Time Well Spent: Completing one Journey to Start Another

            Throughout my Masters in Early Childhood Studies I have learned a lot about myself and others.  I have relearned the value of self-reflecting and how it benefits both you and your mission.  I have learned and redefined my passion in the early childhood field.  I found that I am very passionate about the inclusion of all children, especially the young children that demonstrate challenging behaviors.  I am a firm believer that all young children should have high quality, safe and equitable education and care no matter what their ethnicity, race, gender, ability level, or family type.  During this program I learned about research and how important it is for the early childhood field.  I also take with me the knowledge about diversity and now understand that it is a long hard journey that begins with me taking a little step and is a lifelong process.   

            In our Foundations class we had to list three professional goals that we want to accomplish.  As I review my three goals I see that I am well on my journey of making a safe high quality, equitable learning environment for all young children.  I still have a lot of room to grow and I am a true believer in lifelong learning.  We also had to write a mission statement for the early childhood field and I would like to share mine.  The following is the mission statement that I wrote in our Foundations class:

The mission for the early childhood field is to create a high quality accessible learning environment that is individualized and promotes children’s cognitive, language, social, emotional, and physical development.  Provide families with support, education, and opportunities to be involved in their child’s development.  Provide programs that support interventions, preventions, and treatment for all young children.  Prepare professionals to extend their knowledge of the development of children and identify appropriate and effective skills needed when working with young children.  Provide educational opportunities on psychological flexibility to professionals and families.

If everyone in the early childhood field built and followed this mission I think that we would see high quality accessible education and care for all young children.

 

Saying good bye is a hard thing to do.  I want to thank all my colleagues that have supported, commented, and shared their ideas with me.  Without your support this program would not be meaningful.  You are what made this program successful for me.  I hope that we stay connected with each other.  Thank you for helping me grow and improve my abilities to make social change in the early childhood field.

 

 

If you need me for any reason my email address is lucibarnes@hotmail.com I hope that we can continue to support each other on our journey.