Three ideals
contained in the NAEYC codes of ethics that are meaningful to me and their significance to my professional life.
I-1.1—To be familiar with the knowledge base of early childhood care and education and to stay informed through continuing education and training.
Having knowledge about child development and the most recent studies and research on how children learn and develop can only strengthen my ability to teach my students. For instance, I have been diving deep into the new Kindergarten common core standards and "de-constructing" them with my colleagues at school, so I can gain a true understanding of what specific skills I am teaching to my students. Our administrators also provide weekly in-services to keep us all up to date on the most current teaching strategies, vocabulary and assessments.
I-1.5—To create and maintain safe and healthy settings that foster children’s social, emotional, cognitive, and physical development and that respect their dignity and their contributions.
I believe if an early childhood educator provides a safe and loving environment for their students, that their students will enjoy coming to school, and in return, help instill a love for learning. It is also so, so important to show respect to young children. They have feelings and to teach children to be respectful, we need to be modeling that behavior to them. (aka: Practice what you preach!)
I-1.7—To use assessment information to understand and support children’s development and learning, to support instruction, and to identify children who may need additional services.
Assessments are such an important tool in the education field! We use assessments (Brigance, Early Star Literacy and Dibels) to base our instruction with students. For example, my kindergarteners who don't know all of their letters, work with me in a small group of 5 children and we do fun learning activities that teach them their letters! My kindergartners who know most of their letters are working on making sure they can name their letters and sounds with fluency. We do this with CVC words and sight words, as well as fun games that I create or buy. My students who need enrichment, are working on comprehension strategies in reading, building their fluency and reading fry phrases. We use assessments to plan our lessons by "planning with the end in mind!" We create our assessment, and teachin our students strategies to help them throughout the week so they can master the skill.
Also, if students are not showing gains in assessments after "tried and true" teaching strategies, we can refer out students to the support team (a team of administrators, experiences teachers and Title 1 teachers) to get some new ideas. They can also decide whether future testing is needed for students who may need an IEP or further assistance.
