Observing and Interacting with Families of the Children in Your Setting

2/22/2013

I interviewed Sharna she is a parent. She works part time and her son attends Mary Crane Center in the 3-5 year old class. He is 3-years old. Sharna serves on several boards in the center: Parent Policy Board, Parent Policy Committee and Self- Assessment Team.  She is the Chair Person of the Lake and Pulaski Parent Policy Board.  She represents the parents from Lake and Pulaski site while in a site wide Parent Policy meeting. At the meeting all Presidents from the different sites attend to represent their site. They give reports about different things going on at the different sites.  Sharna said there are program managers on the Parent Policy board to tell more about the different programs in the agency. Sharna duties include conducting emergency meetings, reaching out to parents, finding activities for children especially free activities. She said at the Policy meetings all sites collaborate and give information about enrollment, fundraisers, laws, and finances. Since I’ve been at the site I have seen Sharna around the center and she has positive relationships with the staff. She sits with the staff during their lunch time and has some pretty interesting conversations about the state of the Agency. She comes every day and volunteers in the classroom. She comes at nap time and helps serve snack and put the cots away. She makes the attendance charts a initiative the center has to help recover poor attendance.

Question: How do you feel the program most support and influence her child’s development?

Response: Child has not gained much knowledge since he has been in the center. The teachers are constantly changing and the teachers he has now are new to teaching. She feels since he has been in the program he has actually regressed.

Q: how has he regressed?

R: he is no longer does the self-help skills he was doing before.  He no longer spells his name, or knows his telephone number and address. His behavior is really challenging now, he don’t listen to his teachers. WE moved from the suburban area and the centers were different. Parents were more involved and to get parents involved we have to offer them something like gifts. It’s like pulling teeth to get parents to involved, it’s like they don’t care.

Q: What areas does your child need Support?

R: Fine Motor like buttoning and zipping, understanding small and large, name, numbers and counting, different languages. His previous school always had a second language; they learned Spanish at his old school.

 Q: How do you feel about Early mathematics with preschoolers?

R: I believe it is important for my child to learn how to count, recognize his number, learn about sizes.

Q: what do you think we can do to help your child with early mathematics?

R: Start sending him work to do at home. I have to find things to do with my child at home. If I can piggyback what you all are teaching here that would help him in a major way.

Q: Is there anything else you would like to add about advocey?

R: All the policies aren’t fair to all the children. It seems as though the agency is giving the best things to the other sites like the children up north have I-pads. They are giving all the better stuff to the children that don’t need it the most. They need to put more money into this center and the other center on the westside, in the poor areas.  But the parents support the center and they are always at the parent meetings.  My child is doing ok because I sit down with him every day and I work with him. I noticed he is not learning anymore so I take up extra time.

While observing the children in the areas where more mathematics are expected like the water table. The children were not using much mathematics literacy. They were not talking about sizes, amount, full and empty. They talked making a pie and even with this they didn’t talk about half, more and less. While I observed them with the manipulative rock pieces they did a lot of the actions such as filling and emptying jars with rocks. When they topped off they understood how to take some off. They had the basic concrete understanding of mathematics but their vocabulary was lacking.

From my interview I realized this parent is very active in her child’s learning. She does not fully understand the importance of preschool but she does understand her role in her child’s learning.  She has some basic understanding of mathematics but not a full understanding of what her child should be doing. I will use this interview to include parental involvement with activities to do at home that are simple and concrete about mathematics. This interview has prompted me to research ways of helping parents understand the importance of early mathematics literacy.  I will also include ways of helping learn the best way to support their child’s early mathematics literacy.

My observations of the children helped me realize children in this class need to link their vocabulary and conversations with their actions. They need someone to facilitate the learning while they are playing and interacting with one another and toys. They need more talks about mathematics literacy and this should actually start at young ages.

Module 3

I interacted with K.M the education coordinator for children 3-5 years old.  She is responsible for monitoring teachers. She monitors their physical environment and the social environment. She is also responsible for making sure teachers complete developmentally appropriate lesson plans, also making sure teachers create Reggio inspired and Reggio inspired documentation. She monitors 25 teachers at 3 different work sites. At each site she has a space where she works and other monitors.  She communicates with the teachers, CPS staff and site directors. Her immediate supervisor is the program director.

As I observed with her today she worked at her home site.  She rearranged a classroom with a new teacher. She wanted the new teacher to have a place where she is more comfortable, organized and fits her teaching style. She was also there to monitor one of the teachers. She monitored the teacher during circle time and I also monitored. She was looking for the interactions between the teachers and children and making sure she was engaged in developmentally appropriate practices. After the observation I reviewed her notes and she made a note about the length of circle time. She thought it was lengthy but the children were well engaged.  As a question for review she asked the teachers how they got their circle time to be so well engaged and lengthy. She was really impressed because the children that weren’t engaged were allowed to leave and work in another part of the classroom.   She was impressed because the teacher did a variety of literacy activities: letter sounds, alphabet recognition, read a story and did an activity about alliteration. In my own observation she didn’t do as much mathematics as she did literacy.

I asked K. M her thoughts about the amount of early mathematics skills the children are engaged in. She replied  

“there are so many programs we participate in that promote early literacy and decree this is the key to school readiness. The latest push is for school readiness and connecting the families. As educator coordinators we must create binders first to emphasize early literacy skills. The binders are at each site and teachers must use them during home visits and parent teacher conferences. There are a vareity of activities parents can do to help promote literacy development.

I asked her does she feel mathematics deserve the same amount of time and effort as literacy.

She replied “mathematics and literacy development are two skills children will continue to develop throughout their life. It is important for children to get these experiences however I must follow the orders of my superiors