Early Childhood Development and Learning

Preschool instructors receive training in early childhood education and keep up with their education by taking college courses, attending workshops, and attending conferences. One's ability to instruct at St. Mary's Richard Tufenkiam Preschool is strengthened by such experience. Gross motor skills, social skills, artistic abilities, cognitive skills, and linguistic art skills are among the topics taught to kids between the ages of three and five. Children should be between the ages of 8 and 10 in one class because they must learn important information that will affect their behavior and development. Each child deserves respect and appreciation for their unique personality where their cultural values and their family are recognized and esteemed. Additionally, pre-school children must feel empowered, secured, and treated with warmth when learning while they get an opportunity learn and grow in all developmental areas. The teacher should consider a child’s exceptional capabilities and interests when planning the activities in the curriculum.

As a teaching staff at pre-school, one should serve and advocate for children, support and respect families in their task of nurturing them, ensure that the curriculum follows existing knowledge of early childhood education and child development, be open to learn, grow and contribute professionally. Additionally, it is important to maintain high standards of professional conduct and offer children the right cultural environment and education.

Question 2: Curriculum and daily schedule. Impact on pre-school teacher’s classroom actions, decisions, and reactions.

Daily schedules and the curriculum are highly relevant in a pre-school due to many reasons associated with making decisions and reactions as well as taking actions in the classroom. Schedules help the teacher to adapt to children's needs and interests. It helps in following something to the end where kids do not drop everything and do whatever they find next without having a clear understanding or expectations. It helps avoid anxiety among children and the teacher as they do know what to do next. Through daily schedules, children can have a predictable routine which helps them understand what would follow. It helps them become responsible, independent and confident, become relaxed and cooperative.

A curriculum helps the teacher to develop children’s ability by making meaningful applications and generalization to new contexts and problems. The pre-school curriculum should be consistent with children’s goals as well as endorse learning and development in social, emotional, physical, language, and cognitive aspects. In pre-school, it is highly critical in the classroom as it helps the teacher to incorporate models, procedures, and language of inquiry according to kids needs and interests. For young children, the curriculum would help improve interdisciplinary integration and connection especially that they are in their critical time of development. By establishing the right curriculum, the children would be able to connect with issues, problems, and experiences through gross motor skills, social skills, aesthetic skills, cognitive skills and language art skills (Sylva et al., 2007). The teacher can make the right inter-relationship between what children are learning in class. An organized curriculum helps the kids to reconstruct misconceptions and identify the connection between what they are currently learning and what they have learned before.

In the classroom, the curriculum is important in making decisions related to child development such as physical, emotional, social, linguistic, aesthetic, and cognitive. It provides information on wide choice of content on various studies that have social relevancy, engage intellectually, and provide meaning to children. For instance, it builds upon what children understand or can do in consolidating their learning and fostering attainment of new ideas and skills. In pre-school, the teacher would be able to introduce the right evocative influences and provide openings for productive conceptual growth.

The curriculum stimulates understanding and knowledge development, processes and skills adoption as well as the temperaments to using and applying of skills. The teacher would then take the right action concerning intellectual integrity by reflecting on the main ideas and tools of analysis of recognized study (Wortham, 2009). For instance, the teacher would conduct scientific experiments, write, perform, solve mathematical problems, collect and analyze data, collect oral history, and perform other roles of experts in the study to understand the study disciplines. By having a competent curriculum, the teacher would understand which children’s language and values to support while providing an opportunity for them to engage in sharing community culture and programs.

If a teacher has a well-planned curriculum, then they have the right guidance to balance different activities and approaches with the aim of maximizing learning and development. The teacher can plan and understand the goals of what the children are learning, planned activities connected to these goals, daily schedules and routines, and materials to be used. A pre-school curriculum contains various issues related child development and learning. One of them is an enhancement of student behavior. The curriculum directs the teacher through a program that helps children enhance their ability through knowledge of how to respond to different things. In socialization which is the most important part of early childhood development in practicing socialization skills, the curriculum helps the teacher plan for group activities. A pre-school curriculum is highly essential in ensuring important decisions are made concerning child development and learning.

Question 3: Children’s image influence on teacher’s actions

Personal, social and emotional development creates the foundation for a child's learning. If the teacher has the right influence, then the children would experience positive growth. In early childhood development education, one is trained to respect, value, and accept children and treat them with dignity at all times. It is an essential factor in being a teacher as it sets the basis for a future career. By making children your priority as a teacher, one can know each child well. By seeing children as individuals who are eager and ready to learn makes the teacher establish a positive personal relationship with them. It fosters development and keeps the teacher informed about their needs and potentials. The right relationship helps the teacher to be attentive and adapt to children's unique abilities, styles, interests, and needs. As children, they should be continually observed spontaneously as they interact with the physical environment and other children so that their developmental progress, abilities, and interests can be identified. The right influence is essential in determining whether the children are learning in the context of their communities and families. For instance, the teacher would establish a relationship with the families to increase their knowledge of children's interest outside the classroom. Most of the time, the children are under the responsibility of the teacher and the right influence would help in their development and self-regulation.

Where there is a positive influence, the teacher can create an intellectual engagement that responds to the child's environment to promote development and learning. Using their knowledge, the teacher would organize, plan and teach strategies that respond to children's need. Children are talented differently, and their capabilities are diverse. For this reason, it is essential to encourage them to share their views. They have a force driving them to learn more, and the right environment would help in improving their brain. Teachers should also be ready to advance their knowledge so that the children can benefit from them maximally. As a teacher, the child's image affects how to supervise them, what indoor and outdoor activities to perform and the right timing and what materials and strategies to modify to respond to the needs and interests of individual children.

Question 5: Early childhood theorists influence on Pre-school teacher role.

There are different childhood theories that apply on how teachers observe children as learners and the role they take. First of them is human development theory by Erikson. He found that people have eight psychological stages throughout their lives. In pre-school children education, the stages that apply are early childhood where children need to develop a sense of personal control over physical skill and a sense of independence. At this stage, the teacher needs to understand that the child requires a lot of support to achieve autonomy and avoid failure which may lead to shame and doubt. The other stage is a preschool stage where children assert control and power over the environment. The teacher has the responsibility of providing the right environment for a child to explore and gain a sense of purpose and not guilty. The teacher should encourage and support the children to take various independent initiatives in class. The other stage is the school age where children may become industrious or inferior according to the school environment (Lerner, 2001). The teacher should help children cope with new social and academic demands as success leads to a sense of competence.

The other theory important in pre-school child development and learning is Jean Piaget's stage theory which outlines children cognitive development. As the children grow, their cognitive abilities and processes change. Through pre-school education, teachers help children to go through early cognitive development where actions are the ideal method of learning. Through schemas as identified by Piaget, a child connects both mental and physical actions to interpret and understand their environment. The second concept is assimilation where children take in new information by modifying experiences or knowledge to fit their pre-existing beliefs. The third concept is an accommodation where children change their schema in light of the new information. The fourth idea identified by Piaget is equilibration where a child tries to balance assimilation and accommodation to move from one stage of thought to another. The preoperational stage applies most in teaching at pre-school as it is where the child applies new knowledge of languages and use of symbols to represent objects.

One of the most appealing and informative theories for a teacher in pre-school education is Maria Montessori theory. It provides the ideas of conducive learning based on human tendencies to perfect ones' effort, concentrate, repeat, work harder, use creative imagination, abstract ideas from experience, develop self-control, creates order, to be independent and make decisions, share with a group, move and explore. Among young children, Montessori found that a teacher should be able to take the right number of children per class, has the right schedule, has gone through basic lessons, links all areas of study introduces the right learning styles and carries assessment regularly. For children between 3-6 years, Montessori advises of no academic requirement but instead expose children to their environment to explore and be creative (Cherry, 2012). The last theory is Lev Vygotsky's theories which stress on the vital role of social interaction child development of cognitive skills.

Question 6: Factors leading to teaching changes, schedule changes and curriculum changes in Pre-school teaching

Sometimes the teacher is faced with a dilemma to follow the curriculum or deviate from it to benefit a specific child. In such a situation one has exhausted all the available set teaching program. To achieve this, the teacher is supposed to create additional time which would help in covering the needs of the child. Private Child engagement is common in pre-school as the teacher tries to understand the child's ability which may be unique from other children. When the right environment and connection between the teacher and the child and the teacher is created, then making changes in teaching does not negatively affect the child development and learning. One of this case where changes are significant is when some children have been left behind in their learning. In this case, the teacher has to sacrifice some scheduled activity and help the children cover what they did not get.

In pre-school teaching, both the school and the parent mission is for the children to establish a foundation for future learning and growth. For this and other reasons, it is one of the most critical stage and teachers have to take extra effort to make sure that the children achieve this foundation. It is evident that each child capabilities are different and it is only by using these capabilities that optimum growth can be achieved. The curriculum and schedules are made by generalizing conditions and factors that may influence learning in pre-school. The teacher may encounter other unforeseen challenges which were not addressed by the curriculum or schedules and be forced to change it. Use of different tools to teach and different time frame may apply for an individual child or a group to make them understand what they have not been conversant with.

Some children have special needs and require particular attention to catch up with the others. Sometimes, the curriculum does not take notice of students with special needs. In case a child with special needs is in the same class as other children, the teacher is forced to make critical changes in how they handle such students. Passionate teachers would go an extra mile to make sure that such child is in level with others by making some critical changes in the curriculum or class schedules. Teachers develop, refine, and use a wide range of strategies to teach in enhancing children's development and learning.

Question 7: Types of reflection process during observation period for Pre-school teacher

Pre-school teacher observation is primarily involved with gathering information concerning a child to make the right decision related to programming and planning for suitable activities, approaches, and practises for each individual child and also the whole group. Among the aspects incorporated are aimed at fostering their development. First is watching and observing for significant moments. The moments reflect the child's needs in his or her learning journey. Identifying authentic moments for each child and the group is important. Another aspect is listening to what the children and other staff are saying relating to the class. The teacher record what they see and what they hear using the right method or format which suits the situation. In most cases, the time the observation is made is essential and be supported by a specific skill. The school has a mission, and the teacher should be able to observe if it is followed. In some situation, use of visual or audio tools may be meaningful as it provides information in detail to build the overall picture of what needs to be changed.

Observation would encompass the skills to listen, question, reflect and document what the teacher sees and then interpret it concisely to determine and support a children’s development, interests, needs and strengths. What follows is writing an observation according to what the teacher sees and hears without making deductions. Recording facts help to avoid biasness. After observation, reflection and interpretation should follow where children strengths, interests, needs, developmental skill, emotional state and potential are identified. Consideration should be based on learning outcomes and the chief developmental capacities of social, emotional, physical, cognitive, language and creativity.

Question 8: Pre-school teacher strengths and future areas of fulfilling further growth

As a teacher, one should identify their strength so that they can work on their weakness when offering their services. One of the strengths is creativity which helps in determining new and exciting ways to conceptualize ideas and planning new projects concerning children development. It is essential to synthesize new ideas in children learning. Open-mindedness is important in teaching to help one associate with children and interact with new ideas they present. Persistence also helps in dealing with children who do not understand fast enough like the rest of the class. It is applicable in encouraging children to do something until they are successful. Even when a child is slow in learning, I do not give up easily. I come up with different exercises that aim at improve understanding as well as the brain development. As a teacher with children, it is crucial to be result oriented where one focuses on the end goal. It is essential to understand each children weakness to work in the right direction to achieve the intended goal through optimism. Additionally, it is important to create the right relationship between the family and the school for the sake of child. With the right environment at home and school then the child would benefit optimally.

Collaboration is equally vital for the pre-school teacher as learning and development are based on collaborated effort between the child, parent and the teacher. The last strength of being a pre-school teacher is passionate about children learning. It helps build the right relationship and interest. Children psychology is important to teachers teaching pre-school children. It is upon understanding the children that one develops the best practices for their learning and development. Furthering education in psychological studies would go a long way in ensuring that the children benefit maximally from the teacher.



References

Cherry, K. (2012). Child development theories. Psychology. About.com. The New York Times.

Lerner, R. M. (2001). Concepts and theories of human development. Psychology Press.

Sylva, K., Taggart, B., Siraj‐Blatchford, I., Totsika, V., Ereky‐Stevens, K., Gilden, R., & Bell, D. (2007). Curricular quality and day‐to‐day learning activities in pre‐school. International Journal of Early Years Education, 15(1), 49-65.

Wortham, S. C. (2009). Early childhood curriculum: Developmental bases for learning and teaching. Pearson College Division.