It's a new semester with lots of new and wonderful things to learn. I look forward to learning more about policies and systems in place for the early childhood field. These are my goals for this present course.
1.
Gain a clearer understanding of the 5 C’s
(Coverage, Clinical Care, Coordination, Consultation, Community Health) and how
they relate to my major assessment topic and other issues that I face in the
field of early childhood/speech pathology.
It is important to have a clear
understanding of the 5 C’s so that I can a better understanding of the child
and the family dynamic as well as the childs’ general well-being. If the child is sick all the time then their
progress may be impeded. However, if
they have the right advocates that are providing the necessary referrals then
the child can get the help that he/she needs and then move on to getting the
larger problems and needs taken care of.
With a focus on early intervention knowing and having a background
history of this information is very vital to taking steps to help the child (Kagan
& Kauerz, 2012).
2.
Formulate a clearer, more specific idea/plan of
what I can presently do in my community and at the local level to strengthen
the special needs/early intervention component of the early childhood system
It is important for me to formulate a
specific plan so that I can understand the depth of the issues and problems in
my community. I must also formulate a
plan so that I will be forced to look at programs from the bottom up and
determine what foundational issues may be causing problems. I must gain a deeper understanding versus a
surface knowledge of what is going on. By focusing on the community I will be helping
those
individuals’ that have a very large influence on the children in different
neighborhoods thus impacting the early childhood system (Kagan & Kauerz,
2012).
3.
Find as many systems and policies in place that
support my topic for the major assessment in varying specialties (psychology,
science, education, language, health) and determine Evidence Based Practice for
what has worked and what has not worked.
This is an essential step because I must know
what has already been researched in my topic area, what has worked, what is in
place and what is not in place so I can determine where I need to concentrate
the majority of my efforts. If I don’t
know what is already in place I may duplicate a program that has already been
tried or try a strategy that may not work in a specific community due to the
majority population. I must also
understand the policies in place for early childhood so that I can have a
starting point for developing my own policies.
I must evaluate the systems and policies in place to help me formulate a
system/policy for my major assessment topic (Kagan & Kauerz, 2012).
References
Kagan, S. L., & Kauerz, K. (Eds.).
(2012). Early childhood systems: Transforming early
learning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press.
Melissa,
ReplyDeleteYou have set some great goals for yourself. I especially like your 2nd one of formulately more specific plans to assist your community. We cannot accomplish a great deal for our communities if we are unaware of where deficits may lie. When digging deeper into policy and finding loopholes or weak areas, we have more power to make changes in policies. It is also imperative to know what has been tried in the past, because we do not want to waste time or funding on ideas that have failed previously. You made some great points, and I hope that you are able to meet all of your goals by the end of this course.
Thank you Dixie! It often seems as if I hear people talking all the time about the community and what needs to be done but very few people are actively working to make a change. Hopefully I can start that process or be one of those people that start the change!
DeleteMelissa,
ReplyDeleteWe are just beginning this course, but it is addressing something that I have been interested in for some time and that is being involved in the local community to help bring about change. I live in a Northern suburb of Illinois and have only lived here for 13 years. However, I feel like I have been here long enough that I can offer something to my community. We can take the things we learn in this class and put them into practice because as an educator or speech pathologist, everything we say and do can impact the life of a child and their family forever.
Darla
Darla,
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree. We are very influential and lawmakers may listen to us more before they listen to a parent fighting or advocating for their child. It is definitely important for us to not take advantage of the roles and responsibilities that we play in children's lives but to remember that "to whom much is given, much is required." I too am very happy that we addressing policies in this course. I have had a lot of questions and my research for this class is forcing me to delve deeper to understand the organizational structures that keep everything up and running with the educational system. I didn't realize it took so much!