Farewell

I want to take this time to thank everyone for their collaboration of thoughts pertaining to this course. We have all grown so much since being in this program and I have learned a lot from each and every one of you throughout this journey. I definitely did not know that early childhood education was going to be my niche until after I had m daughter, now i am passionate about making sure that all children have access to developmentally appropriate education as well as be able to do so without bias.
I have learned that:

1) There is nothing more important than providing our youth with education that will be of high quality. There should not be as many education gaps that we are experiencing when it comes to education.
2) People are not taught to be racist, therefore let us, as educators, help change society, starting with our community to not be racist. An anti-bias education is something that can strengthen all people.
3) When becoming an educator it is important to know your own biases, and know a lot about yourself. I have a better understanding of who I am and what it means to me to be a good educator.

A long term goal that I have would be to make a difference in the each student that i have the opportunity to teach. I want to leave all children with a strong sense of self worth, respect for others and their own racial background

International Communities of Practice

http://www.neighbours-international.com/communities-of-practice.html

There was not much information on how to join the organization or what would be required in order to become qualified.

http://www.acei.org/

The way you can join this organization is to pay dues.

Jobs/Roles in the ECE Community: National/Federal Level

Child Development Associate Council

http://www.cdacouncil.org/resource-center/early-childhood-organizations

This site is designed to help people of the early childhood community continue to improvement of its professionals. There were not any position that I could find within this website, but there are applications available to become a child development associate. There s an approval process.

National Association of Early Childhood Teacher Educators

http://www.naecte.org/

However for this site, I saw that there was a place for job postings, but there was also a section where you had to enter a form of payment in order to post jobs and post positions. I saw a few positions that were available for Professors, Faculty, Director and Assistant Professor.

Professor - University of Montana Western (Posted 04/28/2015)

Director - San Diego Cooperative Preschool (Posted 02/25/2015)

Faculty - MiraCosta College (Posted 01/11/2015)

Director - Ohio University Patton College of Education (Posted 01/10/2015)

Assistant Professor - Western Washington University (Posted 12/09/2014)

National Education Association

http://www.nea.org/home/18163.htm

Active Professional/Certified

For individuals employed in public education in a certified position in a public school district or institution of higher learning or whose job is primarily education.   More

 Active Education Support Professional (ESP)/Classified

For individuals who are employed in public education in a support position in a public school district or institution of higher learning or whose job is primarily in education.   More

 Retired

For individuals no longer employed in public education and who are eligible to receive a pension from an educational employment institution.  More

 Pre-Retired Subscription

For individuals who are currently working and are an NEA Active Professional or ESP, you may join as a pre-retired member in advance of retirement.   More

 Student Membership

Student Membership is available if you are enrolled in a postsecondary program that is preparatory for employment in a position that will make you eligible for Active (teacher) membership in the NEA.

this is what is needed in order to join this organization. they also have a position that will be beneficial for students that want to become apart of this organizations in preparation for employment.

Communities of Practice

I googled communities of practice for early childhood for my community, but it did not yield any results for the city in which I live in. There are not many of the communities of practice in my area, if there are any at all. However, I did find one for the state of tennessee:

"Technical Assistance Partnership":
http://www.tapartnership.org/COP/earlyChildhood/

"The Church Health Center":

"Porter Leath"
It was very difficult to find these type of interaction within the community that I live in. However, I am interested in finding ways to make this possible for the youth in this area. I am not sure if they are just difficult to find via google or if they do not exist. It may be that I do not know how to find these organizations, but it was even more difficult to find job openings for these type of positions as well.