Reflecting on International Communication and Learning in the ECF

When I originally read the assignment to reach out to international contacts within the field of early childhood studies, I was really excited and a little nervous. I was excited to finally make some contact with a professional in Butan, but save that one interaction, I was unsuccessful. Still, my experience was far from fruitless. In my investigations of several different websites, radio programs, and podcasts, I learned many things, including, but not limited to the following three inspiring insights:

• The importance of prioritizing the different aspects of child development in the right order. For example, prioritizing cognitive learning early on and lowering the importance of social and emotional learning, which are the foundation of further success in academics, as well as in the broader context of life, is a mistake.
• Through my research into the educational sytem in Finland, I realized that often times the path to educational excellence doesn't come by aiming towards academci excellence and racing to ge there as quickly as possible. Instead, putting an emphasis on equity and accessibility, giving children the space to be children, to play and develop their social and emotional selves, organically leads to academic excellence. Similarly, cooperation, rather than competition, needs to be prized. Educators, policy makers, and researchers need to feel their is motivation to work together. 
• Gender is an aspect of the equity conversation that doesn't come up very often in the conversation about education in the United States. While I know that we have gender equality in education that is massively greater here than in many parts of Africa or the Middle East, for example, I also know that there are subtle ways that boys are encouraged to excel in science and mathmatics that girls are not. I am interested to research this further and learn more about it.

One thing does seem clear in all of that I have researched, however, and that is that, while there is a lot of international communication about education going on, there is little place for students of education to step into that conversation. All that I have learned about Finland makes me beyond excited to connect with educators there and learn more, but I have been able to find an inroad to connect with them. If universities could foster partnerships in other countries, where a respected faculty member in, "Country A" could make contact with educators Country A who are willing to talk to international students in "Country B", while faculty in "Country B" could reciprocate, this would be a wonderful tool for learning and furthering education globally in the spirit of cooperation.

Thanks again for reading my thoughts this week and for the last eight weeks. Best of luck to you all!

-Lauren

Getting to Know your International Contacts- Part 3 or Nobody Wrote Back, So I'm Writing about UNESCO

Hello again!

This week I will be doing the alternative assignment of exploring UNESCO's website for information relevant to my professional goals as outlines in my application assignment this week. Without going on at length about those goals and potentially boring my audience with chit chat about me, I will say that a good portion of my goals were about achieving equity, and finding simple, accessible ways to plan educational tools that can reach parents so they may help they children. As such, my look into the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization site focused on equity primarily and educational planning.

Here is the link to the site, if you are interested : http://en.unesco.org/

Most of my study and thought about equity has been related to need to remedy lack of equality to to issues of poverty, and language and cultural barriers. As an undergraduate student I attended Mills College, a women's college in Oakland, California, and was a Women's Studies major, so I found it quite... well, almost ridiculous... that my thoughts had not immediately gone to the gap in our curriculum around gender equality. In all honesty, I have been so drawn into what I have been learning in these other areas of inequity that I didn't even think of I explored sections of UNESCO's site around equity. Here are some insights that I learned about the need for gender equity in education around the world:

1) The Dakar Framework for Action was created in 2000 with the intention of eliminating gender disparities in education by 2005 and creating gender equality by 2015. Since then, 59 out of 176 countries have achieved gender parity. (http://www.iiep.unesco.org/sites/default/files/newsletter_2010-1_en.pdf)

2) "1 in 8 girls are married by age 15 in sub-Saharan Africa & South and West Asia." (https://efareport.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/womens-education-helps-avert-child-marriage/). This statistic really floored me and reminded me of how much equity we have achieved in the US. It is easy to forget the freedoms and privileges that we have in this country when we are focusing on trying to improve the problems. This is a good reminder to be grateful while still working for change.

3) One of the most effective ways to combat the above statistic is through education. The 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report showed that education empowers girls and women and gives them the strength, confidence, and freedom to make their own decisions. The study estimates that if all girls finished primary school in these regions of Africa, the percentage of girls married before age 15 would decrease by 14%!

So how is this relevant to my professional development? Well, as early childhood professionals, it is our job to keep the well being of all children at the forefront of our minds and actions. It is easy to focus in on small problems or even big local problems and forget the bigger picture. While I don't think it is possible for me to single-handedly create equality around the globe, I can always keep in mind that there is more to learn; that there are more people to help and learn from; and to remind myself that I have enough privilege to give myself the freedom to work towards this type of change on some level each day. I am grateful for this knowledge.

Thanks for reading and checking in!

With gratitude,
Lauren

More Hand In Hand Parenting Goodies!

Ooh! I’m super excited to share the results of my foraging on the Hand in Hand Parenting website. Truly, I am a big geek about it. These tools have transformed my life and my practice and introduced me to a way of parenting that finally aligned with my values and my intuition. Not that it is always intuitive, sometimes I have to go entirely against my instinct to scream and yell and act like a toddler, myself. Parenting can be so frustrating!

Anyway, today I was challenged to follow exterior links on the site, but HIH is a pretty self-contained. So I decided to explore some parts of the site that were in line with issues of equity and barriers to equity. I was really excited to find some links to HIH Services that I was unaware of.

First off, HIH has a scholarship program. A lot of the articles and information on the site are free, but the HIH booklets, classes, consultations, retreats, and webcasts are not free. The program is need based and gives 100%, 75%, 50%, or 25% discounts depending on need. These discounts apply to all HIH services. This is an incredible resource that has been made available to many more people through this program.

I also decided to get to know the “Blog and Community” link on the website. This section of the site has links to a blog, which highlights parents and instructors stories about using the HIH tools and teaches amazing lessons about how to reframe parenting experiences. It also has a link to sign up for the Discussion Board. On the Discussion Board parents can share their story, ask questions, request support, and get responses from other parents about their ideas, as well as from certified HIH instructors and consultants. Perhaps my favorite, though, is the Find a Listening Partner link. Listening partnerships are a HIH tool meant to help parents stay sane! The idea is that parents, just like little ones, have a brain chemistry that needs connection and a feeling of being heard in order to maintain equilibrium. During listening partnerships, two parents (not typically in the same family!) get together and take turns either listening or actively talking about their parenting woes. The person listening holds the intention that the person talking is fully capable of solving their own problems, doesn’t interrupt or give advice, is affirming and kind, speaks very little, and never brings up what is said in the listening partnership. A timer is set and the first person talks for a set amount of time and then the parents switch roles. The idea is that parents get to offload their frustrations, release frustrations and at the same time release the cortisol that is clogging up their ability to think well. I swear by listening partnerships. They have saved my children emotional pain, myself emotional pain, and, on many occasions, save my marriage, too. This link helps you connect with someone else looking for a listener partner. It’s a wonderful tool!

The newsletter had only one link on it. It was one to learn more about membership to HIH. The membership option allows you to access the paid areas of the site for a small monthly fee.

This organization always enlightens me and helps me feel really connected to the heart of what early childhood work is about. It’s about the children. It allows me to further understand the brain science and basic emotional functioning of children, and give concrete tools that help support me, my clients, and my family to work as a team and grow closer through hard times. I think these tools are distinctly applicable to issues of equity in that a basic understanding of basic human emotions and the way that every child’s brain works can only lend to seeing each and every child for who they are. Additionally, HIH has made an effort to make their information and tools available to those who’s access would otherwise be blocked by issues of affordability.

Thanks for reading!

Here is the link to the site again: http://www.handinhandparenting.org/

-Lauren

Getting to Know International Contacts- Part 2

A few weeks back I managed to establish a wonderful international contact, but, alas, have not heard back when I requested further communication. With the World Forum Radio seemingly non-existent, I decided to search the Internet for a podcast about the Finish education system, which I am absolutely fascinated and inspired by.

I was able to find a podcast which was a conversation between an Australian commentator, Natasha Mitchell, and Dr. Pasi Sahlberg, former teacher and current official with the Finnish Ministry of Education, as well as the author of the book, Finnish Lessons: What Can the Rest of the World Learn from Educational Reform in Finland? This podcast was such a treat. You can listen at:

http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/what-we-can-learn-from-finnish-education/3851186

It is tough to say what was the most inspiring part of this conversation, but perhaps most applicable to this week's course emphasis on equity and excellence, there is one point that seems the most relevant. Finland has been rated as the top school system in the world for many years. When Dr. Sahlberg was asked what his secret was, he was quick to say that there was no secret. No secret sauce, so to speak. Instead, the difference is based in what, according to Sahlberg is proving to be true in most of the countries who are excelling in the field of education. It is that in Finland, they prioritize equity over all else! Sahlberg even went so far as to say that in Finland they don't really care about academic excellence. They see education as a right. It is ILLEGAL to charge anyone for an education. There are no private schools. They are against the law because a quality education is seen as an equal right of every person.

Further, children do not start their schooling until age 7. And, at that, the focus of the first few years of primary education are on well-being and happiness, and helping children who are having a hard time adjust and find their way. Additionally, children are only in school for four hours a day and they have no homework. Yet, they are not only competitive with the rest of the top countries in education, they are beating them. But this is of no concern to Dr. Sahlberg.

Competitive, he explains, is really counterproductive in education. In the 90's,  when so many countries were using high stakes testing to push teachers to push children to reach higher academic goals and using funding as a rewards or punishment for success therein, Finland turned the other direction. With a focus on community and cooperation, they realized that by rewarding a few individual schools or teachers, you make cooperation very difficult.

Teachers, he added, are very highly esteemed and extremely well-esteemed. At the University of Helsinki, where Dr. Sahlberg is a professor, there were over 2500 applicants for 120 spots in the Master's of Education program. One of those that was accepted was applying for the seventh year in a row! Sahlberg explained that by setting the bar very high at the entry to teaching programs, they have virtually eliminated the possibility of having a poor teacher. As a result, being a teacher is as highly respected as being a doctor or a lawyer. Further, teachers are trusted to develop their own curriculum and to be creative. Their is a national framework within which they work, but they are trusted to listen to their students and to let curiosity, which is highly valued in their culture, lead the way. Teachers are also trusted to do all assessments with no formal testing until exit from school at age 18-19.

Also relevant to the topics we have been studying is the way that the Finnish seem to value play. They are more interested in having children play and be happy for as long as possible and believe it is a mistake to put kids in an institutional setting to early or for too long.

Clearly, we have a lot to learn from Finland!

I have tried to contact Dr. Sahlberg. I found his email address at the University and asked him some questions about kindergarten curriculum. It was very hard to find an email address for him, so I was ecstatic when it didn't bounce back. Unfortunately, I didn't receive a reply. So I went to the Global Children's Initiative and did some exploring.

Three things I learned through the Global Children's Initiative were as follows:

1) There is an incredible program called the Saving Brains that works to protect and bolster children's brain development during the first 1000 days of their lives. It focuses on children living in poverty. I work with infants primarily and am a huge brain science geek, so I find this idea spectacular.
2) I learned that in Chile, the Center for the Developing Child has been working to bring literacy prep into Kindergartens. In Chile, Kindergarten focuses on play and getting used to working groups, much like Finland, but in first grade, the curriculum suddenly speeds way up. Children are expected to make a leap that they aren't prepared for. .This is an interesting thing to think about after all of the reading we have done about play being taken out of kindergarten. It is necessary to make the preparation fit the future program, as well.
3)In a study of affects of toxic stress on brain development, the CDC study brain activity and IQ loss and recovery amongst children in Romanian Orphanages. The conditions in Romanian Orphanages often include little to no human contact except for daily group trips to the toilet. The study found that children who were put in foster homes before the age of 2, recovered half of their IQ points, whereas children who were put in foster care after two, were virtually the same as children who remained institutionalized through their childhood. This data really reinforces the resilience of young children,  the importance of relationships in children's development, as well as the vital importance of the first few years of life.

If you are interested in reading more about these issues in Harvard Magazine, here is a link to the current issue. http://harvardmagazine.com/2009/03/the-developing-child

Thanks so much for reading.
I hope you found it as interesting as I did!

-Lauren