Sharing Web Resources

I read a paper by Geoffrey Canada, President and CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, Inc. about Poverty and how it relates to education in America.  He states that there are 13 million children living in poverty in the United States.  He feels that the educational system as it is today is failing and has failed particularly in regard to poor students of color.  He states that education is the way to fight poverty and states five ways to make a difference in the years to come.

1)       Reform the Bureaucracy - Good teachers and other school staff should be able to move from a successful school to failing school.  Principals and lousy teachers are not replaced in a timely manner.

2)      End the public school monopoly – In poor communities parents don’t have choices as to where their children will attend school.  Children can’t opt out of a failing school and attend a successful school.

3)      Attract and retain Good Teachers – He states that the median starting salary for a teacher in the U.S. is $29,564, while a recent MBA can start his or her career with a salary of $75,000 or more.

4)      Making teaching and learning full-time jobs.  Mr. Canada proposes that school hours be extended over the summer months because schools are failing.

5)      Create incentives for excellent teachers – He proposes that our educational system needs to structure a reward system for great teachers and train other teachers to improve their classroom skills.

He states “We can spend escalating amounts of money on jails, drug treatment and welfare or we can pay a fraction of that money up front and do the job of educating low-income Americans right the first time” (G. Canada, n.d.). 

I found this short paper inspiring because as an early head start teacher I would like to advocate for families living in poverty.  I believe like Geoffrey Canada that education is the way to fight poverty for the next generation.  His ideas make sense. 

I also watched a video of Barack Obama speaking about the Harlem Children’s zone and the fight on poverty.  He is a strong supporter of this program and stated that when he became president he combat urban poverty by replicating HCZ in 20 states in the United States.

I think this topic lines up with the Economists, neuroscientists and politicians support of early childhood field.  HCZ on a small scale has launched it attack on poverty in a small community.  They are providing services in the area of medical services, crime prevention technology training, early childhood education, after school programs, job counseling, charter schools, which is directly benefiting the families and children of poverty.  HCZ reasons may be different from the economists, neuroscientist and politicians, but they are preparing children to be a benefit to society not a liability.

The insight I gained is that the Early Childhood Education is a major issue in Washington and it sounds as though Washington is going to make a major investment in Early Childhood Education.

Reference:

G. Canada (n.d.)  Winning the War on Poverty Through Education retrieved from http://www.hcz.org/images/stories/pdfs/legaccy_op-ed.pdf

Getting to Know your International Contacts

I listened to Podcast radio with Irma Allen – Chairperson of the Swaziland Environment Authority (the equivalent to the EPA in the United States) and a member of World Forum Nature Action Collaborative for Children.  The podcast describes her work in African where she lives with her husband.  She has been challenged to teach community people to teach early childhood education.  Much of their work is done in the environment opposed to classrooms which they do not have.  The environment or nature is very strong part of the experience since they are teaching a respect for nature and Environment.  Ms. Allen describes a story of a young man who was an orphan that was one of the first participants of the early childhood experiences and how he stated that he remembers a woman smiling at him with open arms.  He states that learned to appreciate his country, home and environment, which gave him strength and encouragement.  He stated as he moved through life and experienced struggles and failures he would always draw on his early childhood experiences for encouragement.  Listening to this podcast reminded me of a school here in Decatur, Georgia called the Waldrof school.  Their curriculum is founded in nature and spend a great deal of time exploring the environment and nature.

I visited the site (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/), Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre’s page and read about poverty in India.  India has 260.2 million people living in poverty as of 1999-2000.  Through systematic efforts to alleviate poverty they have increased economic growth, including liberalization of the economy, targeted programs, land and tenancy reforms and participatory empowerment based approaches and the provision of basic services.  I learned that governmental policy and programs are helping alleviate poverty in India.  Due to these approaches the poverty line declined from 54.9 percent to an estimated 26 percent.    In India there is a high rate of communicable diseases, malnutrition and maternal and perinatal illness.  So poverty has a negative effect on the health of people living in poverty.  India has a high percentage of working children.  There are inequalities in child wellbeing based on gender.  Girls life chances are less than boys, this is due to the fact of poverty as well as the Indian’s views that boys are permanent members of a family while girls are only temporary members.

Harlem Children’s Zone at http://www.hcz.org/

This organization began in 1970 as a truancy-prevention program.  Through the 1980’s and 1990’s the crack epidemic was a problem in Harlem HCZ’s staff developed new approaches to help these families.  In 1991 HCZ turned a public school into a community center offering a range of services and activities on nights, weekends and summers.   In the early 1990’s HCZ ran a pilot project that brought a range of support services to a single block.  They addressed all the problems that poor families were facing:  from crumbling apartments to failing schools, from violent crime to chronic health problems.    In 1997 the agency began a network of programs for a 24 block area the Harlem Children’s Zone Project.  In 2007 the zone project grew to almost 100 blocks.  Today the Children’s Zone serves more than 8,000 children and 6,000 adults.  Overall, the organization serves more than 10,000 children and more than 7,400 adults .  Over the years the agency introduced several ground-breaking efforts in 2000 the Baby College parenting workshops in 2001 the Harlem Gems pre-school program and the HCZ Asthma initiative, which teaches families to better manage the disease.  In 2004, the Promise Academy a high quality public charter school and in 2006, an obesity program to help children stay healthy.   HCZ aims at doing nothing less than breaking the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and families it serves.

I listened to an interview CNN had with the CEO, Geoffrey Canada of Harlem Children’s Zone entitled Education and the American Dream.  One of the things he said in this interview is that children today are not getting the education that their parents received.  He feels that education is failing today due to lack of innovation.  What he is saying is that the education experience to day is the same as it was years ago, nothing has changed.  He feels that what is required of this generation is much more than previous generations and change is necessary for Education to work.  I think that with the changing demographics this is also an issue.  Education needs to go through some change because the clientele is different now than in years ago and we as Educators need to address the new issues in educating our children.

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

I emailed a couple of professionals using the email addresses that were provided on the NAEYC website, but my emails were returned to me.  So I tried locating email address that looked familiar like yahoo accounts.  I emailed Blesilda Rios in the Phillippines and Mrs. Bimbo Are in the Federal Republic of Nigeria.  I explained that I was an Early Childhood Education major and was looking to correspond with them regarding issues and trends in the field.  I have not received an email back, but I am hopful.  If I don't receive a response by Tuesday I will have to proceed with the alternate.

The second part of our assignment expanding resources I chose the Harlem Children's Zone website.  I chose this site because I am from New York and am interested in the fight to end poverty for minorities and all people.  I realize that poverty has a negative affect on children.   When I clicked on the website the first thing you see is statistics on how there early childhood programs are impacting the lives of the people in Harlem.  I will enjoy following this website.