Sharing Web Resources- Week 6

I have been following the Harlem Children’s Zone organization for the last four weeks. During this time frame, I have learned a great deal of information pertaining to the early childhood field. As I clicked on the tab titled “Early Childhood,” I came across a section titled “Harlem Gems.” I knew that this early childhood organization was dedicated in helping the children and families in Harlem but I did not know that they had a program specifically designed to the early childhood field called Harlem Gems.

Harlem Gems is an all-day pre-kindergarten program that gets children ready to enter kindergarten. Classes have a 4:1 child-to-adult ratio, teach English, Spanish and French, and run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. HCZ runs three pre-kindergarten sites, serving 200 children. I found this to be quite remarkable. The fact that they have professionals who are bilingual in Spanish and French is very impressive. I am a little fluent in Spanish but hope to take a language course to refresh what I already know and to expand on that as it will benefit not only me but my students and their families.

I did sign up to receive newsletters through this website but I have not received any recent news lately. Immediately, I went to the search engine and typed in “equity.” A link popped up titled “Workshop Descriptions” and I clicked on it. Upon reading the article, I found that it features four workshop series, one of which includes engaging the community and assessing needs. It went into depth about how developing a strong and ongoing relationship with the community is critical to ensure an initiative is addressing needs that are important to the community, that the initiative evolves as the community does, and that community leaders and adults understand the role they need to play as role models for young people as well as how the surrounding environment strongly affects children’s growth and development. This information really did add to my understanding of equity and excellence in early care and education. I learned this week that not many families are able to access education for their children. At least this organization is involving the community in deciding what needs need to be met and how to exactly go by doing that.

Other insights about issues and trends in the early childhood field that I gained this week from exploring this website are:

• Strong leadership at multiple levels forms the lynchpin of a successful initiative.

• A strong commitment to setting, measuring, and analyzing both intermediate metrics and long-term intended impact is critical to ensure that a neighborhood-based initiative can continuously assess and modify programs and practices to achieve its mission and to sustain committed high level funders.

• Collaborations with other organizations can be an effective and efficient way to bring together services and expertise for families you serve.

References:

Harlem Children’s Zone (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hcz.org/  

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

For this week’s blog, I was so taken aback by the issues related to excellence and equity in the early childhood field that I wanted to share with my colleagues what I have learned, in addition to the insights I gained about early childhood systems around the globe from Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website (http://developingchild.harvard.edu/initiatives/global_initiative/).

In an article titled “Early childhood care and education: Worldwide challenges and progress,” many developing countries are now focusing their attention to “early” childhood education of children from birth to age four. Apparently, there is a huge debate on where the brink of education begins for a child. According to this article, it is believed that many “researchers claim that growth and development starts at birth or even during the prenatal period” (Teachers College, Columbia University, 2009). Regardless if this is true or not, learning during the early years is critical for any child in every country. It is even revealed that the quality of such programs must be beneficial for children. There are not only inequities in the early childhood field in America but also in countries such as Zambia.

After thoroughly exploring the Harvard University’s “Global Children’s Initiative” website, three insights I gained about early childhood systems around the globe are as followed:

• Out of all three of the domains that the Global Children’s Initiative has begun to build a portfolio of activities for, each of these domains is being guided by a designated faculty working group that will facilitate continuing cross-disciplinary collaboration.

• International discussions of child-related policies and practices often fail to make the vital connection between child survival, one of the developing world’s most pressing issues, and child development, an equally important prerequisite for productive and harmonious societies.

• The Global Children’s Initiative is the centerpiece of the Center on the Developing Child’s global child health and development agenda.

References:

Teachers College, Columbia University. (2009). Early childhood care and education: Worlwide challenges and progress. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 11, 1–44. Retrieved from http://www.tc.columbia.edu/cice/Issues/11.00/PDFs/11_Complete_Issue.pdf