Early Childhood Education: Roles of Family, Educators, and Environment

Early Childhood Education
Name
Institution
Early Childhood Education
Introduction
During the course of my high school, I always had mixed thoughts about which among teaching and medicine would be a perfect career path for me to pursue. All the while I wanted a career that would endear me to nurturing growth and caring for young people. After completing school, I spent several months doing community work and during that period I did a number of college applications with a preference on medical courses with teaching as an alternative course. As fate would turn out, my medical college admission letter came one month after I had already secured an admission and joined a teacher training in the Early Years sector that was in the month of September, four years ago.
My philosophy concerning valuing each child as an individual and as a part of the community was nurtured in college and it helps me to give children good experiences while learning and developing skills as they grow and prepare them for the future. The curriculum used by Early Years educators must be balanced and creative to develop the children’s abilities, knowledge and understanding in a personalized learning environment. I value sharing of the learning objectives as well as the success criteria with the children because by letting them know exactly what is expected of them enables them get focused and achieve better.
I am passionate about my work and my experience and training helps me to use the most appropriate interventions such as those designed for each child by modifying them to be able to serve into larger groups of children. The children in my class are well acquainted with me and this makes it easy for my lesson presentation in several ways depending on the children’s abilities like the use of visual presentations and audio learner materials. My initiatives must be balanced for both of us so that in as much the child needs to learn and understand, I also must be able to learn about each child’s learning styles as the child is enabled to build their own knowledge base. Children should be allowed to explore and discover on their own concepts and topics that interest them to make the learning experience a success.
The Role of the Child in Early Years Learning
Educators need a thorough understanding of the processes of child development to able to use pedagogical approaches effectively. Child development constitutes knowledge that can be used for recognizing and reporting children’s behaviors through observation and draw conclusions from the deductions before sharing it with their families and caregivers (Miller, 2010). When educators are properly informed and empowered about child development, they are able to provide instructions and guidelines that challenge the abilities of the children in a bid to compel them to work extra hard to achieve more. The educators interact with the children and give them challenging tasks beyond their current capabilities to provoke learning at a slightly higher level. It is important for the educator to understand what to expect as outcomes and as well be able to determine when the child is experiencing challenges.
A resource continuum of development is provided for educators to understand the sequences of development. This particular resource is not a universally accepted template and is not intended to be used as an assessment tool but is meant to integrate all areas of programs such that children get holistic development. Children from different traditional backgrounds should be given attention on the sensitive domains of their social, emotional, physical, and cognitive and language development. The other important areas where children should be observed on are the creative, aesthetic and spiritual perspectives.
Learning requires a change of mindset in the way educators interact with children under different contexts. The theories and practices in terms of what educators pay attention to when having conversations with children, their families and even colleagues, contexts which influence children’s growth through play and learning as well as their own perspectives on their life experiences (Moss, 2019). Educators are able to interrogate the children and understand their experiences by looking at them and listening to them from various perspectives such as the unique characteristic strengths, attitudes and approaches for each child, children relationships at their home environments including their cultural context and their influence on the child’s development and learning, the motivation for the child’s actions and what brings joy to them, what can be done to enhance the children’s learning and each child’s character.
A typical field learning day for the child begins with the natural sensual experiences of the outside world to create anticipation of the day (Forest School Canada, 2014). Group meetings create impressions of bonding the children together to give them the impetus that will drive the day and express their group’s collective needs. Each day has unique tasks and group initiatives can last for several days depending on the children’s initiative and they generate their own perspectives.
The Role of the Family in Early Years Learning
Understanding the children from different perspectives is helpful for educators to ensure design of education programs that are unique in value and have varied characteristics of their families and their communities (Miller, 2010). The approaches must be different as no single one is applicable in all children situations. Cultural and linguistic backgrounds such as those of indigenous people of Canada comprising of the Métis, First nations, Inuit, and Aborigines must be considered. The Early experiences for indigenous children in Canada vary because of the way they are raised in cultural ways which are more flourishing in rural and remote and isolated regions in contrast to the affluent western hybrid culture found in metropolitan areas (Ball, 2012). Indigenous children like the aborigines and First Nations’ are actively involved in family and community activities to enable them to learn concepts and skills about their heritage such as indigenous language, land issues as well as different kinds of activities. These early learning opportunities stimulate their cultural identity and spiritual consciousness and enables educators to create a culturally safe environment for generating concepts that make the children good learners.
Early Years programs should be considerate about the culture and linguistic backgrounds of the children to create a web of both family and community as the child’s anchor for development. Families are competent and capable in experience to be partners with educators in creating relationships that will benefit the children significantly. The importance of strong, respectful relationships with families cannot be overlooked because creating an environment where families are welcomed and opportunities are provided is supportive to their sense of belonging (Miller, 2010). Educators however should engage families in identifying the characteristics and strengths of each family, how to encourage more integration, how to strengthen cultural competence, how to help families as co-learners about their children as well as recognizing the strengths of families.
The Role of the Community in Early Years Learning
Educators must make the children understand that their communities begin right from their classrooms before extending to the local community and then the wider global community. Creating a community building program that will enable the children learn to relate with their community members is important through the classroom which is the child’s first experience of the community. The educator must enhance cohesion in the classroom by adopting school wide community building programs that outline routines and rituals including a common language (Miller, 2010). Other aspects of this program include regular class meetings, a common language for collaborative learning activities, class discussions and conflict resolution in order to build mutually respectful relationships. The children are introduced to multiple aspects of social issues and empathy which is then extended from the classroom to the local and global communities. The educators use role playing and inquiry to teach the children.
Early Years plays a very important role in nurturing visibility, inclusion and active invol...