Time Well Spent

Dear Dr. Myers and fellow Walden Classmates:

These last 8 weeks have been extremely amazing and wonderful to work with such a diverse group of people with the same goal in mind. I have no doubt that we will all leave a remarkable impact on the field of early childhood education in unique ways. It is my greatest wish to work with each of you one day to make a great impact on the lives of children and families all across the world.

As I move closer to the completion of this course, I am reminded of the following quotes to make it to the end or to continue to push myself. I have listed the quotes below:

• "Children are the living messages that we send to a time we will not see."(John Whitehead, founder of Rutherford Institute)
• "The price of greatness is responsibility." (Sir Winston Churchill)
• "Be the change that you want to see in the world." (Mohandas Ghandi)

Each of these quotes move beyond the field of education but can definitely relate to what we (parents, teachers, advocates, etc) need to strive for and make the years of early childhood benefit all children.

This course has left 3 deeply felt learnings that I have gathered from this course include: being passionate, create the right team, and continue to make changes. First lesson learned was being passionate was taught to me by searching for a topic that I felt needed addressing in the field of early childhood (this because the foundation for my major assessment). The second lesson learned to create the right team or people from diverse background to add something meaningful to the goal. The final deeply felt learning that gained from this course is to never be afraid to make revisions to plans. Revisions doesn't mean failure but simply changing a component to take a step closer to reaching the goal.

I am now more convinced after completing this course and this program, that I will meet my long term goal of establishing a resource centers for children and families. I want to use all of my resources that I have gathered along the way through the wonderful contacts of professors and classmates to make this dream a reality with hopes of working with many of my classmate in the near future.

Best wishes on your many endeavours and pray that our paths meet in the near future.

Sincerely,

TaShunda Pollard-Chapman


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Jobs/Roles in ECE Community: International Level

This week I am looking at jobs with organizations in the early childhood field from an international perspective. In this blog, I will share the organizations that I find interesting, current positions with the organizations and reasons why each of them was chosen.

1. Organization: International Youth Foundation
     Website: http://iyfnet.org
     Position: Program Manager-Employability (MENA Region)
     Requirements: Masters of Education with experience in working with youth, ability to travel,
         excellent computer skills with Microsoft products.
     Significance: I chose this organization because it works with children and trains them with job
     skills that they can use in the future. It is important to me because it gives youth skills to earn
      money the right way and builds confidence while learning a trade.

2.  Organization: Plan International USA
      Website: http://www.planusa.org
       Position: Program Associate/Health
       Requirements: Good communication, in depth knowledge of spread sheets, power point
         presentations, word processing and experience in Spanish.
      Significance: I chose this organization because it focuses on developing health programs around
         the world which is very important because there are limited resources in many parts of the
         world for children and families. This is a dream job for me because it will provide the
         opportunity to travel to remote parts of the world to help communities establish and learn about
         good health.

3.  Organization: World Food Programme
     Website: http://www.wfp.org
      Position: Junior Professional Officer
      Requirements: none were listed only an application
      Significance: I chose this organization because it focuses on creating food programs around the
         world for children and families because poverty and lack of food are common in many parts of
         the world.

Each organization that was chosen taps into an interests of mine: working with youth, promoting good health and working on eliminating poverty which are all common issues that families with children face daily.  I believe that each of these positions would ideally be a dream job because it would allow me to travel and network with individuals in the field on an international level.