A Journey at Childcare

Virtual Tour

Leveraging Leadership

Leaders!

I can’t believe that we are at the last week of the last course of our Master’s Program. This course has empowered my leadership skills and improved my confidence in making decisions and team building. I was a person who had never thought of seeing myself as a leader, but now, I believe I can say “YES” to the new challenges.

Leaders Say Yes!

In my opinion, saying “YES” opens new opportunities in everyone’s’ life and helps them go beyond their boundaries. As Michael Hogan stated, “Saying ‘yes’ begins things. Saying ‘yes’ is how things grow… An attitude of ‘yes’ is how you will be able to go forward in these uncertain times” (as cited in Kouzes & Posner, 2010). According to this article, there are ten truths about leadership:

I agree with the authors that taking responsibility of your own life is an important part of leadership. “… [Leadership] is about seeing a problem and accepting personal responsibility for doing something about it” (Kouzes & Posner, 2010). This article narrated the leadership’s journey of Ivana Sendecka which could be found in this TEDx video.

 
Leading for Succession: Building Leadership Capacity

The role of leadership in the area of early childhood education is critical, they can inspire educators, children, families, communities, and policy makers to improve the quality of the education. According to Rodd (2013), there is lack of encouragement for early childhood educators to take leadership roles mainly because the amount of responsibilities and complexities associated with this role. It is very important to invest in “leadership recruitment”, “capacity-building” and “succession planning” in order to create a pool of diverse leaders who can take the lead in “different facets and various contexts of leadership”. Holistic leadership contains the following characteristics:

It is also vital for the leaders to have expertise and information about child development, pedagogy, legal issues, family and community relationship to provide a high quality services (Rodd, 2013). Providing leadership training for educators could empower them to be a leader, develop their skills, and increase the quality of staffing and services. “Tailored training opportunities help individuals to transition from naive to better-evolved conceptions of leadership” (Rodd, 2013).

Today’s leaders should prepare the next generation of leaders to replace them in future. This could make the leadership training even more critical for the new generation of educators. For example, in my workplace, we have an organizational structure to train the staff for the leadership opportunity. An Executive Director is the first person who leads two supervisors. Supervisors are the main contact between educators, families, and Executive director. Each age group also has a facilitator who works 3 hours per week in the office to collaborate with the supervisors for planning and programming which could help them develop leadership skill. I think this structure not only helps develop some leaders for future, but also creates more opportunities for people to experience leadership. “Distributed leadership can encourage early childhood educators to gain broader experience and perspectives that shift them from a management and positional perspective to a distributed and more holistic conception about leadership”(Rodd, 2013, p.262).

References:

Kouzes, J. M., & Posner, B. Z. (2010). The truth about leadership: The no-fads, heart-of-thematter facts you need to know. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Rodd, Jillian (2013). Leadership in early childhood : the pathway to professionalism (4th ed). Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, N.S.W

Culminating response paper

 My opinion about the assessment for children who are English language learners has been affected during this semester. At the beginning, I hardly accepted having the child to be assessed because of my belief about each child’s uniqueness. Getting to know assessment and the ways that we can use them to promote children’s learning help me realize the benefits of the appropriate assessments. As Siegel (2013) stated, “The use of appropriate instruments to assess learning and plan future instruction is particularly essential for students whose first language is not English, because without special planning, the opportunity to learn might be absent” (p.2).

What is Assessment in Early Childhood?

• What does “Assessment” mean in terms of being an educator?
• Do we make meaning about “the whole child” by questioning and/or observing children?
• Do we respect individualism by assessing children?
• What kind of assessment tools would be more beneficial for both children and educators to be used?
• What does assessment do in terms of being a child?
• Does the whole child and the family being considered in the assessment?
• Does it help children to get to know their interests and needs?

I have begun my journey in this course by those questions from both educators and children’s point of views. I believe assessment might standardize the way that children were expected to learn and could give them some guideline to improve themselves. On the other hand, it is not fair to assess everyone in a same way. Having pre-written assessment test at the center that I work made me think of the children who do not fit in the category of their own age. Specially, I could see the difference for children who are English learners. As Blandford and Knowles (2012) stated, “Each child is unique and the ongoing process of collecting evidence of learning, both formally and informally can be a challenge task for the practitioners” (P.491).

Furthermore, the cultural difference plays a role in the children behaviors as well. For instance, some parents pay more attention to tangible outcome of learning. This has effect on their expectation and would change the dynamic of learning toward that. In addition, we had some discussion about “DAP” last semester which made me really think about assessment practices and if it is the best practice. As Paki &Caulcutt (2011) stated, “Many have criticized DAP by questioning the ethnocentricity in the assessments' view of what is typical child development” (p. 37).

Reading this course articles have changed my negative perspective of assessment. As Blandford and Knowles (2012) described, “In practice, AFL [Assessment For Learning] means children and practitioners working together to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there” (p.488). I believe, in the situation of being an educator, not a specialist, some children may need more time to transfer to the next developmental stage, so the timing should be used as sign to investigate and assess the child’s development. The result of assessment might be/not be applicable for individual. According to Michael-Luna & Heimer (2012), “Creative Curriculum also supports a range of teaching approaches,…, offers advice for how to adapt instruction to different types of learners, including those with special needs, gifted children, and second language learners. [it] guides teachers to use naturalistic forms of assessment which directly contribute to supporting individual learning as well as to program evaluation” (p.125). We also know, the best result would be found when the family and the educators work together to foster children’s learning.

Teacher’s role

I have been thinking of the role of the teacher to include everyone in the room. By respecting different languages and the cultures, teachers can use the variety of the tools to assess children. It also is crucial for the teachers to have knowledge about different ways of learning, so that they can have the variety of materials to help children develop their skills. Siegel (2013) emphasized, “Formative assessment is critical for teachers to communicate about and foster learning. Using assessment data to provide feedback to students and adapt instruction provides substantial effects in student learning” (p.2).

I thought of my topic and specifically about the word “Language” and the benefits of the documentation that I had been exposed to. The following sentence made me rethink about the correlation between a 100 language and the children from around the world who talk in the other language and have different cultures and values to express themselves: “Multiple languages can facilitate communication between multiple groups, from children, to parents, to political and other ‘stakeholders’” (Alcock, 2000).

I think by respecting other languages and cultures, we provide the accepting environment to children to express themselves in the variety of ways. For instance, in my workplace, we have an international twin who play together and talk in their own language. Some educators asked the supervisor to separate the children, so that they learn English faster. Others talked about their observations and the way that the twin help and support each other for creating new art and exploring their environment. We decided to have them both in our room to support them. I believe both “a hundred language”, and talking in different language can facilitate communication between multiple groups.

Teacher’s knowledge

In addition, I believe, teachers need to promote their knowledge about the assessment for all the children. They can use the assessment to enhance children’s learning and find their interests and needs. As I have seen in my workplace, some teachers assess children only to measure performance, and they usually use the same methods for everyone. But Siegel (2013) believed, “Flexibility in selecting and administering a variety of assessment instruments and making time adjustments for students to complete the assessment are important aspects” (p.4).

How to Assess the ELL?

In my opinion, not knowing English has effect on most of the skills. As I talked with my colleagues, infants and toddlers generally don’t communicate verbally, so ELL child can easily play and imitate other children (parallel play). “Observing and imitating peers, beginning to play “follow the peer” games, and observing and playing briefly with peers” are the indicators of the “social interest” (ELECT, 2007, p. 35). On the other hand, older children have more difficulties to adopt to the new environment and socialized, as language becomes more dominant in the social skills. For ELL child, who just join the English environment, the language become barrier to communicate effectively. “Not speaking the same language is a barrier to inclusion” (Hardacre & Dumais, 2013, p. 485).

Rock & Stenner (2005) mentioned, “ ‘Interpersonal skills’ rates the child’s behavior in forming and maintaining friendships; getting along with people who are different; helping and comforting other children; expressing feelings, ideas, and opinions in positive ways; and being sensitive to the feelings of others” (P. 22). My concern is how the educators are able to assess those children even in the other aspect of developmental stage when the child is not able to communicate and express her/his self?

Furthermore, they might have hard time expressing their feeling to resolve any conflict with peers which is one of the indicator of “Conflict Resolution and Social Problem-Solving Skills” (ELECT, 2007, p. 43). On the other hand, exposed to new language can be handled easier in preschool than older children. “Social language can be picked up more quickly, through mimicking in social interactions” (Hardacre & Dumais, 2013, p. 471).

Also, what if the children get frustrated because they cannot express themselves? Are they consider as a behavioral problem?  As Rock &Stenner (2005) stated, “ ‘Externalizing problem behaviors’ measures the likelihood that a child argues, fights, gets angry, acts impulsively, and disrupts ongoing activities. ‘Internalizing problem behaviors’ measures anxiety, loneliness, low self-esteem, and sadness.”  I am afraid if the culture and the language differences cause children to get the low mark from their assessment, so that they feel different from others.

I was reading this sentence and felt if this situation happened to me, I would be so proud of myself challenging the accepted assessment! As Alcock (2000) stated, “Pedagogical documentation may also be used to challenge accepted assessment practices such as the obsessive and sometimes exclusive reliance on individually written observations of individual children” (p. 3).

Although almost everyone knows about the child individualism, and believe in uniqueness, we still are forced to do the assessment and evaluate each child’s capability to pass the test. As Rock and Stenner (2005) explained, “A useful test must be reliable, which means that it will produce essentially the same results on different occasions. Reliability can be measured in three ways: retesting, equivalent form, and internal consistency” (p. 17).

We have observed children do great job in the class and have appropriate developmental skills, but have difficulty do the same in specific situations. We all can see the benefit of have both observation and evaluation in the settings. Alcock (2000) emphasized, “At a micro level (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) many centres in this country do use some forms of pedagogical documentation for the ongoing formative assessment of children's learning and evaluation of their programs. Written child observations are probably the most prevalent form of documentation” (p.8).

I have learned that assessing each child with the variety of tools to find appropriate assessment for each child with diverse ability is critical, at the same time it is very challenging exercise for the educators considering limited time and resources. Also, we need to know different cultures and the strategies to meet the needs of each child. At this point, I have not found clear answers for all of my concerns, and I still need time and experience to deal with them. Siegel (2013) stated, “Beth questioned the difficulty in making assessment equitable for a diverse population of students by asking, ‘‘who is the judge on what is fair for each student? Is that the teacher or is it someone else?” (p.7).

My Poster : Nipissing District Development Screen

Pedagogical documentation

I was reading this sentence and felt if this situation happened to me, I would be so proud of myself challenging the accepted assessment! As Alcock (2000) stated, “Pedagogical documentation may also be used to challenge accepted assessment practices such as the obsessive and sometimes exclusive reliance on individually written observations of individual children” (p. 3).

Although almost everyone knows about the child individualism, and believe in uniqueness, we still are forced to do the assessment and evaluate each child’s capability to pass the test. In the first week of this module, we had articles about the reliability, validity, and ... of the test. As Rock and Stenner (2005) explained, “A useful test must be reliable, which means that it will produce essentially the same results on different occasions. Reliability can be measured in three ways: retesting, equivalent form, and internal consistency” (p. 17). I still am confused to accept the reason that we need to assess and evaluate children to receive the rate of the school in the area.

We have observed children do great job in the class and have appropriate developmental skills, but have difficulty do the same in specific situations. We all can see the benefit of have both observation and evaluation in the settings. Alcock (2000) emphasized, “At a micro level (Bronfenbrenner, 1979) many centres in this country do use some forms of pedagogical documentation for the ongoing formative assessment of children's learning and evaluation of their programs. Written child observations are probably the most prevalent form of documentation” (p.8).

100 Languages for everone!

As I have been working on my PoP about the children who are English learners, I usually think of my topic and specifically about the word “Language”. I was reading this week article “pedagogical documentation: Beyond observation”, and I thought about the benefit of the documentation that I have been exposed to. The following sentence made me rethink about the correlation between a 100 language and the children from around the world who talk in the other language and have different cultures and values to express themselves:

“Multiple languages can facilitate communication between multiple groups, from children, to parents, to political and other "stakeholders".” (Alcock, 2000, P.8)

Don’t you think that we can assume the meaning could be related to all groups? I think by respecting other languages and cultures, we provide the accepting environment to children to express themselves in the variety of ways. For instance, in my workplace, we have an international twin who play together and talk in their own language. Some educators asked the supervisor to separate the children, so that they learn English faster. Others talked about their observations and the way that the twin help and support each other for creating new art and exploring their environment. We decided to have them both in our room to support them. I believe both “a hundred language”, and talking in different language can facilitate communication between multiple groups. :)