NAEYC EARLY CHILDHOOD ORGANIZATION

The early childhood organization I choose to subscribe to was the NAEYC.  The link to their website is http://www.naeyc.org.

NAEYC's mission is to serve and act on behalf of the needs, rights and well-being of all young children with primary focus on the provision of educational and developmental services and resources (NAEYC Bylaws, Article I., and Section 1.1). 

 

Goals

NAEYC expresses its mission in terms of three broad goals:

1. Improving professional practice and working conditions in early childhood education.
2. Supporting early childhood programs by working to achieve a high-quality system of early childhood education.
3. Building a high-performing, inclusive organization of groups and individuals who are committed to promoting excellence in early childhood education for all young children.

Vision Statement

NAEYC's efforts are designed to achieve these ends:

• All children have access to a safe and accessible, high quality early childhood education that includes a developmentally appropriate curriculum; knowledgeable and well-trained program staff and educators; and comprehensive services that support their health, nutrition, and social well-being, in an environment that respects and supports diversity.
• All early childhood professionals are supported as professionals with a career ladder, ongoing professional development opportunities, and compensation that attracts and retains high quality educators.
• All families have access to early childhood education programs that are affordable and of high quality and actively participate in their children's education as respected reciprocal partners.
• All communities, states, and the nation work together to ensure accountable systems of high-quality early childhood education for all children.

The issue or trend from this particular website that caught my attention was “How do early childhood education programs meet the challenge of engaging families in their child’s early learning and development?” NAEYC’s Engaging Diverse Families (EDF) project sought answers to this question. The project's goals were to develop a research-based definition of family engagement, identify exemplary family engagement practices in early childhood programs, and share what was learned with the field of early care and education by assembling a tool kit of materials to help programs more effectively engage families in children’s early learning (NAEYC 2014).  This topic was interesting to me because this is something I struggle with in my current program.  Although, I feel that I have some teachers that do a great job of engaging with their parents and families there are others that do not.  From reading this particular article I am able to gather several ways to help improve this issue in my program.