Professional Goals, Hopes, Dreams, and Challenges

The need for high-quality early childhood education has never been greater. Increasingly, children are growing up in families where all available parents are working. In addition, research continues to affirm the short and long-term benefits for children who participate in high-quality early learning programs. 

The key to a high-quality program happens inside the classroom or family child care home, namely the interactions between the teacher and child. In a high-quality program, teachers engage children with learning strategies tailored to the child’s age and use an appropriate curriculum to structure the learning experience. A variety of supports are needed to facilitate these interactions so that high-quality teaching and learning can occur. As such, the quality of an early childhood program is dependent on many important factors. One such factor is a Program support structure. The discussion among staff members and colleagues has centered around this (administration support), which is somehow lacking in our workplace.

A high-functioning operating environment is an essential element of a quality early childhood program. This administrative, operational support takes several forms. First, programs need effective leaders who can provide instructional support to teachers and sound business management to the overall program. Multiple leadership functions are complex and often need to be fulfilled by more than one person. Second, programs require a series of structural supports external to the immediate program, including access to professional development, quality improvement resources, stable and sufficient funding streams, and a pipeline of well-trained teachers. These external supports recognize that early childhood programs do not operate in a vacuum and rely on the broader early childhood system.

In my workplace, the covid-19 has had a negative impact on the school’s ability to provide effective leadership. My school is short-staffed and, at the moment, unable to provide instructional support to teachers.

 A well-resourced classroom is not sufficient without an effective teacher to harness those resources. Meanwhile, an effective teacher is not sustainable without a support system to manage the business, support instruction, and provide professional development.

However, there is an opportunity for professional development.  Teachers are encouraged to pursue their degrees in early childhood education through grant awards. Teachers are also expected to complete a minimum of thirty clock hours of professional development yearly. 

 My school is historically and culturally White, and my professional goals in terms of supporting social equity, that reality to support accountability and growth around racial equity. In other to do my share when it comes to uncovering, unpacking, and addressing racism in our community. I intend to talk about race, racism, and racial justice in more public ways so that the burden doesn’t fall so much on the “same old voices.” and also normalize with my students’ conversations about race, racism, and racial justice. I intend to name and address microaggressions and incidents of racism in proactive, productive, and constructive ways as they occur within my classroom or area of the school. I intend to make invisible cultural expectations and norms visible and accessible to all students and members of the community I serve.

My professional hopes and dreams are tied up in one sentence, “to nurture a new generation of engaged, self-directed students who continue to love learning long after graduating.” My ultimate goal, therefore, is to be a Child Advocate. I think the greatest challenge to being a Child Advocate is that removing or dismantling the structural inequities that have been placed over the years and engrained deep in the early childhood education system is a huge task. All children should be given the right to equitable learning opportunities that help them achieve their full potential as engaged learners and valued members of society. Thus, as an early childhood educator, I have a professional obligation to advance equity. 

To do this best, I  will work to promote social equity in early learning settings and encourage the wider communities to embrace diversity and full inclusion as strengths, uphold fundamental principles of fairness and justice, and eliminate structural inequities that limit equitable learning opportunities.

                                                                          References

Leadership Conference Education Fund. (2015). Advocating for Educational Equity & High Standards

      Retrieved from http://www.civilrightsdocs.info/pdf/education/toolkit/Education-Equity-Toolkit-

       ACCESSIBLE-overview.pdf

Racial Equity and Inclusion Goal-Setting. Retrieved from

       https://foliocollaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/RacialEquity_080420.pdf