When I think of early childhood education, I always think of it in my worldview and how it affects me on my level... on my home turf.  I think that we are all very insular in our thinking of early childhood development and don't tend to really consider very far outside of our own programs.  I remember reading on one of our assigned websites to view a statistic about how many children have access to secondary education and the percentage was so low that I, for a moment, felt that it had to be incorrect.  I then realized that if that statistic had only included the United States, the percentage would have been very high.  However, the statistic was WORLD WIDE.  I rarely consider things on a world wide level.  Learning about early childhood education in the world taught me:
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1. That I am really very small and the world is very large.  My day and my life is such a tiny little sliver of what goes on in the world.  My program and the children in my program are just one little, very tiny, piece of early childhood education across the world.  We are not the entire world; we are just a small part of it.

 

 

 

2. That not all programs around the world look like mine.  Not all classrooms look like the classrooms that I picture in my head.  Not all children have supplies and shiny, pretty classrooms.  Many children never even get to see the inside of a traditional, United States cookie cutter type classroom.  I feel that I had never before even considered that education is not just a given around the world like it is here.  It is not a requirement or a right, like it is here.

I have always pictured this...

 

 

But not this...

 

3.  Something must be done.  Early childhood development programs have been shown to be the fundamental building block to future success.  We must work to ensure that every single child has access to this building block to success.  Early childhood education programs should be a right.  It should be a requirement.  It should be something that every single child has access to without question.  This means every single child in the WORLD.  We must work to see that this happens.

 

 

 

My goal is to start to make the steps and to put myself in the position to start working to make this a right and a possibility for every single child born to this world.

 

 

     This week, I looked into the UNESCO website to get a look at who they are and what they do.  I literally knew nothing about this organization, so I felt that I needed to start at the very beginning.  I didn't even know what the acronym stood for.  I learned this week that UNESCO is the United Nations Organization for Education, Science, and Culture.  The headquarters for this organization is located in Paris and there are fifty field offices around the world.  In the USA, there is an office in New York. 
     UNESCO does many different things for many different sectors involving education, science, and culture.  However, this organization also addresses early childhood care and education specifically.  UNESCO advocates for early childhood programs and works to ensure a holistic program that addresses development, health, nutrition, security, and learning.  It's goal is to work to see that all young children have the ability to develop to their fullest potential. 
     UNESCO works to gain access and equity in early childhood programs by expanding and improving early childhood programs especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged populations of children.  UNESCO works worldwide to first help the countries recognize the importance of early childhood education, and then to mobilize the resources to provide early childhood education.  UNESCO's stance is that all countries should view early childhood education as part of a basic education.  The greatest difficulty is not convincing countries of this, but in mobilizing the resources to provide it.
     We often see the way that early childhood education works in our country, but seldom think of how it is provided in other countries.  The UNESCO site helps one to get a worldwide picture of early childhood education.  There is even a calendar of events that gives dates and locations for meetings and conferences regarding early childhood education all across the world.

     I have spent the last few weeks looking deeper into the NAEYC website.  I still haven't received a newsletter from the organization, even though I have signed up for it several times.  I spent some time this week looking into the links on the NAEYC website that take me to outside places.  I think that my favorite link is the one that helps me to find accredited programs.  This is such a great tool, especially for parents.  It can help them to find programs that they can be sure follow certain expectations and guidelines.
     I mentioned before that although my program is NAEYC accredited, I really didn't fully know what that meant to me or to my families.  I felt that exploring the NAEYC website could give me a better knowledge of this and that it would help me, not only for this class, but for my job also.
     While exploring the site this week, I did find information that helped me in both areas.  NAEYC has 10 standards and accreditation criteria that must be met by all programs that wish to be NAEYC accredited programs.  These 10 standards were updated in 2006 to not only address programs serving children birth though kindergarten, but also to make sure that standards were more evidence based on what early childhood programs need to be in order to be most effective.  Reading through all of this really helped me to make a connection of equity and excellence and how the NAEYC standards help to ensure both.  The 10 standards address 10 different areas: relationships, curriculum, teaching, assessment of child progress, health, teachers, families, community relationships, physical environment, leadership and management.  Reading through these helped me to understand that if all programs started following standards such as these, it could create a united force that would all be on the same page of providing equity and excellence to children.  These standards and criteria help to ensure best practices in our field.