Excellence and Equity in the Early Childhood Field

The “Excellence and Equity of Care and Education for Children and Families Part 1” podcast was an interview with Ms. Delila Vasquez, the Director of Program Services for the Los Angeles Universal Preschool, in reference to early childhood education standards, curriculum assessment, and the achievement gaps that affect both young children and their families.  During the interview, Ms. Vasquez described standards as being a set pattern or goal for educators to know where, how, and what children will acquire their knowledge and skills as they progress through an early childhood program. She, also, describes a downside to having standards.  That is, they do not “take account where the children are coming from, and how much do they know before they enter the preschool programs, and how much they have learned.  It only tells you what they need to have, but it doesn’t’ take into account the whole child as we are used in our field” (Laureate Education, 2011).  In other words, standards are good at telling you what to teach, when to teach it, and how to teach it, but they do not take in consideration an individual child’s previous knowledge and experiences or the child’s learning needs.  The assessments help the educator know what the child has learned; however, as soon as a child passes the assessment, it is time to move on to more knowledge.  This is all seen as preparing a child for school-readiness.

Towards the end of the interview, Ms. Vasquez touches on the most important topic for me.  By focusing on the standards, curriculum, and assessment, we lose focus on the essential school-readiness skill…social skills.  She stated that “we don’t give children the tools that they need to cope, to survive, to communicate, to ask for help, to maneuver everything else that we put in front of them through the K-12 system and beyond” (Laureate Education, 2011).  Classrooms and schools are a place of education.  We need to help develop the cognitive and physical skills, but more importantly we need to help nurture and enhance the social and emotional skills of children.  Social and emotional skills development is not just a school-readiness skill; it is a life skill necessary for success in the community, career, and family life.

Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child focuses on programs that support child development in the United States and globally, in countries like Brazil, Mexico, and Canada.  They provide a variety of professional development platforms for educators, policy makers, and families to encourage educational equity for children and their families.  As I explored the Center on the Developing Child: Working Globally webpage, I came across the Saving Brains program that is led by Grand Challenges Canada.  The Saving Brains focuses on improving nutritional, educational, and overall life outcomes for children living in poverty through “interventions that nurture and protect early brain development in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life” (Partnerships with Global Early Childhood Organizations, n.d.). 

Saving Brains focuses on three primary area of healthy child development – health & nutrition, enrichment, and protection.  During the first 1,000 days, is when the child’s brain is developing rapidly and learning from experiences.  The early experiences of stable and supportive relationships in a child’s life can help develop healthy responses to stress, adversity, and failure.  If a child has protective relationships when experience extraordinary stress, there is chance that the children will have a “sense of control and adaptive coping” abilities (Evans, 2014).  The video on the webpage on the Center on the Developing Child about the Saving Brains project shared that there are two primary ways to help children living in adverse situations, such as poverty, are to provide a platform for health and nutrition along with creating a focus on play-based responsive stimulation between children and their parents or caregivers.  It focused on the research program in which children were either provided healthy nutrition, playful stimulation, or both extra nutrition and stimulation.  During a 2-year followed, it was discovered that the children that received extra nutrition or the playful stimulation improved their child development scores.  The children that received both extra nutrition and playful stimulation had significantly improved their child development scores and had caught up to their typically developing peers.  The playful stimulation, which involved caretaker and/or parents being responsive to a child’s needs, contributes to the child feeling loved and secure. 

Mike Evans’ statement “making some early investments in nutrition and stimulation to children can lead to less impoverished brains and hopefully break the complex cascades that lead to impoverished brains and hopefully break the complex cascades that lead to impoverished communities…This may require some courage from policy-makers as the return on investment tend to be farther down the road after they have left office” (Evans, 2014).  As educators, policy makers, parents, and society-overall, we need to focus on the nutritional welfare and play for children not only in the first years but also when they enter early childhood education.  Both Delila Vasquez and Mike Evans emphasized that it is about the children – building relationships through play and responsive interactions.  If the children are not getting what they need to nurture their development, then it is up to the educators to provide what they need in the classrooms.

I highly encourage you to watch Mike Evan’s Saving Brains, A Grand Challenge video.

References:

Evans, M.. (2014). Saving Brains, A Grand Challenge. Retrieved December 1, 2018 from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw0TkwjjpZU.

Laureate Education, Inc. (Executive Producer). (2011). Issues and trends in the early childhood field: Excellence and equity of care and education for children and families—Part 1. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Partnerships with Global Early Childhood Organizations. (n.d.). Retrieved December 1, 2018 from https://developingchild.harvard.edu/about/what-we-do/global-work/.