A Note of Thanks and Support

First I would like to thank God who is the head of my life. I went through some issues after having my baby with my blood pressure and I thank God for giving me the strength to continue with this class and fulfill my newly motherly duties at the same time. It was stressful at times but it was worth it.

Then I would like to thank my colleagues for sharing their experiences which have strengthened my understanding about a lot of things. Also, thanks for all of the comments and insights on my discussions. It helped me to hear the views of others so that I coukld see different views of certain topics. I feel like I gave my colleages the same things sucha s great feedback on discussion and blogs.

I wish all of my colleagues nothing but success in their future endeavors. I wish them all to become future leaders in the early childhood field.

I would also like to thank my professor who was also great and very helpful with whatever questions or issues that I had. Walden couldn't have any better professors and I'm glad to be apart of this University


Sincerely,

Crystal Preston




"Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children."
Charles R. Swindoll
"Life, love, and laughter - what priceless gifts to give our children."
Phyllis Dryden

NAEYC Code of Ethics

Ethical Responsibilities to Families
Ideals
I-2.1—To be familiar with the knowledge base related to
working effectively with families and to stay informed
through continuing education and training.

I-2.2—To develop relationships of mutual trust and
create partnerships with the families we serve.

I-2.3—To welcome all family members and encourage
them to participate in the program.

These three are important because
families are of primary importance in children’s
development. Because the family and the early childhood
practitioner have a common interest in the child’s
well-being, we acknowledge a primary responsibility to
bring about communication, cooperation, and collaboration
between the home and early childhood program
in ways that enhance the child’s development.

Testing for Intelligence

In early childhood,  children should be assessed but not measured on their ability to do something.  I feel that they should be assessed on the 5 developmental domains which are fine motor, gross motor, social/emotional, language and cogntive. I also feel that the satndarized test are good to see what a child knows but it shouldn't determine big milestones in a child's life such as graduation or entering college. A test doesn't always your abilities and strengths. Someone may be a good test taker and another person may not be. For example, in high school I was a student who made A's and B's and my cousin was a student who made A's, B's, C's and D's. She was a nonchalant person when it came to taking a standarized test and I was nervous during that time. We both took the GHSGT which is the Georgia High School Graduation Test and she passed all of her test. I didn't pass Science or Social Studies. This is an example of good test takers and bad test takers. I currently have test anxiety and I get nervous when taking a timed test.

School-aged children are assessed all over the world and the country that I'm interested in getting information about is Japan. In Japan, children are assessed and measured in school. The focus of Japanese parents and teachers is to prepare students for two important tests: one at the end of ninth grade, which determines whether a student goes to a vocational school, a first-rate public college-preparatory high school, a second rate high school or an expensive private school; and another at the end of the 12th grade to gain entrance to university. This is similar to the schools in the US.  Also, national achievement tests are given to primary school sixth graders and third year middle school students. In some cases, the test require students to not only give an answer but their calculations.

When it comes to children being assessed,  one of my big concerns is giving the smaller children test. When they are four to eight years old, I feel that they don't understand how important it is when comes to taking standardized tests so it shouldn't be measured.

Reference:

http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=830&catid=23&subcatid=150