The name of the link for the international website I selected was the Liberty Foundation, http://www.libertyfoundation.org.uk/. This organization is located in Belize and provides children who have been abondoned and or abused a safe place to grow and develop. They have been caring for abused and abandoned children since 2005, providing high quality child-centered education for pre-school children.
Identify one current issue/trend from the newsletter and/or from the website that caught your attention. Share if there was anything else you learned from studying these resources related to the topic of this week.
One current trend that caught my attention was their outreach program Parent's As Teacher's (PAT), which is an international family support program that helps parent's be their child(ren) best first teacher. They provide parents with adequate information, guidance and assistance with every day trials and tribulations of parenting as well as identifying children who are at risk and for those who have disabilities and special needs. Liberty serves hundreds of families within Belize and they are expected to become nationwide within the next couple of years. This program is very much needed in every community in the United States, all parents are their child's first teacher and can learn something positive from this outreach program. Being a good parent does not mean that you have always done everything correctly, however it makes this learning experience much easier when you have this type of support from outside resources.
I have never heard of the Parents as Teachers organization. Now after reading about on your blog, I had to look it up! After brief perusal, I love that they have a "Cultural Competency Policy"as this works to address the issues we've discussed this week in terms of adequate teacher preparation for working with diverse populations. I love the concept of this organization and hope to hear about more of their efforts.
ReplyDeleteAs a director of a parent participation preschool, these are the types of resources that I'm continually looking for--ways to help families become and feel more competent.
Thanks for sharing.
~Shawn
In the Head Start program that I work in, our Early Head Start home visitors use the PAT program. They just started using it a few months ago and so far have had very positive results. The parents enjoy it and the home visitors seem to think it is a very beneficial program.
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