Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Professional Goals for Systems and Policies

As I enter this course, I feel anxious due to the small amount of knowledge I possess relating to early childhood systems and public policy.  Although I find myself inexperienced in this field, I understand that policies and systems can largely impact my role as an educator.  

Three professional goals that can guide my path through this course include:

First, I must understand the ways systems obtain resources, while also integrating resources to better provide for young children and their families. 

Secondly, to fully engage in public policies, I must become aware of service integration and funding challenges that ignite concern and discussion in professional and political networks.

Finally, the goal I will have the hardest time achieving is to not only understand the systemic angle of early childhood, but one that also exhibits the confidence to participate in the highly political policy environment, in which I have never been a part.


Through these goals, I hope to fully understand the dynamic web entwined to the many facets of policies and systems.  Many hours of research within the Walden library will be necessary in order to fully understand and apply the information gathered and learned.  

2 comments:

  1. Hi Emily,

    I appreciate your honesty about this course. I too feel a bit out of my comfort zone as I have read about policy through NIEER, but have never really participated in scholarly discussions about specific policy. I share your goals. You mentioned funding challenges. This is an area that I want to learn more about as well. My focus is on policy regarding daycare teacher pay, specifically Head Start. I look forward to learning more about this together!

    Kelly :-)

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  2. Emily,

    I definitely share your sentiment on systems and policies! In my blog, I mentioned that I think that practitioners- the people actually doing this work--are too BUSY to really understand and fully participate in shaping or even fully understanding systems and policies. Your comment on funding really made an impact on me- state funding, federal funding, grants, philanthropic funding... All are complex, detailed and require an understanding of the regulations and limitations of each! It can seem overwhelming if we let it. One step at a time, right?? Thanks for your insightful post.

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