Elementary Education

I have chosen to concentrate my teaching career on Elementary Education. Family and Community Services is my concentrated major and it is important that I start with building parent and community involvement with our youth.
The Family & Community Services specialization trains you to work in community service positions, including: child welfare, social work, mental health, family counseling, and community outreach. What better way would there be at reaching these youth than becoming a teacher. My focus as a teacher would lean more towards Early Childhood Education. I am currently Founder and director of South Cobb Raven Youth Association and the continued success of the organization have heavy dependency on my continuing education.

When we look at doctors, lawyers, politicians, and engineers, the question may be asked how they all got to where they are today. No matter the position someone may hold in society everyone has progressed to where they are in life because they had a teacher, someone who taught them in the way they should go. Teacher is defined in the dictionary as one who instructs. To teach someone is to communicate skills and give instruction. Today I would like to tell you why I would like to become a teacher. Specifically speaking I will tell you what has led me to this decision and why I want to become a teacher.

To begin out of the countless professions one has to choose from in the world today I have chosen to become a teacher. I have chosen to become a teacher because I myself am a product of some whom I consider to be the best teachers in the world. As a child in Tennessee I was inspired by a wonderful woman named Mrs. Minor. Mrs. Minor taught me that there is nothing in life that I cannot do, if I put my mind to accomplishing my goal I could make it. Mrs. Minor inspired me to be the best I could be at anything I wanted to be. As I have grown I have had other important teachers, some whom I am surrounded by daily whom inspire me to set out to accomplish my dreams. These people have led me to the decision of becoming a teacher.

Childhood education has been shown to be an evolving and complex process, and is influenced by many factors. These factors include a deep understanding of the theories and philosophies of many pioneering and contemporary pedagogues, such as Piaget, Montessori and Vygotsky and studies emerging from Reggio Emilia in Italy. Researchers have found, that unless the educator is working in a specific theory based environment, for example, a Montessori school, or a school where Piagetian practice is implemented, the contemporary pedagogy will base lesson plans on a selection of these theorists ideas and concepts rather than the entire philosophy ( Edwards & Hammer, 2006). To be an effective contemporary early childhood educator, one must be empathetic (Wesley, 1998; Wood, 2008). More specifically effective early childhood educators should be empathetic to the children in their care, the child's family and other co-workers. This reflects that the educator is willing to listen, relate to others and therefore be integrated as a respected and trusted member of the school and wider community. When this respect is earned there is little that you cannot achieve within your community.

As an effective early childhood educator, creating strong partnerships with children and their parents, as explained by Shonkoff et al. (2000; as cited in Wood 2008) has shown that to provide a productive learning environment a teacher must have a positive relationship with children and their families. I have learned through my youth program that this relationship is unbreakable. Parents are more agreeable to educators that get their children to respond to something positive.

The ability to accept new ideas and practices and a willingness to adjust the curriculum in accordance to specific cultural and social influences has been suggested to be another important factor for the effective early childhood teacher. With the onset of the information age for example pedagogues need to adapt lesson plans accordingly to reflect and stay abreast of the changing learning environment (Heider, 2009).

In the book Early Childhood Education Today 11th Edition, we read that "Family-centered practice is one of the cornerstone features of early childhood special education. This follows the fundamental notion that children's development is influenced by their environment: their family, teachers, school, town, media, governmental systems, and so on." (Morrison, 2009) The first thing we as teachers must do is acknowledge that the children's families are the first and most important teachers of their children and recognize the long-term effect families have on the attitudes and accomplishments of their children . For the edification of today's youth there are potential positive responses to be obtained through working with a child's parents as well as the child themselves. There are six distinctive areas in which we can look at to improve the education of children.

The first is in the area of Parent Knowledge and Skills. Here we have the opportunity to not only acquire more information in regards to the child, but also give information to the child's parents on ways in which they can assist their son/daughter with their education. According to George S. Morrison, we the educators are to "Assist families with parenting and child-rearing skills, understanding child and adolescent development, and setting home conditions that support children as students at each age and grade level." (Morrison, 2009, p. 491) Through a partnership with the child's parents, we the educators are assisted in understanding the families in which the children come from. This arms us with knowledge that allows us to adjust our teaching skills suitably to the children's different learning styles as well as helps the parents to know where their child is at within their edification and where they can help.

As educators we can develop Workshops that familiarizes the child's parents with the platforms, guidelines, and actions of their child's school system. It is said that "Most families want to know what is going on in the school and would do a better job of parenting and educating if they knew how." (Morrison, 2009, p. 491)

The second is Communication between the Home and School. In order to help families create settings within the home to support their children as students we, the teachers, can provide suitable materials which give information and assistances on how the parents can help at home. Through pamphlets, e-mails, and phone calls teachers can inspire and encourage parents to converse and work with their child. Through our involvement with the families, parents become more aware of their child's school platform, they interact on a