Saturday, January 28, 2012

Sharing Web Resources


 

 For the sake of this blog, I focused on the website http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org / e- newsletter. As an educator, and more specifically a kindergarten teacher at a bilingual school, I have learned that I should be aware of the cultures of the audience that I am working with and of the community I serve. After reading the on-line article/magazine section spoke of the importance of diversity. For instance, according to the article, Hopetoun Children’s Centre in Flemington, Melbourne, is a multicultural hub within the local community. The centre’s goals include developing the centre’s operations to embrace the different cultural beliefs, practices and needs of the families attending the centre, in order to create a collective sense of belonging.  

Although we don’t have hub’s here in New Jersey, the overall tone of the article is to embrace the cultural differences and beliefs between educators and families and to use those differences as a positive to enrich the class environment and to make families and children feel welcomed and respected.
After thoroughly reading through this article, I didn’t find anything to be controversial, but the article did encourage me to do more in terms of cultural diversity. For example, I could ask parents to bring a dish in from their culture, or we could have festivals where children could research a country and give a short presentation about what they learned…this would integrate language/literacy, technology, history, health, and art.
                                                                     
Furthermore, this website contains information that adds to my understanding of how economists, politicians support the early childhood field through reform in the sense that each baby will have more attention by a care giver. For example the web site www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org states


"Babies will be the big winners in 2012 thanks to new early childhood reforms that come into effect on 1 January, ensuring there is one staff member for every four babies now in childcare.
Early Childhood Australia CEO Pam Cahir said the reforms were significant, but thankfully many childcare services were already implementing them so costs to parents would be minimal.
Ms Cahir said the reform package was long-term. “The full set of early childhood education and care reforms will be implemented over the next eight years. There is plenty of time for services to adjust and many, many services have already moved ahead to implement the reforms.
“2014 will be the next milestone for governments and services to work towards. This is a long-term process that will benefit children, families and the Australian economy and should not be slowed down to appease interest groups".

Reference:

http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org


Nicky


5 comments:

  1. That is great. There needs to be one staff member to every four babies. Just recently, as a matter of fact, last week my husband and I read an article about a child in day care found with a dead rat in her mouth. The center worker stated that she thought it was a toy, but she saw the tail and realized that it wasn't. Great news for Australian babies.

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  2. Dear Nicky,

    I agree with Melanie that there needs to be one staff member to every four babies. Oh my goodness, one of my parents came in the other day and told me the same story. I could not believe that could happen in a daycare, but it did. That's why every time I hear my children, I get up and walk around my room to make sure that they are ok. You can never be too careful with babies and preschoolers.

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  3. Nicky,
    I have a child in my class who's Dad is from Australia. We celebrated Australia Day last week. At my center we have a 4-1 ratio for babies and i would love to see it be 3-1. When the class is full 4-1 can still be very demanding on the caregiver.

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  4. Nicky,
    Great job on the information presented. I found that it is quite interesting. That is a good idea to make children in be included in programs where the cost would be minimal for parents to help in care of their children. And I agree that the ratio to infants should be raised, many times the caregiver cannot watch that many children at one time.

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  5. It sounds like the children are headed for great things with the reform. It's always good to hear about new programs and policies that benefit the children. In Texas we have the same 4:1 ratio and it's great depending on the age because it can get a little tedious when all the babies wake up in stair steps and need your attention right away, I think that every classroom should have two caregivers always present. It's a great dream that I hope to be able to financially commit to when I open my own center.

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