Promoting Children’s Social and Emotional Development Through Preschool Education

 

 

To be prepared for school, children also must be excited and curious about learning and confident that they can succeed.  They should be able to recognize and understand their own feelings as well as others. They must be able to control their own feelings and behaviors as well as get along with others and their teachers.  Unfortuantely, many kindergarten teachers express concerns that children entering kindergarten are not ready for the challenges in their new environment. These skills begin with the relationships children from with people around them that includes parents, family members, teachers and other children.

The Role of Family

Parents and families play an enormous role in shaping a child’s social and emotional development. Early relationships with parents lay the foundation on which social competency and peer relationships are built.

 

The Role of Teachers/Early Childhood Educators

Just as parents who are warm and responsive are more likely to promote strong social and

emotional skills in their children, so too are early childhood educators and teachers, which means that

the classroom environment must enable teachers the time to focus on individual children. Just as it is

important for a consistent attachment to form between a parent and child, so too is such an attachmen

important for caregiver and child. That means that staff turnover in preschool programs should be kept to minimum.

The Role of Peers
Through play children learn how to work in teams and cooperate with others. Their behavior is influenced by the way teachers them and they way they are treated by other children. As early as preschool, the relationships children develop with one another can have a lasting impact on academic achievement, because they can contribute to more positive feelings about school and eagerness to engage in classroom activities. It is important to have skilled preschool teachers who can intervene when they see children having difficulties with peers and help the children learn how to resolve conflicts, regulate emotion, and respond to the emotions of others.

Some of the strongest evidence for the benefits that preschool programs can produce on children’s social and emotional development is derived from demonstration projects begun in the 1960s and 1970s.

 

The High/Scope Perry Preschool Project: A recently released report of outcomes through age 40 confirms the economic benefits of investing in the education of young children.Throughout their school years, the children from the program groupoutperformed the control group on achievement tests, had better attitudes about school, and were more likely to graduate from high school. As adults, the preschool participants attained higher levels of educationand were more likely to vote in elections, find and maintain employment, and own their own homes,than children in the control group.
The Syracuse University Family Development Research Program:This program offered education, nutrition,health and safety, and human service resources to low-income, primarily African-American families from 1969-1975.At follow-up, when children were 13-16 years old, 6 percent of the intervention group versus 22 percent of the matched comparison group children had been processed as probation cases (juvenile delinquency) by the County Probation Department, and the cases for the youth in the comparison group were much more severe and chronic.
 

The Houston Parent Child Development Center: In 1970 this program was designed to promote social and intellection competence in children from low income Mexican Families. Families received two years of services, beginning when children were one year of age. These services included participating in weekend sessions of decision making and family communication, child development and child managment. Five to eight years afther the teachers rated children in the program were more considerate and less hostile.

 

 To understand the impact of quality preschool education  the first step is providing programs that foster healthy emotional development  that requires foresight, planning and the support of politicians, communities and families. The child’s ability to control his or her emotions and the ability to socialize and interact appropriately with others is a key developmental stage needed before a child is ready to set in a classroom ready to focus and attend to the task of learning.

 

While teachers all over the world are equally held responsible for molding students into intellectual beings, preschool and kindergarten teachers have an exceptionally important role in establishing the foundational building blocks that that are instilled in young children forever. Like a domino effect, what a child retains from his or her preschool or kindergarten class can affect their progress in all aspects of life, including the success or failure in other grade levels and career choices. Reading many of the articles helps me to appreciate my career choice greater and provides and eagerness to learn more.

 

 

 

 

                   
  

 

 

 

My International Contact

I would like to introduce to you Mr.Don Giesbrecht. He is the President of the Canadian Childcare Federation . Don first worked in early childhood programs in 1991 and became an Executive Director in 1996. He has been at ACC, which provides quality care and education for over 200 children ages 1 ½ to 12 years old, since 2005. His current work at the community level includes working on a broad-based community governance model for early learning programs in the St. James community in Winnipeg.
He's been the President of CCCF since 2006. Mr. Giesbrecht has communicated with me via email. His passion in early childhood was relevant from our first communication.

There is so much to discuss when it comes to early childhood from the politics of it, the necessity of play based curriculum, the integral role it plays for families and children in modern society to the many issue that affect quality and the retention and recruitment of quality, trained early childhood educators. One thing I know to be true is that across Canada, as an example, the issues from province to province are the same and as I have had the pleasure of meeting colleagues and have spoken with others in the US about issues you face, I can tell you with certainty that they are the same.

Early childhood is not embraced with the same reverence and investment that elementary, middle and high school children are (and by no means am I suggesting that any of these age groups have enough invested in them, but by comparison, early childhood is the very poor and distant relative). Yet, we know that research tells us that quality early childhood experiences are a key to life-long learning, success, reduced social costs and participation in the work force (both for parents of today and for their children down the road). It truly baffles me that politicians and society in general still view early childhood as baby sitting and in many cases, as an affront to the sanctity of the family.  
Don Giesbrecht.

It's amazing how many of us are not alone in the crusade towards educating others of the importance of early childhood.  It's comforting knowing that children have someone advocating for them constantly. Also helping families understand the importance the early years of development is. I am looking forward for continuing my communication with Don and learning more how there organization is working towards early childhood education.

Poverty

 

Despite the United States having the largest and most technologically powerful economy in the world, the United States has the highest number of children living at or below the national poverty level (CIA, World Factbook, 2007). The current federal poverty level is $20,650 a year for a family of four.

Poverty is hurting our school children. Poverty is hurting our schools. How are our children going to focus when they can only think about where they will sleep tonight or if they will have dinner? Is this a problem for society or is it an individual problem? What can our schools do when our schools are poor also? Most importantly, how will all of these questions be addressed? Programs for children and families are the softest targets for policymakers desperate to make cuts. Policymakers have been eyeing Medicaid, food stamps, Head Start and other programs for deep cuts. Yet these are the programs have been an important safety net for more and more American families as they deal with their own budget crises.

 

 

 

NIEER


National Institute for Early Education Research  (http://www.nieer.org/)

The National Institute for Early Education Research  conducts and communicates research to support high-quality, effective early childhood education for all young children. The Institute offers independent research-based advice and technical assistance to policy makers, journalists, researchers, and educators.

NIEER publishes Preschool Policy Matters, a set of research briefs, which address early childhood education issues such as class size, preschool attendance, Head Start teachers, and outcomes and assessments. The site also presents fact sheets on some of these issues and covers special education, culturally responsive education, and issues faced by English Language Learners.

Abbott Preschool Program Longitudinal Effects Study: Fifth Grade Follow-Up

   In 1998, the New Jersey Supreme Court took an unprecedented step and ordered the state to provide high-quality Pre-Kindergarten programs to all 3- and 4-year-old children in 31of the state’s highest poverty districts, also known as Abbott districts after the long-running Abbott v. Burke school finance case. Since then New Jersey has committed to providing preschool for all children in poor districts and all poor children living in non-poor districts.

 If New Jersey stands by its pledge to ensure preschool teachers are well qualified,highly-trained professionals then the state must stand by its teachers and help them reach their fullest potential. Using New Jersey statewide assessment and school placement data provides strong evidence that the Abbott Preschool program has produced persistent, meaningful gains in achievement for children in the state’s most disadvantaged communities. Achievement gains were particularly large for children who attended the program for two years.