Sharing Web Resources

While following other links that I haven’t explored yet, I found out some interesting things about the Step by Step Program Foundation. For instance, they are involved in a "Promoting Access to Quality Education and Desegregation of Roma" Project, which is similar to the discussion we are talking about this week in my class. Here, is some information about the project and its goals.

In 2001 the Education Program Area carried out “The Roma Schools in Bulgaria” research. Its findings showed and confirmed the data of some previous research on the nationwide phenomenon of Roma dropouts as a result of interrelated economic, social and educational reasons. This research points to the educational stages, which are critical for Roma children according to the dropout rate.

Based on the above mentioned the current situation and needs, and considering the results of all projects and the expertise in this area, the Open Society Foundation – Sofia developed an integrated project, whose aim is to promote the provision of equal opportunities to children and youth of Roma origin in the entire education process and to increase their access to high quality education (from nursery to secondary education).

The project objectives focus on retaining the children at school and providing quality education and adequate preparation for social realization through:

• Improving the desegregation policy at a municipal level in connection with the integration of Roma children in mixed schools;
• Supporting the process of integration through attracting, including and successfully retaining Roma children at school hence increasing the opportunity for their passing to higher educational levels;
• Involving dropouts and children not covered by the educational system through strategies like community based programs and improving the receiving schools, where the children will be integrated;
• Supporting Roma children to continue their education through increasing the number of Roma children enrolled in mixed schools and improving their school performance.

This project proposal aims to implement these objectives through a new, integrated approach applied to the educational chain as a whole and involving all participants in the education process. This approach involves comprehensive partnership activities designed to improve the quality of education through teacher training, community development, school improvement and effective use of resources. These activities and trainings within programs as Education for Social Justice, Step by Step, Reading and Writing Critical Thinking, Health and Woman Programs under the School Improvement Initiative umbrella create opportunities for equal access to quality education for Roma children. In that sense, this is a pilot project not only for OSF – Sofia but also for the country.

Also, in the context of the Framework Program (FP), the project seeks to enhance schooling of children at educational institutions and encourage them to pass to higher levels of education. This is achieved through helping them leave “Roma” preschools and schools and enroll in mixed institutions. Again in the context of the FP that foresees measures against racism in the classroom, the project envisages teacher and parent training for overcoming biases.

This website contributed to my understanding of equity and excellence in early care and education. For instance, it showed me that no matter where you live in this world, everybody goes through the same thing one way or the other. Also, there are people out there who do care and wants to help individual succeed no matter their cultural differences.

Reference

Step By Step Program. (2001). Step By Step Program – Bulgaria. "Promoting Access to Quality Education and Desegregation of Roma" Project. Retrieved February 10, 2012, from http://www.stepbystep-bg.org/display.php?page=project3

Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

According to my international contact Emil, the European countries have been largely successful in maintaining public pre-primary education for 3-6s, with high enrolment rates. Yet, the quality and outreach of these services could, in many instances, be greatly improved. Nations vary in the extent to which they view the quality of national early education services as a critical responsibility to be supported by adequate funding, research, quality initiatives and the continued training of educators. In purely economic/educational terms, the return on investments in young children is potentially great. Such returns are foregone when societies do not provide comprehensive supports to families with young children and, in particular, fail to ensure a good start in life for excluded children.

The additional information about issues of equity and excellence that I acquired from my international sources was teacher-guided and collaborative playful learning interactions with relevant content (e.g. emergent academic language, literacy, numeracy, science, citizenship) is particularly promising in this regard, avoiding two often observed but much less adequate approaches in early childhood care and education: the ‘drill and kill’ approach, when the contents and learning formats of primary school are simply copied, and the ‘laisser faire’ approach, when the curriculum predominantly consists of free activities without teacher guidance.

Reference

Emil (personal communication, February 1, 2012) noted her personal experience with Issues related to excellence and equity in the early childhood field.

Sharing Web Resources

While looking at the Step by Step Foundation website, I saw that they had an e-newsletter.  As I look through some of their e-newsletter, I saw that they had an e-newsletter that talk about the well-being of children. The ISSA had launched an Online Databases of Human, Technical, and Institutional ECDE Resources in the CEE/CIS Region, the result of a partnership project between ISSA and UNICEF. The Databases provide rich information about policies, resources, and initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CEE/CIS), which guarantee and promote the rights of young children. In addition to providing details with respect to human, technical, and institutional resources in 26 countries of the region, these Databases also include information on relevant policies and legislative frameworks, as well as information on whether these resources are involved in or prepared for disaster risk reduction and emergency response.

The address of the website is www.issa.nl/issadatabases.html. User login name: issadatabases@issa.hu
Password: user01.

 ISSA Newsletter states across the region, a great deal needs to be done both in terms of designing comprehensive early childhood strategies and of ensuring their effective implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. This statement along is what made me think differently about the mindset of the economists, neurologist, and the politicians.  Are they really looking out for our children, or are they just trying to save money?

The e-newsletter helped me to understand my question that I mention earlier. According to ISSA Newsletter, ISSA and UNICEF welcome the fact that more and more development partners and governments in the region are beginning to pay closer attention to holistic policies and programs for young children. Therefore, greater attention is being directed to child poverty and its implications for the young, as well as the uniquely intertwined health, development, and protection needs of infants and young children (ISSA, 2010).

The e-newsletter helped broaden my thinking by showing me that these databases are intended to be a critical source of information to address this gap and to enable efforts to promote coordination and cooperation among key ECD players.

Reference

Izsak, E. (2010, Summer). ISSA and UNICEF Launch Databases of Early Childhood Development and Education Human, Technical, and Institutional Resources in CEE/CIS Region. Retrieved January 28, 2012, from http://www.issa.nl/newsletter/10/summer/topic2.html

Getting to Know Your International Contacts Part 1

For this assignment, I had to ask my partners that I had established contact with from the Step by Step Program Foundation to help me understand the issues of poverty they encounter in their professional lives, as well as, those they are concerned about throughout the world. One of them replied to me saying, “I am sending you link of the UNICEF study from 2009 where you can find some data about poverty, non-employment and children's well being. She also said, “On UNICEF site, you can find some other studies. The name of this contact is Suzana Kiradziska, and she is the Executive Director for the Foundation for Educational and Cultural Initiatives, "Step by Step" Macedonia.

I went to the UNICEF website and read about the Well-being of children and young people in difficult economic times. I found out that “the main objective of the study was to identify and analyze the effects of the difficult economic times and the current economic crisis on the well-being of children and young people throughout the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.” Also, the study was done to see how many families were most at risk in the difficult economic times.

Since I have establish contact with my two international partners, I have learned that it is better to have more than one contact to collaborate with because sometimes you may only get one responds to your question. For instance, I emailed both of my contacts and only one emailed back in time to write my blog assignment. I have also, learned about the economic crisis that they are facing in Macedonia. For example, “In countries already undergoing difficult economic times, such as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the global financial crisis exacerbated pre-existing problems such as limited foreign investment and high rates of unemployment and poverty, all of which contribute to extreme levels of social insecurity (Gerovska, 2010).

Reading about the poverty issues in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia has given me new insight on an international level of economic crisis. Poverty is everywhere, and it is affecting our children, families, and educational growth. There has to be something that can be done about our financial and economic crisis all over the world. I believe if you start in your own home than you would be able to help others around the world. But you must take care of home first.

Reference

Gerovska (personal communication, January 20, 2012) noted her personal experience understanding about the specific issues of poverty she encountered in her professional life, as well as, those she are concerned about throughout the world.

Gerovska-Mitev, M. (2010). The Well-Being of Children and Young People in Difficult Economic Times. Retrieved January 21, 2012, from http://www.unicef.org/tfyrmacedonia/STUDIJA_ENG_Final%281%29.pdf

Sharing Web Resources

For this blog assignment, I selected Bulgaria Step By Step Program Foundation as my international website. As for my contact person with the program, I have established contact with Emil Buzov. Emil answered my email asking me what she can do to help me with my blog assignment. Emil is a faculty teacher preparing future students in UNI. She also is an executive director of education NGO. She seemed eager to help me learn more about initiatives and policies of her organization. I am grateful that she answered my email.

Assoc. Prof. Emil Buzov, Ph.D - Executive director

доц. д-р Емил Бузов - Изпълнителен директор

 Step by Step Program Foundation

Bulgaria, Sofia - 1000, str. "Bacho Kiro " 14,

office phones: 00 359 9804942 or 00 359 9805712 or cell phone: 00 359 888 215779

www.stepbystep-bg.org,

emil.step@bitex.com

International Step By Step Association

http://www.issa.nl/network/bulgaria/bulgaria.html

Step by Step Program Foundation/Bulgaria is a non-governmental organization working in the field of the Bulgarian education since 1994.

                   

Vision

Quality education for the XXI century

Mission

As an educational model, the Step by Step Program - Bulgaria spreads ideas concerning the implementation of the following activities through using democratic principles for education:

• Offering educational technologies and strategies connected with interactive teaching methods and organization of the school environment;
• Monitoring, evaluation and research of educational projects;
• Developing specific projects in the field of permanent education as well as training and re-training teachers.

Connected to this, the Step by Step Program Foundation conducts the following projects:

• Infant and Toddler Groups Project
• Preschool Project
• Primary School Project
• Higher Education Project
• Children with Special Educational Needs Project
• Boards of School Trustees Project
• Municipality - Model Site Project
• Special Schools Project

The things that caught my attention about their website was they conduct a lot of projects. They seem to cover a lot of educational ground from infant through higher education to children with special needs to special schools projects. They also invest in re-training their teachers to better their academic skills. I believe that is a brilliant idea because in order to produce successful children, they must have well qualified teachers to teach them. I also believe that if more programs invest in their teacher’s education, then they will be able to prevent a lot of the issues that they have with their children developmental growth. 

Reference

Buzov, E. (2010). Step by Step Program Foundation Bulgaria. Retrieved January 14, 2012, from http://www.issa.nl/network/bulgaria/bulgaria.html

Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

I have been trying to locate and contact two early childhood professionals outside of the United States. I have emailed two early childhood professionals, asking them to help me with my blog assignment for my early childhood class. I am still awaiting their reply to my email. If they don’t respond back by Monday of next week, I will try to locate two more early childhood professionals somewhere else before I try the alternative assignment for Part 1. I choose those two organizations because I wanted to learn more about their country, and how their early childhood education systems work. I decided to study The Global Alliance of NAEYC because they had several countries that I wanted to explore and learn. I tried contacting Mr. Erica Atmore at the National Early Childhood Development Alliance, and I also tried contacting Emil Buzov at Step by Step Program Foundation Bulgaria. I hope they will contact me back, so I can start my journey of understanding their perspectives on some of the issues and trends explored in this course. Hopefully, you all have stated your journey as well because it doesn’t seem too easy to find contacts on the other side of the world. If you have made any contacts, please inform me on who I can contact, so I can get this show on the road.

"My Support"

My Support Net 

·         God

My God is everything to me, and without him, I wouldn’t be here today. Through all my trials and tribulation, he has been there for me and my family. I am glad that I know him and that he is in my life forever. Without God, I wouldn’t be where I am today. My faith has brought me through a lot of things such as, the lost of an aunt, the lost of my step father, my health issues, and school. Having faith is one thing but keeping faith in a storm is another, and having God on my side has strengthened my faith tremendously. Now that, I have God in my life, I couldn’t imagine my life without him. My life is good, and it can only get better as long as I have Jesus.

·         Family

My family/God family means everything to me. They have been there to support me emotionally, mentally, financially, and spiritually since the day I was born. There hasn’t been a day that goes by that my family wasn’t there to give me their support. They have taught me how to love one another, care for one another, and help one another. The support that I got from my family helped me to believe in myself, love myself, educate myself, so I wouldn’t lack the knowledge I needed to succeed in life. There a lot of people out there who wished they had a family who supported them, especially, when it came to them making their own decision in life. I’m glad that I am able to make my own footprints in life and not follow in someone else’s footprints unlike, other people. To lose my family support would be devastating because they are always there when I need them, and I would be lost without them. Having a family that supports you can build confidence, structure, and courage in a person, and I thank God for them and their support.

·         Boy Friend

My boy friend is the love of my life, and I cherish every moment with him even though he makes me mad at times. He is a very supportive boy friend. He supports the idea of going back to school even though it takes up a lot of my time. He supports me emotionally, financially, and spiritually. It is very rare for me to find someone who can support me in all three of those aspects at my age. I am blessed to have Nick in my life right now because he has taught me how to love again. I thought I could never fall in love again, and if it weren’t for Nick, I wouldn’t be able to experience it again. Love brings the best out of me, and I am glad that I have someone share it with, and there to support me no matter what.

I can imagine raising a child all by myself would be a challenge. I don’t think I would be able to raise a child without God, my husband, or my family. Having all three support groups would help me emotionally, practically, and physically. They would give me the strength, the patience, and the ability to raise a child in this day and age. They would also, help support me raise my child, and help me to make the right decision for his/her future. Without the daily support of God, my husband, and my family, I believe I would struggle trying to make ends meet. I wouldn’t want to live my life without the support of my love ones, especially when it is a time in my life when I need them the most.