Thank You!

I would like to take a moment and thank all of the wonderful colleagues I have met during my first online course through Walden University. They have all been generous in sharing their ideas, knowledge, and experiences relating both to their personal and professional lives. They have enriched and widened my view of the field of early childhood education through our online discussions and blogs. I will forever grateful for the valuable resource they have become. I would never have learned so much if I had been learning alone.

I would like to extend a special thank you to the members of my most recent discussion group, Amanda, Nicole, Vanda, Kelly, and Artrianna. I looked forward to reading your posts each week and enjoyed our discussions. 

I would also like to thank my colleagues whose blogs I found to be informational and inspiring, and who provided positive feedback and encouragement on my blog, especially, Amanda, Nicole, Artrianna, Candice, Amanda, Stacey, and Arielle. 

I enjoyed this journey with all of you and learned a lot!

Here are a few more quotes that I would like to share with my colleagues.

"The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you."
B.B. King

"If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader."

John Quincy Adams

"The only person who is educated is the one who has learned how to learn and change."

Carl Rogers

Ethical Ideals

The following ideals are contained in the NAEYC and DEC codes of ethics. They are meaningful to me because they are directly related to children and families. At this point in my career, children and families are the groups that I have direct contact with on a daily basis. They are the reason I go to work every day. They are the fuel for the passion I have for my profession. I take these ideals very seriously and try to put them into practice each day. Teaching children is what I was born to do. Helping parents to support their children is interrelated to my life’s work and is just as important as teaching is to me.

·         To create and maintain safe and healthy settings that foster children’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development and that respect their dignity and their contributions. (NAEYC, 2005).

·         To use assessment instruments and strategies that are appropriate for the children to be assessed, that are used only for the purposes for which they were designed, and that have the potential to benefit children. (NAEYC, 2005).

·         To use assessment information to understand and support children’s development and learning, to support instruction, and to identify children who may need additional services. (NAEYC, 2005).

·         To develop relationships of mutual trust and create partnerships with the families we serve. (NAEYC, 2005).

·         To welcome all family members and encourage them to participate in the program. (NAEYC, 2005).

·         We shall use individually appropriate assessment strategies including multiple sources of information such as observations, interviews with significant caregivers, formal and informal assessments to determine children’s learning styles, strengths, and challenges. (DEC, 2000).

·         We shall build relationships with individual children and families while individualizing the curricula and learning environments to facilitate young children’s development and learning. (DEC, 2000).

Resources

NAEYC. (2005). Code of ethical conduct and statement of commitment. Retrieved  from

http://www.naeyc.org/files/naeyc/file/positions/PSETH05.pdf

The Division for Early Childhood. (2000). Code of ethics. Retrieved from

http://www.dec-sped.org/