I did my presentation last week and felt that I received very good responses overall.  I was pleased with how it all turned out and actually ended up having more people at my presentation than I planned on.  I had planned to have only 2 kindergarten teachers present but all 7 K-1 teachers were at the building so the other 5 came and joined in the presentation.  Four of the teachers are new to our building so they enjoyed hearing the information about how important it was to provide children with time to explore their learning instead of the skill and drill techniques that are often used today. 

I want to thank my classmates and our professor for all of your support during this course.  This course seemed much more difficult than 411 and the challenge was much easier with the support from all of you as well as my mentor.  Good luck to everyone and look forward to seeing some of you at graduation!

As we prepare to present our AAP's, I am still feeling a little nervous about just presenting my topic.  I have an added concern because of the changes that our district just announced where they will be grouping all K-1 classes together.  This is a concern because my long term goal is to implement 2 hours of choice time in the full-day kindergarten classes.  I am not sure as to how this will be received because of the addition of first grade to this mix.  One question that I do have is how are you planning your presentation?  Are you going to present to everyone (all 5) at the same time or break them up in groups that may need different information (parents/community members)?

I feel that I have a good amount of information and look forward to finishing my presentation and preparing fact sheets for my audience members.  The best resources that I have found are articles by David Elkind and information on the NAEYC website.  I also found a great resource about the importance of play in kindergarten entitled "The Crisis in Kindergarten."

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."   This quote by Albert Einstein is inspirational for me when advocating for young children because if we do not stand up for what is right for young children the world will be a dangerous place.

What inspires and excites you most about your advocacy plan and being an advocate?

What excites me and inspires me the most is the fact that I am advocating for what I feel, based on research, is best practice for young children.  I feel that advocating for young children will have an impact not only on their lives but on our lives as we grow older.  If we do not stand up and provide the best education for these young children and advocate for what is best for them and their families, we will suffer in the end.  I am excited about making positive impacts in the lives of children with the changes that I am working on getting implemented for their educational future. 

What challenges and/or anxieties do you feel related to engaging in the advocacy efforts you have targeted?

One anxiety/challenge that I have regarding my advocacy efforts is making sure that I reach my target audience and find them supportive of my ideas.  I am concerned about providing them enough education about the impact of push-down or trickle-down academics on young children and helping them understand the negative impacts that it can have on a child's educational career.  Another anxiety that I have is my presentation.  I did present a brief overview of my plan to our advisory board but am still a little nervous about the big presentation and how it will be received.

What do you believe will be most effective in helping you overcome any challenging emotions you may be feeling with regard to presenting and implementing your Advocacy Action Plan?

I believe that presenting my plan to a smaller group of peers before my main presentation will help alleviate some emotions that I have regarding my presentation.  As far as implementing, I feel that by making the steps small and measurable I will be more successful so I need to be sure to have the steps laid out and easy for all to understand.

How can you encourage others in their advocacy efforts, and how can others encourage you?

I can encourage others by showing them that it is possible and that while there is a lot of work required, it is important to stand up for what you know and feel is right.  I think that just by seeing someone complete a plan and have some success with it, this would encourage others.  For others to encourage me I would like to hear honest feed back about my plan and what they feel would be beneficial changes to make sure it is a workable plan.

As this class comes to an end I am breathing a big sigh.  I have really enjoyed this class and have gained a great amount of knowledge from the discussions, blogs, and my research paper.  This was a challenging course but it was worth all the work.  I feel that I am better prepared to go out and advocate for our young children.  I hope to try and teach others of the crucial roles that early childhood educators have and to try and preserve some of the developmentally appropriate curriculum for them.  Children today face many struggles and they may not have the family support that some of us had growing up for a variety of reasons.  They need to know that there are people out there that will work for what is best for them and are willing to stand up and fight for their rights.

I wish everyone well in their future.  It was great to have so many supportive classmates going through the same struggles that I was.  You were all great supporters and I know that you will all be great advocates for the children whose lives you touch.  Good luck to everyone in the future!  Congratulations on getting one step closer to graduation.

Family Interviews

Since I am doing my research paper on trickle-down academics (pushing education on younger children), I spoke with two different parents who have children that could go to kindergarten next year to ask their feelings on the reasons why they are making the decisions they are about kindergarten for their child.

The first parent has a daughter who will be five on September 1.  Our school district has a cut-off date for kindergarten as August 15.  Her daughter is academically ready for kindergarten and she has attended two years of preschool.  She has decided to keep her in preschool for another year because she herself is a teacher and has seen the impact that academics has on children at many levels.  Currently she teaches kindergarten but in the past has taught 8th grade, 3rd grade, and 1st grade.  She based her decision on the social readiness and the fact that as children get older, the age difference really starts to show in their maturity level as well as their academic skills.  She stated that the children that are behind in kindergarten are the same ones that are behind in 3rd grade and the same ones that are behind in 8th grade.  She wants to make sure her child succeeds in school and knows the importance of giving her time to grow and learn.

The other parent I talked to has a daughter who will be five on August 27.  This parent has decided to push to get her daughter in kindergarten next year.  She feels that it would be easier on her as she is a working parent and would like the benefits of placing her in the all day program.  While I feel that this child is academically ready, I wonder if the parent is just looking at the "day care" benefits; she won't have to bring her to school and will have somewhere to keep her all day.  She has been working with her daughter at home to get her ready for kindergarten and her daughter is very smart. 

I wonder why some parents want to be in such a hurry for their child to grow up.  They don't realize how fast the time goes as their child grows and before long they will be old enough to move out of the house and go to college.  While I don't think that the second child will struggle in kindergarten, I wish I could convince the parent that it is just as important to allow her time to grow and develop socially and emotionally.  I encourage all of my parents to visit kindergarten classrooms so that they have the opportunity to see how academic kindergarten is now compared to when they went to school.

Observation #3

Over the last 2 weeks, I have had many conversations with my internship supervisor about her feelings on the possibility of implementing a junior kindergarten.  This is something that she is very interested in and would love to get the principal on board to start in our school.  There are several children who are ready for more than a typical 3-5 year old preschool classroom but not ready for the academics of kindergarten.  She also feels that this would be a great solution to parents who struggle with waiting another year to put their child in kindergarten. 

We have been offered an opportunity to pilot a kindergarten program using Teaching Strategies Gold and she thinks that this would be a great opportunity to implement that program.  The structure would be much less stressful on the children than the current kindergarten curriculum.  I look forward to seeing how this process goes and if it proves to be implemented successfully.  I hope it does because it would be a great benefit to the children.

Mrs. Walton feels that this would be a great service to provide for children who are not proficient in English, children who are just not developmentally ready for kindergarten, and for children who are not old enough for kindergarten but are more advanced in their thinking.  She feels that this would provide a great balance of children so that the class did not just end up being the lower level children without role models.

I was also able to spend time with two kindergarten teachers who had breaks between parent/teacher conferences.  They were sharing their feelings about the parents that do not come to conferences and how it relates to how their children are doing in school.  They both felt that there is a direct correlation between lack of parental involvement and the child's success in school.  Every year the children who struggle in kindergarten seem to be from families that lack the time or abilities to support their child in school.  They would like to see some changes to this.  They were both pleasantly surprised by the number of parents who have been attending a reading workshop that is being offered at our school at night.  They hope that some of these programs can help make positive changes in the lives of the children attending our school. 

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.