Children Quote

The Audubon Nature Preschool
"Children are born naturalists. They explore the world with all of their senses, experiment in the environment, and communicate their discoveries to those around them."
Retreived from
www.audubonnaturalist.org/default.asp?page=548

Intelligence

When considering a commitment to viewing young children holistically, there should be several things used to measure and assess them.  Measuring children’s physical, social, emotional, cognitive and language skills are necessary when using a holistically approach to measure children. These measurements will help align and foster shared accountability outcomes across diverse constituencies in a community. The outcome from the data collected will have a positive effect. The effect will hopefully result in improved conditions for the children.  Measuring children physically will help to show how they may react to various activities. This can also show how they may interact with other children socially. The way children interact with other children physically and socially may have a tremendous impact on their emotional well being.  Measuring children’s cognitive and language skills are very important as well.  Through measuring children’s cognitive skills, a person is measuring their mental processes of perception, memory, judgment, and reasoning, as contrasted with emotional and volitional processes. Language skills will measure the children’s communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols. 

In Canada, children are measured and assessed using an early development instrument, EDI. An EDI is a 104- item questionnaire given to and filled out by Kindergarten teachers on each student in their classrooms. It is generally given during the spring of the school year. The questionnaire requires approximately 20 minutes per student to complete. The teachers are generally given a stipend or release time for EDI related activities. The EDI measures five developmental areas of children in kindergarten. These areas are 1) physical health and well being, 2) emotional maturity, 3) social competence, 4) language and cognitive development and 5) communication skills and general knowledge. The EDI identifies the percentage of children who are vulnerable by developmental domain and compares this information by target communities such as cities, and school districts. Generally the outcomes of the EDI’s are positive which results in increased community awareness of the importance of childhood development as well as changes to early childhood policies and strategies of funding.

Retrieved from www.earlyyearsinstitute.org/data/EDI%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

Child Poverty

Every human being should have the opportunity to make a better life for themselves. Unfortunately, too many children in the world today grow up without this chance, because they are denied their basic right to attend school. A way to end world poverty as we know it requires everyone to empower themselves to make positive choices and provide for themselves and their families. Mexico is the largest country in the world to deal with child poverty. Reasons for child poverty are individual condition, geography and political economy. To certain circumstances and characteristics of poor people in Mexico they lack the skills, intelligence, health and education to make them. Due to the lack of the communication and transportation, the government is unable to provide the country with potable water, affordable food, primary health care, and education because of the geographic. The economy itself is not accurate because the government doesn’t carry out enough policies to encourage successful development, therefore they cannot repay nor do loans.

As a child my husband dealt with poverty. My husband was raised with four younger siblings, making him the oldest with a single parent mother. My husband and his family grew up in a poor house with no heat and barely enough light in order to survive. His mother was on welfare getting about $600.00 a month raising five children on her own. As a child, my husband wore the same clothes at least twice each week, but didn’t take anything for granted including life. By the age of 11, he decided to work on a farm in order to help his mother. As he got older he found out that money was the key to everything (housing, clothes, food, shoes, etc.) By the age of 21, my husband mother died. My husband took it upon himself to raise his siblings. He went to school and worked 2 jobs to provide them a better life. To this day all four siblings graduated from high school. My husband passion, motivation and wisdom only made him stronger. Dealing with poverty he learned to appreciate life, because he knew his greatness would come if he believes.

Retrieved from www.eslbee.com/causes_of_poverty_in_mexico.htm

Retrieved from www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_chi_pov-economy-child-po...

NAEYC and DEC codes of ethics

Section I

National Association for the Education of Young Children

 Ethical Responsibilities to Children Ideals

I-1.1—To be familiar with the knowledge base of early childhood care and education and to stay informed through continuing education and training.

To stay informed on current issues relating to early childhood education through the means of articles, collaborating with colleagues and enhancing my career as I develop as an educator.

Section III

Ethical Responsibilities to Colleagues

I-3A.2—To share resources with co-workers, collaborating to ensure that the best possible early childhood care and education program is provided.

As an educator I will inform and collaborate with co-workers of resources available to foster children’s learning.

The Code of Ethics of the Division for Early Childhood (DEC)

Professional and Interpersonal Behavior

6. We shall build relationships with individual children and families while individualizing the curricula and learning environments to facilitate young children’s development and learning.

As an educator I will build a one to one relationship with the parent and child and accommodate to the needs of the child succeeding.