Expanding Professional Contacts

This week for the blog assignment, I attempted to email and make contact with 15 of the contacts listed in the resources only to find that I was getting a vast amount of failed deliveries. Therefore I listened to the podcast on the World Forum Foundation Radio from Susan Lyon. She brought the “100 Languages of Children” exhibit to California. She also started the Innovated Teacher Project which is inspired by the Reggio Emilia School. From listening to her talk about how a young child inspired her to do her research and bring these projects to America I was inspired that I can make a difference in my community like she did. The innovative project was designed to provide resources to teachers to build their professional development where otherwise resources might not be available. The schools utilized the Reggio Approach and would meet with other teachers on a weekly basis to work together and share ideas about what was working for them. I enjoyed researching Susan Lyon and her innovative teaching project because we share the same idea of what quality early childhood education should be. A quality program should support learning of all students and have successful partnerships with families and communities.

For the second part of our blog assignment I chose to explore the National Association of Child Care Resource and Referral Agencies website. I chose this website as I have a child facility and thought the resources available would benefit me. You are able to sign up for a variety of weekly and monthly newsletters distributed by the website. Providers are able to view professional development trainings available to them. There is also a section for parents and support for them to help them find quality child care for their children. There are also activities that they can do at home with their child. I enjoyed the parents’ part of the website because it is a good resource that you could share with your parents to help extend learning to the home environment. Parents and educators are able to keep up on current legislation as it relates to the early childhood field on the website. There are links to view policies and agendas.

The website is changing its name to Child Care Aware if you need to access it as a resource in the future. There are links to the new web address on the website. Overall this website offers a variety of resources to parents and child care providers. You are able to find information about your local resource and referral agency. I am familiar with my local agency and I am able to borrow learning materials for the children from their lending library, attend trainings, and keep my openings updated with them for them to match parents whom are looking for quality providers with my facility.