Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2

 

 

            This week I spoke to Taesha Rowe who is and early childhood professional originally from Jamaica where she was a high school teacher.  Mrs. Rowe is currently stationed in Naples, Italy on a military base. She has three children and is a wife to an active duty member. Mrs. Rowe’s husband has been in the Navy for 16 years. They have been together for 18 years but married for 11. Mrs. Rowe has been with the Department of Defense (DOD) for nine years. She started working as a flexible employees with a child development center in Connecticut.  Mrs. Rowe moved to Virginia with her husband and children and worked as a toddler program lead teacher at a DOD child development center.  Currently Mrs. Rowe works with DOD as an Assistant Director at the child development center in Naples, Italy (Taesha Rowe, personal communication, November 28, 2014). 

I asked Mrs. Taesha Rowe about issues in excellence and equality in early childhood field: How do you measure excellence in Early Childhood?  Mrs. Rowe discussed how it was difficult to do so.  However, Mrs. Rowe discussed how the lives we impact are not subjected to a particular test to measure the caregiver's success. Unlike the elementary level where the teacher's success can be measured by the academic success of her students, in early childhood it is usually about the parent's view on their child's development. Not only is this the first difficulty, but there are other obstacles. Excellence in early childhood education, I believe, is limited because of the guardians' understanding on the service offered. Many believe that early childhood education is about "baby sitting" and "potty training." Caregivers may not be encouraged to strive for excellence because of others opinions of what they do. Despite all these different pieces, Mrs. Rowe feels there is still excellence in the field. Caregivers who have identified each child in their care as an individual and treat him/her as such, focuses on how individual children meet their milestones  (Taesha Rowe, personal communication, November 28, 2014). 

There are a few issues with equality in the field. Gender is certainly a consideration in the early childhood field. There are still parents who feel "uncomfortable" with male caregivers. Mrs. Rowe discussed how she had situations where parents have approached her and asked "Does Mr....... change my daughter's diaper?" or "Is Mr...... allowed to be alone with my child during nap time?" In Mrs. Rowe’s experience, early childhood is predominantly dominated by young single females. Another issue of equality in early childhood is caregivers of the minority groups who are in management positions. While there are many caregivers of minority groups working in the classrooms, managerial positions are usually held by White Americans. It is however fair to say that this trend is changing slowly (Taesha Rowe, personal communication, November 28, 2014).