GETTING TO KNOW MY INTERNATIONAL CONTACT part 3

I feel extremely blessed to have the two professionals I have on board during this course. Their wealth of  experience and knowledge shared with me and in turn the class have definitely added to what we have. Jeannie Farr has shared a lot of insights from Hawaii and Stella Edemekong has made us known what is obtainable from Nigeria. 

Jeannie and Her very strong support

Jeannie Farr shares her aspiration from Hawaii:    

What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed in Hawaii ?

 There is great need for funding and training in my area.  Currently there is focus on sustainability.  Hawaii has begun to focus on building a strong infrastructure, investing in a data system and research to support a comprehensive early childhood system.  They are also working on embedding prekindergarten into the school funding formula to increase and support quality and access to those services.  Hawaii is also working towards creating a greater flexibility of funding streams to support seamless services by blending federal and state funding.  With these plans comes a need for efficiency, which is another area of focus, reducing administrative costs and ensuring equitable distribution of programs and services. 

What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

Currently in my area we just opened the Center for Early Education and Development, a grant funded Center for Early Education and Development (CEED) to provide education and training to early educators utilizing advanced technology, it now serves as a community hub as part of the new early learning system being designed by the state.  The center provides opportunities for educators to improve their levels of education and offers job-embedded training that relates to best practices in the field of early education.  The CEED provides national resources and technology to assist early educators in expanding their knowledge and expertise in providing quality learning opportunities for children.  CEED is the only facility in the islands that is specifically designed for early education.  It provides technology such as closed-circuit demonstration observing and coaching, video conferencing, web-based course/resources to ensure instructional opportunities are available for working professionals.  A demonstration Pre-K Classroom, located on the first floor of the facility, is designed to enable student teachers and researchers, whether located on campus or on a neighbor island, to observe best practices in action. The classroom was designed to support job-embedded professional development for future teachers. At the same time, the classroom provides learning experiences for up to 24 pre-kindergarten students.  The Adult Training Room upstairs has a large meeting space that can be divided into two smaller rooms to suit program and community.

What are some of your professional goals? 

My current goal is to complete my Masters in Early Childhood Studies with a Specialization in Administration, Management, and Leadership.  I hope to become a Director of a program and in the near future an Instructor at a nearby Community College, impressing upon Adult Learners my love for Early Childhood Education.

What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges? 

My hope for Early Childhood is equity for children, families, and professionals.   It is time that the field be recognized as a Profession, and Early Educators as a Specialized field of Educators.  My hope is that we can learn, teach, and play on equal playing fields as our education counterparts.  It is my dream to have funding that exceeds our need and quality infrastructure. 

 

Star Edemekong

Stella Edemekong is a choice I made because I seek for her when it looks like I am loosing grip of what I should know and ought to be doing as an early childhood professional. I am sure that interaction with her would get fired up. I wish that the field of education would have multiples of her and sincerely desire to be one of them.. I have learned a lot from her especially because her resources and line of thoughts are most applicable to my situations ( we both reside and work in Port Harcourt, Nigeria).  I project myself in the future as a better output with her input in my life. I hope that colleagues can refer to me like that too.
 Here is our line of conversation,


What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed where you live and work?

The major issues regarding quality and Early Childhood professionals in where my environment is:

Ø  Lack of professionally trained hands to manage the Early Childhood program. If I may use about three schools within my environment as example, the three most populated offering early childhood education, here is an estimated ratio of trained to untrained teachers: in one of the schools we have 9:25; in a second one we have 1:8; and yet in the third one we have 6:26. The professionally trained among them are not even specialists in the field of early childhood education except three in all the schools. Can this situation promote quality early childhood education?

Ø  No training institutions readily available to prepare willing workers for the job. If we had access to training institutions within our area, in-service trainings would have helped interested teachers. If they get relevant training then the quality of their work will invariably improve.  

Ø  Few of the teachers have undergone a crash training program in Montessori Education and are half-baked. When peopled who are just certified as Montessori teachers, who have not been trained for more than a month, turn up to train others who are not even professionally trained teachers, for a period of one or two week and get them to read up and write the test, the outcome can only be imagined. Yet, this is the state of the majority of the early childhood teachers in my area. Any reason to wonder why the quality of the program is so poor?

Ø  Lack of interest in self-motivated professional development for some of the workers while a few that are interested have challenges in funding such training programs. Most of the graduates that come into the program use it as a stepping stone to getting jobs in their choice career later. It is a means to earn a living so there is no interest in self motivated professional development. They just do what they can to make ends meet till a more desirable job comes up.

Ø  For the few hands that are professionally qualified to handle early childhood programs, the salary is so meager that they are discouraged and will head on to source for more lucrative business. Most school owners are not in the profession and they see early childhood education as a business venture, so they employ cheap labour instead of paying the few available professionals to run the schools for them. This too affects the quality of their output. No one can give what he does not have to others.

What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

Presently, there is no training facility within my environment which means there is room for one to be established. There are more than ten (10) early childhood learning centres within my area which would benefit from or serve as a ready market for this training program. We cannot also boast of a functional resource centre for this purpose even within the entire state. If the quality of early childhood education must improve, then we need to have a well trained/equipped workforce that will manage available facilities optimally.

What are some of your professional goals?

Some of my professional goals especially regarding early childhood educational are:

ü  To take a professional program that will prepare me as a trainer to handle early childhood training ;

ü  To seek affiliation with a professional institution that will handle training programs in early childhood education as distant learning program for interested teachers in my area;

ü  To get a relevant early childhood standard curriculum (from a country where it is a reliable practice), compare that to what we have been working with so far to detect  the weakness/strength of what we’ve been working with and adapt it for our environment where necessary, then make this same available for EC centres in my area.

ü  To also create the awareness that anybody cannot be a teacher especially of the early childhood school.

What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges?

My professional hopes? I do hope that more school owners will take this course with Walden University. That will create the awareness among them that early childhood education is more than a business venture; that there is need to employ professionally trained hands to work with the young learners to lay a solid educational foundation that will lead to self motivated/reliant learners tomorrow.

My dreams: That professional training will be within reach of interested and willing labour force. I can establish a dynamic resource centre that will make relevant resource materials readily available for use by interested group.

The major challenge is financial constraints to take off training costs.   

 The conclusion of each is that funding is greatest challenge to achieving their dreams, and sincerely, I share that with both of them.