The program where I am doing my internship is also the facility where I work.  It is the Grand Valley Center for Family Learning (big name for a school for small children), located in Parachute, Colorado.  The school has three preschool classrooms, two Head Start classrooms (one is an all-day program for four-year olds), three kindergarten classrooms, and also is the location of our school district's teen parent program which includes a nursery for the children of the teens in the program.

For this module, I spoke with and observed two different individuals.  The first person is a kindergarten teacher who teaches one of our two full-day programs.  She has been teaching for over 25 years and really enjoys teaching kindergarten.  The other individual is the special education teacher for our building.  It was a joy to watch both of these teachers in action and they showed great examples of teaching young children.

In the kindergarten classroom, I observed different groups of children during literacy time.  The first observation was a boy reading with the teacher on his own.  He read the words fairly easily and did not require much support from the teacher.  After reading the book, the teacher asked him what the book was about and he could not answer any questions about the book he had just read.  The teacher showed him each page and asked him what happened on that page - he had no comprehension over what he just read.  The teacher then talked with him about how reading is more than just saying the words on the page.  In order to read you must be able to re-tell what story you just read.  After my observation, I talked with the teacher about this experience and I was surprised that this boy had no idea what he had just read even though he read the book quite well.  She said that this has been struggle with this particular boy all year.  He can read words but cannot recall anything that he read.  She has worked with him on strategies but he still struggles with comprehension.  As an observer, I would have guessed by the way he easily read the words on the pages that he could comprehend the story.  The insight that I gained from this experience is that just because a child can read it does not mean that they will remember or be able to re-tell what they just read.  This is just as important as learning to read because if you do not comprehend what you read, what is the purpose of reading.

In the observation of the special education teacher, I observed her working one on one with a little boy who is diagnosed with ADHD.  To say that this little boy is active would be an understatement!  I really enjoyed this observation and how engaged she kept him even though he was all over the place most of the time.  He has only been enrolled at our school for about 1 month and he is doing wonderful.  After my observation, I spoke with the special education teacher and she said that when he arrived at our school he only knew 2 letters of the alphabet and now he knows 9.  During my observation, she read a book to him called "Truckery Rhymes" that takes familiar nursery rhymes and changes the words to different types of trucks.  She had only read this book to him one time and he could repeat almost every nursery rhyme in the book.  He pointed to words and asked what the word said and was really engaged in the book.  One conversation that stands out to me between the boy and the teacher was about his grandma.  He talked about how he missed his grandma and how she looked like the teacher.  This brought me to realize how important it really is to connect with the children in our care.  I think that this little boy is doing so well because he has someone teaching him that really cares about him and that he relates to someone important in his life.  This made me realize how important the relationships we form with the children in our care are and what an impact it can have in their lives.  I always knew that this was important but hearing how much he has grown in the short time he has been here and seeing how he reacted with this teacher made me realize just how important this is.

To add to the stress of trying to figure out the whole blogging thing, my computer crashed and I had to order a new hard drive.  Got the new hard drive and finally got most of my programs re-installed.  I am not sure I am loving technology right now!!  I can attest to the drawbacks of living in a rural area and working with technology.  Nobody around here sells computer parts and everything has to be ordered so I was at the mercy of the delivery trucks. Thank goodness they came through!

Interview

I am looking at focusing my research paper on the trickle down of academics in early childhood education.  I interviewed two individuals that have over 25 years of experience in the field of early childhood.  During their duration they have seen many changes in the academic expectations of young children and question the ability of the children's learning - are they learning or are they memorizing.  They both agreed that this is a very good topic to focus on since there seems to be a return of DAP questioning.  Some of the issues commonly encountered with this topic are questioning whether we are forcing young children to grow up too fast, are these activities really developmentally appropriate, and are we really focusing on their Zone of Proximal Development.  Some areas of advocacy related to this topic include the importance of all day kindergarten and refining goals and objectives based on the standards set forth.  There is also a focus to make sure that preschool remains child directed more than teacher directed.  Some concerns that both individuals expressed are if we are trying to teach children this information too early does it stay with them or do they forget it and have to be re-instructed on the same topics year after year and they also are worried about how this affects the children.  By teaching them too much too soon are we stressing them out (or making them become overwhelmed).  There are also concerns as to how this affects children if they do not understand the information being presented to them - do they shut down or do they get upset and feel as though they are a failure.

Questions I have for my classmates are:

1. How do you feel about trickle-down academics?
2. What do you remember about your early childhood experiences when you started school?
3. What do you expect from children in your early childhood classes?

Hi everyone!  This is my first attempt at blogging.  Looking forward to seeing everyone's blog.  Good luck to all!