EP 004 Work Product

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Part I. Program Assessment Tools

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is an organization that aims at enhancing high standards early learning for all young kids, from birth to the age of eight by creating a relationship between practice, policy, and research. Their main aim is to ensure that all young children grow and learn in an environment that is dedicated to ensuring that they implement their full abilities.

For a preschool to acquire NAEYC accreditation, it has to first aim at meeting the NAEYC program standards. These standards include; enhancing positive connection between children and adults; establishing a strategy that enhances learning and growth; using appropriate and efficient teaching strategies; establishing an organized assessment for children's learning; enhancing children's health and nutrition; employing qualified teachers; promoting good connectivity with families; determining community resources to enhance program goals; maintaining an healthy physical environment and using program management follow up policies to ensure high-quality experiences for children, parents and stuff (naeyc, n.d.).

The NAEYC early learning program accreditation standards and assessment criteria aim at ensuring the quality of kid's daily experiences in early learning programs and to enhance high standard kids’ results. It helps establish a collaborative framework for the high standard that is based on the profession’s collective understanding of quality practices. The accreditation ensures that high standard education and care is given in programs for young kids. Additionally, the NAEYC assists parents to find the best possible early childhood experience for their young ones. Since every child requires access to high standards of the early learning experience, the Naeyc accreditation ensures that the early learning programs have all that it takes for quality learning in the class and other contexts. These standards make sure that the programs are secure, well prepared, and aims at ensuring children’s good results. NAEYC accreditation relates to the children's readiness and good results in school; maximized educational achievement rates and healthy lifestyles (naeyc, n.d.).

It is as well important to use the NAEYC accreditation strategies when assessing the program quality since these standards ensure that the program enhances the childcare experience for children and their parents. An accredited program enhances positive interactivity between all children and adults to motivate every kid’s sense of personal worth and belonging as part of a society and to foster every kid’s ability to take part as a responsible member of the society.

Additionally, an accredited NAEYC program will ensure that it establishes a strategy that is in align with its agendas for kids and that enhances learning and development in social, emotional, physical, language and cognitive areas. Similarly, the standards will ensure that the program implements teaching practices that are developmentally, culturally, and linguistically appropriate. The teaching practices should each kid’s learning and growth in the context of the program’s strategic goals. The assessment will as well ensure that the program uses various assessment strategies to offer data on kids’ learning and growth. These evaluations should occur during the interaction between teachers and parents.

Additionally, by using the NAEYC accreditation standards to assess a program, one will ensure that the program enhances health and nutrition for every child and secures children and staff from sicknesses. Similarly one will ensure that the program supports staff that has the appropriate qualifications and wisdom that is required to enhance children learning and development and to supports parent's requirements. In addition, one will as well ensure that the program promotes a positive relationship with every child's family to enhance children’s development.

Part II. Using Accreditation Standards to Evaluate an Early Childhood Program

With regard to the importance of accessing a program using the NAEYC accreditation standards, a parent will have the ability to determine if the program has a secure context that offers suitable and secure indoor and outdoor physical contexts. One will as well find out if the program has the ability to effectively use the policies, procedures, and systems that reinforces stable staff and powerful personnel, fiscal and program authority so that all kids, families, and staffs have great experiences (NAEYC, 2018).

NAEYC engaging Diverse Families self-assessment checklist is a vet productive tool in program evaluation. This program offers a chance for families to take part in the decision making process on issues related to the education of their kids. The program educators collaborate with families to create goals for their kids' learning and education both in school and at their homes (Phillips, Austin & Whitebook, 2016). It offers a chance for parents to give their needs in person or in writing. This assists the teachers to understand what the parents really want for their kids.

This program also offers various ways of interaction. Some of the types of communication that are used include face to face interaction, journal, phone calls, emails, and bulletin boards. Productive interaction between teachers and families to enhance a child's education, enables all individuals to feel respected, valued and more confident. This collaboration assists children to maintain their concentration on learning since they feel protected by the teachers who are depended on by their families (Garrity, Longstreth & Linder, 2017). The evaluation checklist offers resources that motivate learning when not in school. The resources consist of a lending library, literacy bags, and many others. Kids gave the chance to access the learning resources at home which assist them in their education. This checklist as well as motivates parents to share their knowledge with their kids. This establishes a learning context and motivates a child's learning at home. Additionally, the assessment checklist institutionalizes family engagement practices and policies and ensures that the staff is provided with the required support that they require to interact with families’ comprehensively.

I carried out my research on Poe Cooperative Nursery School (Poe Co). It was among the first parent cooperative in the nation to acquire accreditation by the National Association for the Education of Children (NAEYC). It is a child-centered program that focuses on fostering the love of learning by play. Poe Co provides each child with a learning context that is established to enhance children’s creativity, confidence, and independence. Poe Co supports the growth of children's social, emotional, physical and intellectual skills in a way that aligns the needs of every kid. Children are motivated to decide which activity to undertake, express themselves and explore materials.

Positive early childhood education relies on relationships and interactions with children’s families and communities. Thus it is essential to develop a positive partnership with children’s families and to involve families in the preschool context. Family engagement in the first years of life can support a child’s preparedness for school and the continuing academic and long term success. According to former research, children whose parents have been present attain positive results especially in the long term period.

According to my research in Poe Cooperative Nursery School, it has great strategies to enhance family engagement. The program assists families to feel welcome in the preschool. Families and teachers have similar agendas in children’s growth. It is essential to develop and maintain a relationship between home and school that will enhance children’s learning and development. At Poe Cooperative Nursery school does several strategies to support family engagement. The school invites families to the classroom before the child’s start date; teachers ask the families about the children’s needs and interests; ask family to send a video to their children that teachers can use during hard times in the transition period; attach photographs of children and their families in the classroom walls where kids can easily see them, and invite families to take part in the assessment process.

To encourage and support family participation in the programs routine the program motivates family members to visit the classroom at any time; invite parents to take part in classroom tours; offer jobs to family members in the preschool routine; asking family members to help plan a classroom dinner night, and request specific family members to be speakers on a specific topics. These strategies are according to the NAEYC accreditation since they establish and maintain collaborative relationships with every child’s family to enhance children’s growth in every aspect (Naeyc, n.d.).

Safe, responsive, and nurturing environments are an essential part of establishing the learning and growth of infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. Such environments also assist to prevent challenging characters and serve as a main factor of inventions for infants and young children. Based on the research that I carried out, Poe Co ensures a secure physical environment by; contains space for play activities inside and outside the classrooms, I observed that they were a space for eating, playing, toileting and sleeping; has various areas for various activities such as play and science; has playing materials that are convenient for kid’s ages, abilities, and interest; has a well-planned daily schedule and has provision for children to feel and develop a sense of community. These strategies are in line with the NAEYC accreditation standards. This is because the program maintains a safe physical environment for its students (Naeyc, n.d.).

Assessment of children's progress has been greatly appreciated in Poe Co. According to the program director, the assessment assists the teachers to plan based on the children’s strengths. Additionally, assessment enhance the ability to offer personalized activities for students in the contexts of growth. Their assessment system includes both formative and summative evaluations, measures to test for possible developmental or academic concerns and measures of the quality of the learning context. According to my respondent, their assessment is developmentally, culturally and linguistically appropriate for the children being evaluated. It involves measures that are valid, dependable, bias-free and ethical. They as well enhance the teaching and learning happening in the early childhood program. According to the NAEYC standards, evaluation for a child's progress should occur with the context of reciprocal communications with the parents and with the conditions of the cultural beliefs where the children grew up in. the assessment outcomes should be to benefit the kids by informing sound decisions about the kids and the program enhancement (naeyc, 2008).

According to my findings in my research in Poe Coe, one of the recommendations that I would offer to the facility is to enhance their reciprocal relationships with the families. This can be done by upholding each family's right to make decisions for and with their children. If ever the family's priorities conflict with the teacher's knowledge, the teacher should collaborate with the family to determine common agendas and work towards creating mutually acceptable strategies. The program should as well create time to learn more about the families they work for. This involves learning about the families' languages, customs, activities, values, and beliefs so that they can provide a culturally and linguistic learning environment. This may require the teachers to reach out to families who may not give feedback to traditional strategies to interact with them. The program's management should communicate the importance of multilingualism to all families. This is because all kids should benefit from the social and cognitive benefits of multilingualism. The management should ensure that the parents of the bilinguals understand the benefits and importance of supporting their kid’s home language which is English. This will ensure that they grow into fully developed bilinguals and biliterates.

The program should as well create a caring, equitable context of learners. The teachers in the program should identify each child's strengths and support the full inclusion of every child. This involves assisting the kids to know, identify and support each other as valued members of the society. The teachers should as well ensure that no child feels bullied or invisible. The teachers should as well create a trusting relationship with the children and nurture the relationships among them while developing their knowledge and skills. This will involve treating every child with the respect which will be achieved by eliminating language that is judgmental.

To interact with the director of the center, I interviewed him by asking him questions that he was expected to respond to. My interaction with him was smooth since he was not ignorant of any of my questions. He was ready to share all the information about the facility with me which made my interaction with him to be easy. I was also tolerated his behavior of seeming reluctant to answer some of my questions, through this he felt respected since I would give him enough time to respond to the questions. Due to my tolerance, he was willing to interact with me. According to the information shared by the director, I felt that they should enhance their reciprocal relationships with the families. Though the center has some strategies that they have set aside to help improve family engagement in the center I feel that they should improve so as to improve the number of families willing to take part in their children's learning. Additionally, I also observed that some children remained in the classrooms as others were out playing. Thus I recommended that the teachers should create an equitable context for the learners, through this all the kids will feel appreciated which will improve their self-esteem which will, in turn, make them feel comfortable to play with others.

References

Garrity, S. M., Longstreth, S. L., & Linder, L. K. (2017). An examination of the quality of discipline policies in NAEYC-accredited early care and education programs. Topics in early childhood special education, 37(2), 94-106.