Getting Ready—Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

For part 1 of this week’s assignment, I have tried to contact early childhood professionals around the world through the NAEYC Global Alliance, and the World Forum Foundation, but still awaiting respond from them. I contacted the representative in Ghana, Africa, also Armenia, Asia by email to explain who I am and my interest in learning their professional experience and share mine in United States with them. I also sent out similar email to contact the group of Working Project for Multi-Site organization, Men in Early Childhood Education, Curriculum Initiative and Teacher Educator Network. I understand it may takes a while for them to respond. Therefore, I contacted my colleagues and connected to two early childhood professionals in Hong Kong, China. Through finding these contacts, I found it fascinate to see how much network around the world are trying to support children, families and professionals in different ways. For example, the World Forum Foundation has more than 15 working groups projects “focused on specific global early childhood issues”. Participants are around the professionals around the world who a passionate and desire to share and address the particular issues of their designated group. 

For part 2 of this week’s assignment, there are a lot of association I want to study more on and I finally chose Zero to Three Journal because birth to three year old development stage a new area to me. Zero to Three is a national center for infants, toddlers and families. They provide training and resources for parents and professionals on childcare such as how to prepare toddler for preschool, tips on choosing a quality childcare and etc. I like how the session of the “behavior and development” with articles and podcast series in different topics such as child development, brain development, how to develop self-control in the first three years etc. The podcast also translated in Spanish with written transcript. I think this is a very resourceful web site for both parents and professionals and I am planning to share this to my teachers and families. 

References:

NAEYC Global Alliance: http://www.naeyc.org/resources/partnership/globalalliance#africa

World Forum Foundation: http://www.worldforumfoundation.org/

Zero to Three: http://www.zerotothree.org/about-us/funded-projects/parenting-resources/podcast/