2nd Blog--Observing and Interacting with Professional Colleagues

The name of my setting is Village Children’s Academy. This is a privately owned preschool/childcare in IL. This program services children ages 6 weeks to 12 years. There is a broad range of abilities within this environment and many diverse students. There are 6 different classrooms for the children and they are broken into Infants, Toddlers, Two’s, Preschool, Preschool For All, and Kindergarten. The School Agers share a room with the Kindergarten class in the afternoons. The preschool classroom and the Preschool For All classroom have mixed age groups of children ages 3-5. The demographic for this center is mostly Hispanic and Caucasian. The teachers vary in their educational levels from high school diplomas to Master Degrees in education.

This past week I spoke with a couple different people. I spoke with the Preschool For All teacher who is an IL 04 certified teacher. She works with the children who are determined to be at risk for developmental delays. I spent a lot of time talking with her about literacy and the children she is working with. I gained some great insights about her students. Her class is mostly Hispanic children and most of these children speak little to no English. She shared with me that she fears many of these children will be academically behind in literacy because many of them cannot recognize or say the letters of their name.

I also spoke with the owner of the school. She has owned and operated the facility for the last 15 years and she has seen it all (in her words). She has seen students come into the facility at 3 years old already reading and students come in barely speaking a word. She has also seen students thrive in the classroom with individualized attention and an individualized curriculum.

I learned quite a bit this past module from my observations and discussions. I have gained some hands on knowledge about English Language Learners and their struggle for learning to speak and understand the language and try to learn the alphabet and letter recognition.

The PFA teacher is going to try to connect me with one of the parents in the program because she is a Literacy Specialist. I am very anxious to see if this parent will spend some time answering some of my questions and talking to me about literacy.

One quote that I will share this week is from the PFA teacher. She said “All children learn at their own pace, however it’s a fine line between their own pace and needing to be concerned about their development.” This really resonated with me. I completely agree with her and feel that there is a very fine line between the two aspects of education. Knowing when the right time to step in is can be very difficult to determine.

Another quote that I want to share this week is from one of my resources. It states ”ELLs tend to exhibit lower academic achievement (particularly in literacy) than their non-ELL peers, and similar negative trends are observed in other educational outcomes” (Klingner, J, et al. 2006). This quote hits right on with what I wanted to figure out. I am curious as to how to create interventions that will help decrease this gap in educational achievement. 

First Blog-Advocacy

I am thinking of writing my paper on literacy. There is much concern about the number of illiterate children in the U.S. today and I feel that action needs to be taken to help rectify this problem. I chose to interview an elementary school teacher (1^st grade) and a program director of a private preschool/daycare. A few insights that I gained about literacy is that more and more young children today are ESL learners and struggle with literacy. They are struggling to learn the English language and in turn struggling to learn how to read and write. Also, it has been proven that parents who are illiterate often raise illiterate children. There needs to be a break in this cycle, if that means educating parents as well.

In light of these interviews, my opinions have not really changed much. If anything, these interviews have strengthened my interest in literacy in the field of early childhood. I feel very strongly about all children learning to read and write and hold it in high value. I feel that the three topics in literacy that are of most importance to me are quality curriculums, parent education, and ESL learners.

Questions for my colleagues…

1.      Do you feel that ESL students are at a higher risk of struggling with literacy?

2.      What would you do if you learned of a family that is illiterate?

3.      What types of curriculums do you feel work best when focusing on literacy?

First attempt at blogging

Hi all,

This is my first attempt to blogging. I hope it works