Interacting with Professionals in childcare

I observed Jenny W. Jenny is a 2 year old teacher, she has 6 hours in early childhood along with 1500 clock hours of experience which makes her teacher qualified. She has worked at the center since 2006.

I observed Jenny welcoming families at the beginning of the day. Jenny talked to each parent and they communicated about the child's night and morning. I observed her washing hands as the children arrived, they washed their hands and sang row, row your boat 2 times. I also observed her having informal conversations with the parents at the welcoming time in the morning. I also observed free exploration for the children before they went into their classroom at 8 a.m. I also observed Jenny singing the ABC song with the children. As they sang she pointed to the letters on the wall. I also observed her reading books at story time. While she read the story she pointed to the title on top of the book, and she began to read and pointed to the words in the book. I also observed the 2 year olds singing color songs and spelling out the color words by clapping their hands. These children are also learning words and there meaning such as door, window, snow, penguin, seal, etc. through everyday conversation and class time.

What did your observations reveal about the needs and efforts of these professionals working with children? It revealed to me that by observing Jenny she was able to have an informal conversation and find out things about the child's night and morning routines. By finding out how the child's night and morning was going, this was a determination to how the day would go in the classroom for these children. She also communicates what the child did the day before in class and what they really liked or did not like. Jenny was making an effort to get to know the child and family and she shows that she cares about them.

The strengths and challenges of these professionals? The strenghts for Jenny is that she is able to communicate informally with the parents and find things out about the child's routines. By doing this, she is creating a  bound with these families and getting to know them better and then she has a better understanding of the child. A challenge for this professional is dealing with children that are out of control. She really does not like to talk to the parent about these situations. She has one child who does throw fits and take toys away, but will never really tell the parent this. I see this as her challenge.Another challenge that I see is keeping the children interested, they are 2 and have a very short attention span.

This obervation broaden my understanding of my research topic and advocacy programs of early literacy and how important it is for these children. In the 2 year old room they are already learning letters, words and their meaning, and that by putting letters together they make words. I found this very interesting that they can do this at a very young age. Jenny is giving these children a very good start with letter recognition and phonics.

Here is a summary of some research that I found on Early Literacy. An early start in learning the letters and sounds enables every child to arrive in kindergarten ready to learn to read. If the children are unprepared then they will lack reading readiness and are more likely to develop reading problems later on in their school career. By third grade children are expected to learn to read, by fourth grade they are expected to read to learn.

"To help all children succeed and to compete as a nation, we must strat early and finish strong; we must ensure that every American child becomes a reader. Families can help by maximizing the benefits of parent-child communication from birth. Caregivers and preschool teachers can be given training and resources to stimulate emergent literacy. Children deserve a well-trained teacher who understands reading development, who can pinpoint problems, and who can address them
effectively. "

http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/startearly/intro.html