My Family Culture

I love the scenarios when you have to decide 3 things to take with you. It's like you have to categorize your life. So after much thought I think I have my answers to the questions below.

1. Three items you would take to represent your family culture in case of a major catastrophe.
I wish this was simple, but it isn't, but I would take:

1. My chest of family photos

2. My cell phone

3. My chest full of letters from family member

So these three items represent something special to me. The chest full of family photos has all my photos of my family in there. There are pictures of my grandparents when they were young, and all my family. What I think is so interesting is that people don't take pictures for family albums anymore, but really now for Facebook and social media. The chest with all my photos gives me memories and remind me of where I came from.

My cell phone is my favorite thing, and it holds pictures, text, music and other things that represent my family. I have videos of gatherings we have had, and pictures that will never be deleted.

Since I was about 7 years old, I have been saving letters. I remember writing letters to my friends in between classes. I also remember there was a time in my life when my mother couldn't afford a home phone, so I communicated with family members via letters in the mail. My grandma and I wrote letters all the time, nearly every week, and she would share stories with me, and I would learn a little something about my family. 

If someone told me that I could only keep one item, it would have to be the phone. The videos on it are special, and one is of my grandma on her 85th birthday. 

What I learned about this exercise is that I don't items per say that represent my family culture but I do have memories. When I was doing this exercise I was looking around my house to find items that represented my family, but all I could find was pictures. I thought that was very interesting!

When I Think of Research

Another semester is coming to close. I can almost feel graduation on my face! This semester turned out to be quite a joy. From sitting my top on my lap in airports, hotels and even Uber, I have successfully completed another course in my master journey. As my last blog assignment for EDUC 6163, I have some questions that I am going to reply to!

1. What insights have you gained about research from taking this course?
Answer: I really don't know where to start. I know when I first started this course, I remember a streak of fear coursing through my body, that even the word "Research" scared me. I believe what saved me was the awesome handouts, textbook and of course Dr. Parrish. I learned that research is a process, but it can be done, and you have a choice on the path you can take to get it there.

2. In what ways have your ideas about the nature of doing research changed?
Answer: Research is not a bad thing. Actually after planning out a research design, I actually understand research and the process a lot more, and feel that research might play a part in my future with early childhood.

3.What lessons about planning, designing and conducting research in early childhood did you learn?
Answer: The real questions is what did I not learn? I entered this course not knowing a thing about research, except that it gave answers to our questions. Now I know how to select a topic, write a hypothesis, design a study, select participants and even determine dependent and independent variables.

4. What were some of the challenges you encountered-and in what ways did you meet them?
Answer: I hated the week when we had to turn our research topics into quantitative designs. I repeat, I hated that week, and believe I even cried the Sunday it was due. (Yes I am a dramatic person!) I wanted my assignment to be perfect, but I had no idea how to turn my research topic into a quantitative design because I had selected the topic to be a qualitative design in my head. I was so frustrated that week. But I learn so much from the comments Dr. Parrish left me and I now feel more confident in the quantitative design, just please don't ask me to complete another one.

5. What are some of the ways your perceptions of an early childhood professional have been modified as a result of this course?
Answer: Not much! I never really considered myself a researcher, and still don't, but I know that is something that I am capable of doing. Humans in the early childhood profession wear many hats and have magical powers. I remember when I was a Director, and the Account specialist asked me to write down a list of things I did at work daily, so that they could try to match my pay to my worth. Well I remember the page was two and half pages long. The Account specialist came back to me and said, "Oh my, I would have never guess that you did this much? We can never pay you what your worth, but we do appreciate you and will buy you breakfast every Friday." So I guess it's safe to say that I can add "design a research study" to my list of things I can do!

I enjoyed reading all of your post and discussions, see you in our next course!

Cierra

Research Around the World

The website I choose to explore was Early Childhood Australia, there at two reasons why I chose Early Childhood Australia, the first reason is because it's the Australian equivalent to the U.S. based NAEYC and second, my job is talking about sending me there to train teachers, so I wanted to have a strong foundation before I go.

Some of the current international research topics included, The role of research in professionalizing early childhood, why play-based learning, the ethics of early childhood research and my favorite Leveling the Playing field for Kindergarten entry: Research implications for preschool early literacy instruction.

What made this explorations so amazing was how much information I learned about Australia and the different things they are doing with early childhood, for example, the program Kids Matter, which works with early childhood education and other services, to support the mental health and well-being of young children (Early Childhood Australia, n.d.). Another thing that I found that was insightful was about the importance of talking to children and using language everyday. What I learned is that by helping children talk, and by listening and responding to them,  is a critical occurrence that must happened daily both in the present and the future (Early Childhood Australia, n.d.). Children learn from us, so it's important that we set an example, and we provide opportunities for children to use language.

I really enjoyed exploring and learning from this website. Something else that I found valuable is that the website provides a lot of resources, and one of the resources was different modules, some of the modules that are available is outdoor learning, duty care for workers and the role of certified supervisor. I thought this information would be useful to me because there were topics to that interest me.

Reference:
Early Childhood Australia. (n.d.). Retrieved October 3, 2015, from http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/

Positive Effects of Research: Option 2

If I could conduct research on children on any topic, I would choose to conduct research on the effects on effective teacher and parent relationships in low-economic communities. The reason I choose this is because I want to see the benefits of a healthy relationship between the child's teacher and their parents. Often I see that teachers and parents sometimes are just going through the motion, or doing the bare minimal.  I know that there is currently research that looks at the teacher and parent relationships, but I really want to conduct this research in low-economic communities, where teacher-parent relationships are not frequently seen. My research question would be, "The benefits of teacher and child relationships in low- socio economic communities." I would choose five centers to work with for a period of three years.The reason I want to choose three years because I want to see the lasting effects and not temporary effects.

I imagine that the positive contributions is that we would see that by having effective teacher-parent relationships in low-economic communities, the children will have benefits lasting throughout grade school. I also want to see if there is an effective teacher-parent relationship, is there a change in how the teacher works with the child? I also want to research the steps both the teacher and parents took to make their relationship work. 

 

Your Personal Research Journey

I am so excited to be conducting research on a topic that I got introduced to but didn't have time to really find out a lot of information about. The topic that I chose is immigrant children and their families. My subtopics are immigrant families and language barriers, immigrant families and access to quality child care and immigrant families and unauthorized immigrants parents. I am still in the process of coming up with a question, but I am trying to decided exactly what I want to ask.

The reason I chose this topic is because I live in a city, Austin that has a increasing number of immigrant families. I the subtopics that I chose are barriers that I see immigrant families are facing. As my community strives to end the barriers, I still see that the barriers are present.

When I was going through the simulation process, I tried to think about a topic that I was really interested about. I am a person who gets bored very easily, so I wanted to choose something that was going to keep my interest. During the simulation process, I created a brainstorming web. I started out with the topic that I was interested in, which was immigrant families, and then I made a web of topics that I wanted to learn more about. This is how I created the subtopics. The next step for me is to create a central question that is linked to my topic.

Research has always been a foreign concept to me, but I am learning so much in just a couple of weeks. I use to think that reading research was so complicated, but learning the process, is really making it easy. As I move forward I continue to learn tips about research, and I am actually finding job in the process.

Final Blog Assignment

I am so sad to know that this class is almost over. This class has been my favorite thus far. When I first learned that we would be e-mailing an international contact, it was a bittersweet moment. First I didn't know where to start to find my contact, and I didn't really know how to greet my contact. I am so thankful that I got Atica and she was so patient with me. She literally answered all of my questions and responded promptly.

The three consequences of learning about the international early childhood field for my professional and personal development is...

1. Gaining insight to the trends of early child care programs in the Dominican Republic. Atica really shared stories with me, and painted vivid pictures. I thought I had an idea of what life for a child in the Dominican Republic would be like, but I was wrong. Just like American, the Dominican Republic have the rich, middle and poor class. Families who are rich have access to high quality programs, and families who are poor, not so much.

2. Another consequence of learning about the international early childhood field is realizing and respecting that the early childhood movement is happening world-wide. Often I get so stuck on America, but it's what I know, that I forget that other countries are doing what they can to provide quality care to the children.

3. The last consequence that I learned from Atica, is that education is important in the Dominican Republic but it can be difficult for children in the rural areas to gain education, just because of the distance of a school. I found this to be interesting because in America we are so used to getting around in cars, that distant usually doesn't stop of from doing what needs to be done. So I learned that what we take for granted in American, such as education, can be considered a blessing in another country.

The one goal that I have is that our community takes time to learn about issues/ trends around the world, and offer assistant when needed. I think sometimes we get so focused on our community, that we forget about the people around us. So I think it would be beneficial, if at the next EC community meeting, I bring up my conversations with Atica, just so they can be aware of what is happening around the world.

Getting to Know Your International Contacts-Part 3

This week was a busy week, but Atica and I was able to Skype each other, which was really nice. The video quality wasn't great, so we ended up chatting on Skype, but it was nice to finally meet my pen-pal.

Atica is really nice and has a lot of experience in the Early Childhood field. I asked her what is her dreams, and she actually wants to move to America. She is currently working on a team where some of her researchers live in the Dominican Republic and some of the them live in Florida, so she gets to visit Florida a lot, and she loves it there. She shared with me that she is currently looking for open positions in Florida as we speak.

Atica asked me what I wanted to do in the future, and I shared with her that as of right now, I am not sure. I have only been a National trainer for nearly 2 months, and I absolutely love my new job. I told Atica to keep my contact information, and ask me the same question in 3 years.

I asked Atica the following questions,

1. What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed where you live and work?
-Atica response: Right now we are working are research to find the link to children's school success based on their parent school success. We have just started the research and still have sometime to go. We know that there is currently research that has made the link. but of course we are linking it to children in the Dominican Republic.
2. What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?
-Atica response: I feel like anytime something is new, we have a training on it. The company is always pushing us to get more education or to attend some seminar,
3.In your opinion what makes a quality teacher?
-Atica response: A quality teacher is someone who can do the job of taking care of children effectively. This person usually has an education in early childhood, experience and knows and does what is takes to be a quality teacher.

Meeting Atica was the highlight of my week. I find it so fascinating that the love for children and how they develop is everywhere!

Cierra