Saturday, June 30, 2012

Establishing professional contacts and expanding my resources

In order to establish professional contacts, I emailed some people who are representatives of their program, which is part of International Step by Step Association and The Global Alliance of NAEYC. First I decided to establish contact with Sarah Klaus in The Netherlands and Mr Hicham Moukram, in Morocco. My interest for the program in The Netherlands arose after reading the article “Early childhood trends around the world” (Neugebauer, 2007), and I chose the other contact in Morocco because it is an interesting country and culture to me.

As I said before, I sent those representatives an email, but all I got was another email saying that those ‘addresses had permanent fatal errors’, I admit that I felt disappointed, because I thought that information was updated and reliable. I looked at programs in other countries, emailed them, and, since I didn’t get the terrible message saying that those addresses have errors, I am hoping to get an answer from  Ruzanna Tsarukyan in Armenia, Hilda PĂ©rez Forest in Cuba, Blesilda Rios in Philippines, Margarita A. in Colombia, Suzana Kirandziska in Macedonia, and/or Juan Sanchez in Spain. I also asked some of my co-workers, who are from other countries, to help me getting in touch with a professional they know is teaching in their native country, but I haven’t heard anything yet.

For the purpose of knowing how early childhood is supported by some organizations, I read their mission and vision, and I decided to study the Association for Childhood Education International (www.acei.org).  

I am very excited about this assignment, because I would like to know what is the perspective other countries have regarding early childhood and its education. Even though it is a challenge to get in touch with professionals in other countries, especially when we realize that their emails are not updated or correct, or because of their position they are always busy and haven’t check their emails, I hope to get in touch with at least two people; otherwise, I will have to take the alternative assignment.

I wonder what criteria my colleagues used to choose their contacts and the association they will like to study about, if they faced any challenges like me when I realized some emails were not correct and what they did about it.

Reference

Neugebauer, R. (2007). Early childhood trends around the world. Exchange, (175), 58–63. Retrieved from the Walden Library using the Education Research Complete database.

4 comments:

  1. Hi Caty,
    I, too, am waiting to hear from my contacts. The contact made through the Global Alliance of NAEYC told me that unfortunately no one had time to e mail on a weekly basis (this was in Germany). I sent 1 more through Global Alliance to Haiti and still haven't heard anything yet and 1 to Vietnam through the UNICF website,still waiting. I am hoping to have better luck with contacts through people I know. Hopefully, if they have some personal connection they will be more willing to participate. I found the Neugebauer article very informative and helpful, too.

    Let's hope by next week we will both have new international e-friends!

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  2. Hi Caty,

    I am very impressed with your Blog development. I congratulate you on having such a strong network of international professionals. I hope that you may be connected to several and you will share your collegiality with your fellow Walden students.

    Dr Longo

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  3. Caty,
    Hi.
    I too am hopeful in that an international ECE professional will contact me. Its been a waiting game. I loved reading your blog tonight! Because I like you am excited at the prospect of reading and learning and networking with individuals from other countries. It will be interesting to listen to their prospectives and points of interests in relationship to their early childhood world. I have just begun to delve into the web site for association for childhood education international, looks interesting and thought provoking. Thank-you, for recommending it.

    Take Care,
    Millie

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  4. Caty,
    Good luck with your international contacts. I find that it is necessary to learn about early childhood education issues in other countries. As a result, the research and information can benefit our classrooms. Therefore, I plan to make contact with an international organizationa and to apply what I learn to my own class.

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