A Note of Thanks and Support Blog 5

Blog 5 Note of Thanks and Support

I wanted to say thank you to my colleagues for their support for this class. This class has been a very hard. We have shared our own frustration in this course. I still don’t understand how to write short-term goals and long-term goals. I appreciate the advice and suggestion my colleagues have given me. I have received helpful advice from many of my colleagues through emails, discussion board, on struggling issues.

  I have gain many new ideas on encouraging parents and teachers to attend meetings. My parent meeting went better than to be expected with 12 parents attending the meeting plus teachers and one family advocate. My advocacy action plan was about suggested service providers for children and support groups for parents. I provided a two page flyer for parents, teachers, and family advocate to use. Our family advocate was so excited about the flyer she gave two parents a copy to use before the parent meeting.

My colleagues suggested I plan ahead and give parents a week’s notice of the meeting. They suggested I provide a prize for the teacher that had the most parents to attend the meeting. Bath and Body lotions make a great prize for teachers. Teachers can encourage parents to attend the meetings. My colleagues suggested useful and appropriate web sites that can support my families and provide information for my advocacy plan.

Good Luck on your future as we touch the lives of children and families.    

Enlisting and Providing Support Blog 4

Blog 4

·        Questions I have for my colleagues to provide help and support for my presentation Advocacy Action Plan.

1.     I have printed invitation for the parent meeting on flyers and each one of the teachers has the information post on their classroom door. We have change the time to 2:00 for the parent meeting. Our children have to be picked up by 2:30 so this will encourage parents to come early and attend the meeting. We are going to verbally remind the parents of the meeting that morning. I would welcome any other ideas from my colleagues. I am going to offer refreshments. I have invited my supervisor and teachers to attend the parent meeting.

·        Resources and information I am seeking

1.     I am seeking information that will support parents and children with special needs. They are plenty of information from different organization but some of them want you to pay for the information or donate money to their organization. The families that I work with are low income of 5000-21000 a year. These children have no private insurance and are on Medicaid.

 

·        Resources and/or information you have found helpful and insightful

1.     One of my colleagues suggested giving a door prize to the teacher and assistance that had the most parents to attend the parent meeting. One of her ideas was to have a preplanned meeting for each month around the same time. This way parents can plan for this meeting in advance.

2.     I have asked parents questions about the services their child received and information they would like to know. This information has encouraged me to focus on the parents support and child’s service providers.

3.     I have shared this information with teachers and special needs providers. They have given me ideas to research on web sites.

4.     Good luck to my colleagues on their presentation and Advocacy Planning.  

My Personal Advocacy Journey Blog 3

My Personal Advocacy Journey for Blog 3 to provide suggested support group information to parents

My inspiration for my advocacy plan came from parents that had many question about where other families get services for their child that was diagnosed with delays. I suggested they talk to their child’s pediatrician for advice and referrals. Parents would ask me about other families who had special needs children. These parents seemed frustrated and overwhelmed with questions that I could not provide the answer.  Due to the confidential records I could not give them information they were asking. I can give them a suggested list of providers and support groups in our area. I am excited to plan a parent meeting and to give them my paper. I will offer parents and guest refreshments as they talk about the concerns they have with their child and I can share information on my paper. 

My challenges are to encourage parents to attend the meeting and to share my information with the whole group. Many of our parents work or they are not interested in staying for the meeting to be involved.

I might be able to overcome my challenge for parent’s attendance at the meeting by having the meeting at 8:30 in the morning after drop off time or at 2:00 in the evening before pick up time. In the past we have planed our meetings at 9:00 in the morning but Head Start moved our time for children to be here by 8:30 instead of 9:00. These strategies will improve my Advocacy Plan and the attendance for my parents at the meeting.

The anxieties I will face is speaking to parents, special needs guest, family advocate, and my supervisor in a parent meeting. I can hold a conversation with each one but to share my information for 10-20 minutes in a group for that length of time will be a challenge.

All of my colleagues have great advocacy plans and we have the strength through our past classes to build a terrific Advocacy Plan. I ask my colleagues to share with me what they would put in a paper and post it on their parent board about suggested service providers and support groups in their area.

Welcome to my Blog for 455 Gail Owens

Welcome colleagues to my blog. I have enjoyed reading my friends blogs from 411 and I am excited to read the blogs of my 455 colleagues. I hope you had a great Christmas and a nice break from college to be your families. Good Luck with your classes.

Blog 5 Note of Thanks and Support

Blog 5 Note of Thanks and Support

I want to express my gratitude and thanks to my colleagues that read my blogs and my discussion post. I have enjoyed reading your post and your ideas were amazing from your post. I liked the topics for the advocate plans. They sounded like dedicated teachers that were willing to make a difference in a child’s life.

I wanted to say thank you to the one year old classroom for giving me the opportunity to observe their daily routines and I got to interview the teachers. During this 10 week process I have interview three different area specialist that offer services to our children. This was great information that I can use with the child receiving services and with other students in the room to enhance their skills. I observed the specialist using materials similar to the materials we have in the classroom. Observing the specialist gave me ideas and strategies’ that I can use with the whole room.  

The information that I received from this classroom prepared me for my research paper. This information will be a great resource that I can share with my parents that will benefit their children. This information will help to prepare me for my internship 412. I want to say Thanks to Professor Puntil-Wilcek for helping me set up my blog and the comments and instruction for my papers. Good Luck to all my colleagues and Merry Christmas.  

Blog 4 Observation and Interaction with professionals, children and families that have delays

Blog4- My Observation and Interaction with professions, children and families in Early Head Start as it relates to children with early signs of delays.

          My focus is on early signs of delays in Early Head Start children. During these two weeks I have talked with teachers and parents that their children was screened using the Denver II. The question I wanted to focus on was children that the test results were suspect. If a child was scored suspect that would mean the child had two or more areas of concern on the test.  The teacher stated she rescreens the child with in two weeks time frame. The children in question still showed delays in speech and fine motor delays. The teacher sat up a meeting with special needs coordinator and the parents. The parents came in and agreed to the service now they are waiting on Baby Net to call them and set up a meeting and to screen the child.

          I ask the teacher how she felt about the process she stated that it was faster than she seen in past years. With the holidays coming she expected the meeting to take place January instead of November. The teacher seemed pleased. I ask, did all the families that they talked with agree to the service. The teacher stated “no” one of the families declined services because the family stated the child talked at home and they could understand the child’s wants. The mother stated her other son talked later and was doing ok in public school. I ask what “ok” result was, the teacher stated “ok” in her opinion was not good. She stated the child talked to her one time in three word sentences. The sibling is quite but response to directions. The teacher stated that she will continue to work one-on-one with the child and ask the child to repeat words to increase the child’s vocabulary. The teacher said she will support family’s decision and give them choice to help their child. She will retest all children February 2013 using the Denver II. During this time she will work closely with children, parents, and Baby Net to provide the best possible care for each individual child.

          I ask the teacher if she would provide families with suggestion to enhance learning for their child. She stated she sends home a monthly calendar for families to work with their children at home by naming objects, reading stories, sing to music, and talking to their child everyday. This was great information the teacher had for families. I offered web sites and games that parents could interact with their child. The experience that I gain is that teachers need to be willing to accept decision parents make about their own child.

Blog 3 Interacting with Professional Administrative Staff

My main research is about common delays in infant, toddlers and preschool children. I want to create an Advocacy Plan for children with delays. For this blog assignment I interviewed and observed our center director for Head Start. She has been working for Head Start for 14 years and a director for three years. During this time as a director and a teacher she has worked with children and their families that have delays. My first question was “what do you as a center director do if you think a child might have delays.” She stated “we do an initial screening on all our children the first 45 days with DIAL-3.” During the year we do assessment using Work Sampling and Early Learning framework. This is an on-going assessment tool used to keep tract of each child’s progress. Then they share the information with the parents during home visits and conferences. I ask what a center director does with the information she receives from teachers about a child that has failed the DIAL-3 screening. She stated that she ask teachers to retest the child in 10 days using the same screening tool. She stated that in the child’s registration packet is forms about a Child’s Health Record, and a Physical form the parent must get filled out by the child’s doctor. This is great information that could explain delay’s a child has. This information will be about each individual child.

Then I ask what the follow up plan is if a child has delays. She stated “a teacher might be asked to do a five or ten day observation on a child that a teacher has concerns about and has failed the assessments.” Then a meeting is set up with the parents, teacher’s director, and special need coordinator. The parents will sign a consent form for the information sent to the school district if a child is three years old or older. The school district will do assessments and observe the child at home and school to see if the child qualifies for services. Children can receive services at home or in the Head Start setting.

My second interview was with a quality control specialist from Early Head Start and Head Start. We had an in-service about supporting cultural diversity and providing accommodation for children with special needs. During the in-service our quality control specialist talked about labeling shelves and containers with pictures, English words and home language of children in the classroom. Early Head Start children can not read the words but teachers can read the words in English and the child’s home language during clean-up time. I thought this was a great idea to read the words to the children that name the objects. Our quality control specialist gave handouts that supported words in English and Spanish that we could label our shelves and materials with. I ask about children that that we have in our classrooms that family’s home language is Chinese. Our quality control stated she would find a list of words to translate and to work with the families.   She offered suggestion of having a tape player and asking parents to volunteer saying familiar words in their home language and repeat the word in English so our teachers would have the correct pronunciation of a word.

I gained many insights from these interviews. I did not know the policies for teachers doing screenings and assessment for Head Start children. This would be a challenge for Head Start teachers to do all these screening on seventeen children that were three years old or twenty children that were four years old. They are two teachers in a room but one teacher would have to do the screenings on each child. The other teacher would facilitate learning for the classroom. I liked the idea of using a tape player for my families to say words in their home language. I was excited to see if my children would recognize their parent’s voices on the tapes. This information from my interviews will be useful in my research paper to provide a professional support for children that have delays.