Final Blog Wk. 8

This is the final week for this class, EDUC: 6162 Trends and Issues in Early Childhood Field. This has been a wonderful course and I have learned about many important issues and trends affecting the early childhood field; poverty, changing demographics and diversity, influences of economics, neuroscience, and politics, and equity and excellence in care and education of children, families, and EC professionals. I was never able to establish contact with an early childhood professional from another country but I was able to learn a lot of information exploring the different early childhood professional websites.

I really liked the NAEYC website, http://www.naeyc.org/. I really liked all the information you could find on this site. They had information for parents and families and professionals. The links to the other EC websites was very informative. I really liked the link to the common core standards website. I was hearing a lot of different information about the common core standards. I was not sure what was correct and what was myth/ confused facts. The website,  http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/myths-vs-facts/. I recommend this website to anyone who may have questions about common core standards.

I also learned a lot about poverty and that it effects children all over the world. “Poverty is growing in Australia with an estimated 2.5 million people or 13.9% of all people living below the internationally accepted poverty line” (Australian Council of Social Service [ACOSS], 2015, pg. 1), about 603,000 of the 2.5 million are children. In the United States poverty is just as big of an issue.

I really liked this course. It was very informative and made me realize how important it is to keep up with the current trends and issues within the early childhood profession. I look forward to keep exploring the websites I have found. I am also going to keep up and try to contact other early childhood professionals in another country. I think it would be so interesting and informative to learn about what goes on in my profession in other countries.

Brandie