I believe that Early Childhood Education is the social infrastructure that incorporates children, adults, community, governments and the environment, and presents a correlation and cooperation between them.
The goal of such interactions for the children is to experience physical, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual well-being.
The role of the families, communities and governments in this infrastructure is to provide children with support and give to them opportunities to experience well-being through learning environments, listening to and valuing children`s thoughts, feelings, and contributions, nurturing their individuality and uniqueness, and accepting responsibilities for promoting early learning and overall well-being.
I see the children as valuable members of society. Being a supporter of the eclectic approach to the Early Childhood Education, I believe that children learn holistically, and each child has his/her own unique way to learn and develop. I agree with the fact that children`s “physical, emotional, social, linguistic, visual, auditory, and intellectual learning are closely inter-related and occur simultaneously” and learning becomes meaningful for children through inter-weaving of these different areas of experience (Nicholson, L. 2009. Additional Course Readings).
As an ECE educator I see my responsibility in creating an environment that will be able to support children`s needs in each of those areas. I believe that the supportive environment consists of three parts: physical, natural and social; and must include stimuli for children`s development in each of the multiple intelligence: verbal, logical, visual, kinesthetic, music, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal. As an ECE educator I must ensure that my everyday practice reflects and improves each of these components.
I realize the importance of close interactions and co-operation with the children. There are two meaningful characteristics in the teacher-child interactions: trusting the process and giving to children the opportunity to have some control over their environment. At this point I support the definition of guiding participation given by Lev Vygotsky and Maria Montessori`s idea of the physical environment.
According to the curriculum and the teacher`s involvement I am a supporter of the Reggio Emilia approach, where the children come up with the project, and the enthusiastic teachers follow children`s lead, support them with the information and by giving them the opportunities to explore and evaluate themselves.
As an ECE educator, I realize the importance of my relationship with the parents. The main reason is to be familiar with each child as much as possible. It helps to do assessments, evaluate the child and provide her/him with a unique curriculum, support, program, physical environment etc. wherever and whenever it needs to be taken into concern. The parents are “decision-makers” in their children`s lives. The ECE educator is one of the institutions their child will go through in her/his life.
There are many ways to involve primary caregivers in the program. Working in partnership with families allows children get the sense of secure attachment with the primary caregivers, have opportunity to share their experiences, and to be involved in a more expanded socio-cultural environment.
I believe that quality of Early Childhood Education is a foundation in supporting healthy communities to flourish.
%201.png){kind=logo}
