Sharing Web Resources Week 4

                My organization of choice is the Harlem Children’s Zone.  The information that seems particularly relevant to my current professional development for this week is investing in early childhood programs.  This is a good topic to compare with the Harlem Children’s Zone because Geoffrey Canada, the President of the Harlem Children’s Zone is doing whatever it takes to educate children and strengthen their communities.  In order for children to do well, their families have to do well.  And for families to do well, their community must do well (http://www.hcz.org).   This is why as educators we must work to strengthen families as well as empowering them to have a positive impact on their children’s development.  So we can see that it takes more than just educators to advocate for early childhood programs.  It will take the entire community which includes the parents, teachers, doctors, lawyers, and politicians.  The HCZ programs are absolutely free of charge to the children and their families and these programs are not funded by the government.  If Geoffrey Canada knows that investing in these children will produce a high rate of return later, what are we waiting on?  We can use the Harlem Children’s Zone as a model for where we want our school systems and communities to be and what we need to do to get there. 

             The information from the Harlem Children’s Zone website has made me see that having a dream for young children and their communities that will remove them from poverty can become a reality.  I have often wondered if it was possible for my community to improve and to produce children that will help strengthen our economy.  The HCZ allows me to see that this is possible.  We must develop the same attitudes as the Harlem Children’s Zone staff.  We must not give up hope.  The whatever it takes attitude is what we must keep in mind if we are going to help our children succeed.

            This website has shown the support of not only economists, neuroscientists, and politicians, but it has also shown the support of several of the United States President’s.  President Bill Clinton made a quote about the Harlem Children’s Zone that states “If you volunteer or give money to the Harlem Children’s Zone, you know you will get a high rate of return” (http://www.hcz.org).   President Barack Obama stated that “The Harlem Children’s Zone is an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck, anti-poverty effort that is literally saving a generation of children” (http:///www.hcz.org).   I am of the mind that if donated dollars to the Harlem Children’s Zone can produce high returns then governmental funds and grants can do the exact same thing for children as well.  Our objective should be the same as the Harlem Children’s Zone and that is to create a safety net woven so tightly that children just can’t slip through the cracks (http://www.hcz.org).

             The last thing that I gained from this site is the love and compassion that the staffs provide and show the students.  I love their attitudes and their whatever it takes motto. 

Reference

The Harlem Children’s Zone.   Retrieved from http://www.hcz.org

 

Getting to Know Your International Contacts

Getting to Know Your International Contacts

            I have not received a response from The National Early Childhood Development Alliance; therefore I will be using the alternate method that I chose.  I listened to The World Forum Radio where several early childhood educators communicated concerning poverty and how it affects children.  Tackling childhood poverty is critical.  One educator talks about how we as educators can spread awareness and how it will help the children and their families. 

            From listening to the World Forum Radio I have learned that poverty affects a big portion of communities all over the world.  The World Forum has educators from all over the world that participates in discussions of various topics within the Early Childhood field such as what impacts organizations and programs can have on poverty in communities and the impact that poverty has on children.  After listening to the educators speak on the subject of poverty I went to the website where I read that over 600 million children world-wide live in absolute poverty.  At least 60% of children are living in households that have incomes below poverty level (http://www.childpoverty.org). 

            In the developing countries over 10 million children die each year from diseases that are preventable.  This is due to poverty.  I have gained several insights from the radio and reading the website.  The first insight that I gained is that if we don’t help our children who live in poverty today, they will become parents to children who will also be in poverty tomorrow.  As educators we must spread awareness so that we can help break the cycles in poor families that has been passed down from generation to generation.  We can do this by simple educating the children.

            I have gain insight on what poverty is and what we can do to help eliminate it.  The best possible way to help eliminate poverty in our communities is by advocating to government leaders, senators, and others to keep the programs that start children to learning at an early age.  As we educate all children we make them aware of poverty and how important it is for them to receive the best education possible so that they can in return get good jobs to be above the poverty line, and this will allow them the opportunity to take good care of their families which brings them out of poverty.  The cycle can be broken and raising awareness is the answer. 

      

References

The World Forum Foundation.  Retrieved from http://www.childhoodpovert.org

 The World Foundation Radio.  Retrieved from http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/wf/radio.php

 

Sharing Web Resources

Harlem Children’s Zone

The Harlem Children’s Zone is an organization that resulted from the Harlem Children’s Zone Project.  This project was a unique, holistic approach to rebuilding a community so that its children could stay on track through college and become productive citizens in the job market.  The HCZ focuses on helping children, their families and the community.  Geoffrey Canada, the CEO, has reworked the strategy.  The strategy is to assist children by creating what they called a ‘conveyor belt” to take children and their parents from baby college to college.  The HCZ teach the parents to care for their children as they prepare their children for success, and this is done at the earliest possible age so that they can impact the children when they are easiest to touch (http://www.hcz.org).

                The Harlem Children’s Zone has several programs that are included within their Early Childhood, Elementary School, Middle School, High School, prep for College, Family, Community, and Health, and Promise Academy charter Schools programs.  Another program that is very interesting to me is The Baby College.  This program is a nine (9) week program that works with expecting parents and those who are raising children up to three years of age.  It teaches the parents the importance of reading and it also teaches them how to use verbal discipline over corporal punishment.  They also promote a program that they call Get Ready for Pre-K program.  This program takes the children that will be enrolling in the fall to the Pre-Kindergarten program on a six week journey to prepare them for kindergarten.  I think that this is really great.  Another program is called the Harlem Gems.  This program is for pre-kindergarten children.  This program is designed to get these students ready for the kindergarten.  This program has three sites.  As you can see the Harlem Children’s Zone’s CEO and his staff are committed to assisting all children is reaching their full potential. 

            One issue that this organization has dealt with is poverty in the Harlem communities.  This is one of the main reasons this community based organization created the Harlem Children’s Project.  The Harlem Children’s Zone believed that the citizens in our country could not rely on the various programs that are offered to save children in the various communities (http://www.hcz.org).  This program assists over 10,000 children each year and has even communicated with other communities about creating programs similar to the Harlem Children’s Zone.  The Harlem Children’s Zone is winning the war over poverty.

            From studying this organization I also learned that the Harlem Children’s Zone is also diversity focused which is one of the topics we discussed in our lesson for this week.  The link for the Harlem Children’s Zone is http://www.hcz.org.

 

Reference

Retrieved from the Harlem Children’s Zone website http://www.hcz.org

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources in the Early Childhood Field

    

Establishing Professional Contacts

I am excited as I attempt to contact my two people from other countries that work as educators, administrators, or even on the government level who are interested in Early Childhood Education.  I have e-mailed to South Africa at cecd@iafrica.com and Armenia at ruzanna@sbsbf.am .  In my e-mail I explained that I am a graduate student at Walden University and that I am studying Early Childhood Education.  I explained that my assignment throughout the course I am taking which is Issues and Trends in Early Childhood Education requires me to stay in contact with two people in other countries in order to gain new perspectives of different issues as they relate to people around the world.  I asked them to participate in this assignment with me so that I could compare our issues and trends in the United States with those of South Africa.  I have not received any correspondence back but I am certainly hopeful that the professionals will respond back to me in a professional manner.  If I do not receive responses within the next week I will chose the alternate and contact the World Forum.

Expanding Resources

In choosing my Early Childhood website I randomly typed in the e-mail addresses to see how appealing the sites would look.  The most appealing site to me was the Harlem Children’s Zone.  This is the website that I will follow throughout this course.  I have signed up for the newsletter and I am awaiting confirmation of my registration.  I have already looked at some of the positive ground-breaking efforts that have been made at the Harlem Children’s Zone.  They have what has been named Baby College parenting workshops, the Harlem Gems which is their pre-school program, and I also read about an obesity program that they have to help children to stay healthy.  The website address for the Harlem Children’s Zone is http://www.hcz.org/ .

I look forward to bringing you, my colleagues updates on how this organization supports their Early

Childhood community and what resources it has to offer.