Thursday 14 May 2015

Exploring Roles in the ECE Community: Local and State Level

This week I had the opportunity to explore varying early childhood organizations and agencies to inspire my thinking about places I might like to work and about roles I would like to take on. I explored the College of Early Childhood Educators, the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario, and Andrew Fleck Child Care Services.
I chose the College of Early Childhood Educators as this organization helps to govern Ontario’s early childhood educators in the public interest. It helps to serve and protect children and families by setting requirements and ethical and professional standards for registered early childhood educators, and governing member conduct through a complaints and discipline process. This organization also explains what early childhood educators do and why it is important to regulate our profession (CECE, 2015). 

There are currently no employment opportunities with the College of Early Childhood Educators, although they do have a complaints and discipline department, professional practice department, communications department, and registration and member services department. The skills needed to work in any one of these departments would be to be knowledgeable regarding the Code of Ethics and Standard of Practice. It would also be helpful to be knowledgeable regarding the field of early childhood and be familiar with the current issues and trends that impact this field (CECE, 2015).  

The second organization that I chose is the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario as this organization advocates for this profession and supports quality early learning and care as an integral part of a child’s healthy development. The AECEO promotes and supports research and advancement in the field of early childhood education and care and makes it known to parents and the general public the value and importance of early childhood education and early childhood educators (AECEO, 2015).  
I did not see a web page with career opportunities on the AECEO website; however it would be interesting to become a board member of the AECEO.  This organization is member driven with elected voluntary Branch Executives. It is the role of the Provincial Office Staff to implement, support and maintain the services, policies, and directives as dictated by the Board and fundamentally by its members, within the scope of the Association’s mission and mandate (AECEO, 2015).


The last agency that I chose that appealed to me is Andrew Fleck Child Care Services (AFCCS) as this agency is one of the oldest and most diversified non-profit, charitable, multi-service early learning, child care and family support organizations in Ontario (AFCCS, 2015). This agency has always taken a leadership role in the child care community and in early childhood education. They advocate for high quality, affordable, accessible, accountable and inclusive child care that promotes the optimum physical, emotional, social, cognitive and intellectual development of the child (AFCCS, 2015).



This agency has career opportunities in Early Learning Programs, Children’s Integration Support Services, Home Child Care, and Early Years Centers.  It states on their website that when they hire people, they carefully look at what they offer, and where they can contribute best within the child care services they offer (AFCCS, 2015).


Here are the links to each organization I chose in case you would like to visit them yourself: 

The College of Early Childhood Educators


Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario

Andrew Fleck Child Care Services

9 comments:

  1. Hi Stephaine,
    I enjoyed reading your post! You have some great resources on your blog! Thank you

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  2. Stephanie,
    First of all I would like to say, as always, I love the artwork that you include in your blogs, and thank you for providing the links to the organizations you researched, I found the websites to be very informative. It is important that we find organizations that are near and dear to our hearts and organizations that go above and beyond to make positive opportunities for supporting children’s education, as well as supporting their families.

    I have decided to investigate a career change; I will work within the early childhood field however, I would like to move away from the classroom and train teachers on anti-bias education or become a director of a preschool program; this assignment was a great opportunity for me to explore my options.
    Links to the websites
    First 5 California
    http://www.first5california.com/
    NAEYC
    http://www.naeyc.org/

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  3. Stephanie,

    Nice post! I really like how you separated the sections with organizational icons. It was also refreshing to see a different perspective of the early childhood field through the various missions of the Ontario agencies you have shared. I like that you also considered the role as serving as a board member of a relevant ECE agency or organization. I think this is a role that all ECE professionals need to consider at some point in their career. Thank you for sharing your resources with the rest of us!

    Best regards,

    Pamela

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  4. Hello,
    The college of early childhood educators is a great choice for an organization!! It is the main organizations that governs early childhood educators and sets our profession in progress! For this organization, you mentioned that the skills needed would be to be knowledgeable regarding the Code of Ethics and Standard of Practice; I wonder if these ethics are different in different countries? I know that early childhood education all over the world is striving for a diverse successful program but I think maybe the ethics may differ in different countries. I also liked the Andrew Fleck Child Care Services organization that you chose, honestly I have not heard of it till then, so it was great learning about it, thank you!

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  5. Hello again, do you have our professors email for the capstone class please? Walden website isn't working!

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  6. All three organizations seem to have a lot of great information and I think all three organizations are wonderful. I am currently a preschool director and I am looking for a career change too. I would like to be part of a non profit organization that advocates for children that have no one else in their corner. I currently volunteer for CASA but would like to part of the policy changes for our ECE field.

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  7. Great Post ! As a childcare owner/director Walden has really inspired me to do so much more in the field of early childhood. I appreciate the fact that you would like to work with a non profit organization to advocate for young children. Best of Luck -Deon

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  8. I really enjoy reading your post. I am very interested in learning more about the Andrew Fleck Child Care Services. There are a host of organizations out there.Another organization in which I am a member of is the National Black Child Development Institute. Feel free to take a look at their website. The website is: http://www.nbcdi.org/

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  9. Stephanie,
    you have provided some valuable information. I wish that there were some more options in the city that I live in. I think it would be good because there is plenty of diversity.

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