessons from the beginning of this program.  Each lesson that I learned just settled into me and became a stone in the foundation that each subsequent lesson has built on.  I am amazed at how different I am from when I entered this program two years ago.  I always feel very sure of who I am and what I believe.  Yet with each passing week of this program, I learned something new, was forced to more closely examine my values and beliefs, and many times I found that I needed to change, in order to truly be the person and professional that I wanted most to be.

   I used to always feel like I didn't need to be prepared to include children with special needs, or families that speak other languages, or of other cultures into my center.  I always felt that it was important that everyone be included, I just felt that I since I live in such a rural area that this concept did not really apply to me.  I now realize that I was wrong.  It is now very important to me to ready my staff and center to be prepared to offer services to ANY family at ANY time.
     This program also taught me about what it means to be of "quality".  We can talk a lot about quality programs, but I can now say that I am aware of just what components are necessary in order for services and programs to be of true quality.
     From the last two years of taking these courses, I have learned how important families and systems are in the future success of children.  I learned how vital play is for proper child development.  I have learned far more than I had ever even thought possible when first starting this journey.

Considering that all of my classmates have had the same resources, assignments, and instruction, then it stands to reason that the ending of this program for all of us means a very large number of highly educated and highly motivated professionals setting out into the world of early childhood development.  This excites me and makes me so hopeful for our field.  If the ending of this program means that a large group of people that feel the way I do and that are enlightened as I am are setting out to help families, then that is most certainly very good news for families and children everywhere.

My short term goal is to start teaching online courses.  I want to impact future early childhood professionals, just like I have been impacted.  I want to ensure that early childhood professionals are being educated in areas that can most impact children and families.  My long term goal would to be a director of a Head Start agency, or to work in some supervisory capacity with an children's and family's organization.  I want to direct an agency that has the capacity to do work that helps to ensure that every child is given the opportunity to live up to their full potential.

 

Thanks to all of you for caring enough to want to make a difference and change lives.

Thanks to every single instructor that has demanded excellence from me and that has challenged me to be better.

Thanks so much to my family for having so much patience with me throughout this very long journey.

Go out there and change the world, guys!!

Children of the world!!

     One of the things that I love about having international students in my classes is listening to them talk about the early childhood system in their countries.  It is often eye-opening for me.  I think that we look at early childhood education from our frame of reference, which is how it is in our own country.

     I found three different organizations that focus on international childhood education.  One is the Association for Childhood Education International (ACEI). 

http://www.acei.org/

  This organization states that they want bright futures for every child, every nation.  I love that concept!  I was also drawn to their mission, which is to promote innovative solutions to educational challenges and inspire action that creates sustainable futures for children world wide.  I LOVED the phrase "inspire action". 

     Another one is OMEP, which is the World Organization for Early Childhood Education.  http://worldomep.org/en/.  This organization defends and promotes the rights of child education and care worldwide and supports activities that improve access to high quality education and care.  I like that this organization focuses on RIGHTS.

     Another organization that appealed to me is the International Early Childhood Education organization, known as ICF.   https://www.icf.com/campaigns/education/international-early-childhood-education.  This organization does a lot of work in India, but provides early childhood training and technical assistance, coordinates research and evaluation efforts, and supports corporate childcare.  They work to achieve the highest possible quality, performance, and greatest impact possible.  I really like that one focus of this organization is to create NATIONAL licensing and accreditation standards.  I think that this is a fantastic idea!

     I did look at careers with each of these organizations.  However, I live in a very rural area with very few large organizations located anywhere near me.  These three were no exception.  All of the openings were either out of the country, or all in very large cities.  I would have to consider relocating a great distance if I ever wanted to work in any of these positions.  That is something that I am not interested in doing.  I have lived in the same small town all of my life and have no intentions of leaving!

    

     Whenever I think of jobs that I would really like to have (if I didn't have my current job), my mind usually takes me to different organizations that I collaborate with and different members of my current community of practice.  I do a lot of work with our local health department.  Although I am not a health person (medical things are not my favorite), our local health program actually offers very comprehensive services to the families of the community that I work in.  They have people that work there that go into homes of local families and help them in many, many different ways.  I would love to have a job with the local health department, going into homes and offering intensive services that helps the family to keep their children in the home and to do so in the most effective manner for optimal development.  The problem is that most of these jobs usually require a RN or else a LCSW... I am neither.  I really love the social work aspect of some of the services that our local health department offers to families.
http://www.pikecountyhealth.org/jobopportunities.html


  The other two places that I really think that I could find my niche in are the Missouri Head Start Association and also the Missouri Head Start Collaboration Office.  Both of these organizations do so much to help Head Starts all over the state of Missouri.  They hold trainings, offer resources, and do a lot of collaboration work.  I love the idea of being a trainer with Missouri Head Start.  I have also been a part of several collaborative efforts spearheaded by the Missouri Head Start Collaboration Office and I learn so much from each one.  Both of these organizations send early childhood professionals out better prepared to help families than they were before the meetings, trainings, or collaborations.  I would love to be part of that. I have the education and experience to work in either place (if the appropriate job were to be open).  However, neither are located close to where I live.  All of these types of organizations are located about two hours from my house (I live in a very rural area).

http://www.moheadstart.org/Job%20Opportunities.aspx

http://www.moheadstart.org/Missouri%20Head%20Start%20State%20Collaboration%20Office.aspx
     Although these two both appeal to me, I really LOVE the idea of teaching college courses.  I would love to teach early childhood courses at a local college or to direct or teach at an early childhood center that is ran by a college to train those working to be early childhood teachers.  There are not any of these types of programs near me.  There are colleges, but they either don't have openings to teach the early childhood courses, or else they require a PhD.  I would LOVE to teach online classes.  I do a lot of internet searches and it looks like there are rare online teaching opportunities for me once I get my masters, but most of them prefer experience teaching online courses at a college level.  It looks like it will be a difficult profession to get your foot in the door.  I really hope to find an opportunity with this once I get my Master's, but it looks like it will be a lot of searching.  Fingers crossed!

     Thinking of some communities of practice that I would be interested in participating in was easy, especially since thinking about it made me feel really guilty.  I started my job two and a half years ago.  At that time, the local COP known as PCCP (Pike County Care Partnership) reached out to me.  They meet the first Tuesday of each month.  This group is composed of local organizations and businesses that are all considered to be community resources to help individuals and families in need.   There are mental health professionals, physicians offices, food banks, housing organizations, the local health department, the county social service offices, etc.  I was excited to join!  It sounded like such a good way to meet each month and to share information about how best to help the members of the community that I work in and the families at my center.  I have never been to a single meeting... not one.  There just doesn't ever seem to be enough hours in the day and I always feel like there is something that I should be doing at the center.  This is so silly.  I could really learn a lot from going to these meetings and by participating in this COP.  I also have so much that I could offer.
     One COP that I found while researching was the United Way of Central Missouri.  Most of us are familiar with the united way.  However, I did not know that our local United Way created an Early Childhood Advisory Committee.  The purpose of this committee is to support and promote early childhood programs and initiatives in central Missouri.  One of their goals is to identify gaps in services and needs in the early childhood community, which is one of my passions!  I also saw that they want to provide "Born Learning" materials to all low income families.  I was really interested in this, because I had never heard of this program.  The "Born Learning" program looks like something that I would be interested in for my own community.  It is a series of workshops to meet parents where they are and shows them how to use every day moments as learning moments.  I would love to be part of this Early Childhood Advisory Committee!
     I also discovered, while researching, that Missouri has a COP called the Missouri Coordinating Board for Early Childhood.  This board works to ensure that early childhood program's services are comprehensive.  The vision is that "all young children in Missouri are safe, healthy, and capable of reaching their full potential".  One of their missions is to ensure equal access to the necessary resources that result in implementing effective and sustainable early childhood programs.  This all sounds right up my alley!
     The conversation of job opportunities is a very frustrating one for me.  I love my job.  I am currently the director of a center.  I would maybe like to move up into administration one day, when my administrators retire, but for now I am happy doing what I do.  However, I badly want to start teaching online early childhood courses to college student.  I search constantly for job openings.  I find them (rarely) and I almost have the needed Master's degree and I already have a lot of early childhood experience.  However, I do not have experience with teaching college courses.  Even community colleges look for experience teaching college courses.  This brings about the age old dilemma... how does one get experience when they can't get a job without experience???!!!  This is a huge frustration for me.  I know that I could do it and I know that I have a lot to offer others entering into the early childhood profession.  You guys let me know if you have heard of a place in which I can get my foot in the door! 😕😕😕😕😕

                           Groups!

     This week, we took at look at the five stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning.  After learning and reading about these stages, I then took a closer look at the adjournment stage and reflected on some of the groups that I have been in and what occurred or did not occur during the adjournment stage.
     I do feel that the higher performing groups were really hard to leave, mainly because trust, respect, and relationships had been built in those groups, which is why they worked so well.  However, I do think that in many of the higher performing groups that I have been a part of, many of us were excited that we had reached our goal, but were not ready to split up as a group.  This often led to my groups deciding to set and pursue a new goal.  We saw that we had worked so well together and this led us to work together on other things instead of adjourning.
     I have left many groups before they ever got off of the ground, and this was easy to do.  I have been in groups in which I didn't agree with the goal that was set.  I may not have been able to deal with so many individuals in a group pursing their own individual goals.  Many times, I have not been able to get past the storming stage and have felt that I didn't want to be a part of a group that seemed to operate in this manner.  Leaving groups that never get past the storming stage has always been very easy for me.
     When I think about closing experiences in groups, I feel like the groups that end in a celebration are the ones that are most memorable for me.  When in groups, you are working very hard to reach a goal.  When that goal is reached, there should be a celebration to mark the fact that the goal has been accomplished.  This is a great way to adjourn with happy and positive memories.
     I feel bad saying this, but I have never had a hard time with adjourning from any of my degree courses and I don't feel that adjourning from my Master's will be any different.  I have never attended any of my graduations and I have never really met any of my fellow students or teacher's face to face.  This makes it very easy to not develop relationships and to not feel as if the others in this same group as me really play a part in my experience.  I am sure that it would be much different if I had actual in-seat classes.

     When reading through other blog postings of my colleagues this week, I find it interesting to hear so many say that there really isn't much conflict at their jobs.  My job feels like constant conflict.  I supervise a group of about 15 other women.  The conflict is rampant.  However, mostly it revolves around who is getting the most break time or office time.  Most of these teachers and aides are stuck in a classroom the entire day.  We are always so short staffed, that break time and office time has really become some kind of myth or legend that is often spoken of, but rarely seen.  While one group is "trapped" in their class, they imagine that the other group is in the teacher's lounge relaxing and really having a great time and getting lots of lesson plans and work caught up on.  This causes conflict between the classrooms.  They keep a close ear and eye out to see just how many minutes each person gets in the teacher's lounge each day and it is normally the subject of most of the complaints that find their way to my office.
     I have tried several different things to remedy this.  I tried doing scheduled break times and scheduled office times.  This was a huge pain because I would spend hours each week trying to figure out a schedule to ensure that each person got two fifteen minute breaks and also an office time.  Then, we would have call-ins and/or people quit, which always threw the schedule right out of the window.  I have even tried having volunteers come in just to give breaks.  No solution that I have seems to last more than a couple of days.  I have tried to convince the classes that their colleagues were in the same boats, but they didn't believe this.  I have tried hiring extra help for the afternoons to relieve staff and get them more office time, but those afternoon workers never stay more than a few weeks.  I have tried moving people around and re-arranging work schedules... nothing ever works out.
     This is frustrating to me because it seems so petty when I compare it to the other things that I have to do every day.  When I have parents coming to me because their child has been molested and I am meeting with children's services and police, and then teachers come in complaining that they only got a ten minute break instead of a fifteen minute break, I almost snap at them.  However, I try really hard to remember that it is not petty to them and that they do deserve to have office times and breaks.  I have just kind of started avoiding the topic and telling them just to do the best that they can do.  Until we can get fully staffed, there isn't a lot that we can do.
     After reading the course material this week, I feel like the answer and solution lies more with the staff members than with me.  They are looking to me for an answer that I don't have.  I need them to work together in order to realize that they are all in the same position.  I wonder if I need to have a meeting and have all of them communicate with each other and work together to brainstorm possible solutions.  Then, it wouldn't be so much about who wins and who looses, or who is getting their way.  Instead, they will be working together for a solution in which everyone is a winner.  If I can get them all communicating and brainstorming a broad range of solutions, then new ideas and solutions could arise from this conflict.  Who knows?  Any ideas?

My Communication Style

     Wow!  This one really worried me this week.  I have often been told that I am intimidating and aggressive and this is not something that I am proud of.  I have worked on it a lot and have gotten a lot better as I have aged.  I had my husband, son, and a coworker all take this assessment to see how theirs compared to mine.  I did this because my husband knows me better than anyone on this earth, because my son and I constantly but heads and he states that I am intimidating, and because I wanted to get a perspective from a coworker.
     When I did the self assessments, I got a 44 on anxiety, a 66 on moderate, and a 39 on listening styles.  The anxiety score shows that I have a mild anxiety in some situations and that I am at ease in others and that I don't worry a great deal about communicating.  This is true.  I have spent a lot of years trying to refine the art of communication and I have gotten rather comfortable with communicating effectively.  However, I do get nervous when I have to speak to those that I don't already know well and don't have relationships with.
     The score of 66 put me in the moderate range of verbal aggressiveness and said that this showed a good balance between being respectful and arguing fairly.  It shows that I can attack the facts, rather than the person holding the facts.
     The score of 39 on listing styles did not state which group that would put me in.  Reading through the groups, I feel that I would fall between a group one and a group two.  I am very action oriented, which people can find intimidating.  I am also people oriented, which can cloud proper judgment. 
     Much to my surprise, all three people taking these assessments had scores very similar to mine.  Some of them varied by a couple of points, but I was still in the same boxes.  I learned more by talking to these people, especially my son.  I couldn't believe that his scores for me were not way different than mine, since we disagree so often.  I asked him how this could be, since he always states that I am so intimidating.  He said that I intimidate him because I am so smart!  That really made me laugh out loud.  I am apparently not intimidating to him because I am aggressive.  Rather, he knows that I am going to be tough to argue with because I am no fool!  His teenage manipulations won't work on me.  That really gave me a tickle!  He also always tells me that I don't ever listen, yet his scores did not reflect this about me.  When I asked him about this, he said that what he means is that he can't ever get me to change my mind.  What a little scamp!  My husband and coworker both stated that I am a very strong communicator, but that I am also very kind and very fair.  That made me feel good.  My husband said that people are intimidated by me because I am a good communicator and this leaves people feeling unarmed and worried that they will not perform at the same standards that I set. 
     I am glad that these three feel that I am a good communicator.  However, even my own boss has told me that people find me intimidating.  I want to be a real tough gal communicator, but this does me no good if I am unapproachable or if people are intimidated by me.  My communication goals are to 1. Soften up, 2. Listen more than I talk, and 3. Soften up!