Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

I began this project by searching for professional early childhood organizations that I could contact. I contacted The Early Childhood Association of Australia (http://www.earlychildhoodaustralia.org.au/)  and the British Association for Early Childhood Education (http://www.early-education.org.uk/), by finding the organizations main contact information and sending an email. I informed them of who I was and why I was contacting. I have not yet heard from either of them but I look forward to establishing contact with two colleagues that I can talk to and learn from. I chose these two organizations because Australia is a place that has always interested me and I am curious how similar and different their early childhood system is run, and because my family is from England and although I am sure it is very different now, my grandfather grew up there and I am curious as to how their system differs from ours. When I noticed that the newsletter for the British Association for Early Childhood Education was listed in our class resource for this part of our assignment, I immediately decided to study this website. I chose this site because as I previously said, my family is from England and I am very interested to learn about the field of Early Childhood Education there.

My contact attempts have yet to show success so I have no helpful hints as of yet but I am curious how successful my colleagues were with forming a partnership with a colleague from another country.  Could someone please share their experiences with me?

support

I have a lot of different support systems in my life. My husband is an emotional support system. He encourages me when I frustrated and he listens to me when I need someone to talk to or just need someone to vent to. My mom and step father are a support system in many , many ways. They have supported me in making important decisions, they helped to monetarily support me as I finished my final semester of undergrad and was unable to work because I was student teaching, they support me emotionally as well. My friends have always been a support system as well. They are there for me whenever I needed someone. They too encourage me and emotionally support me. I think of support as encouragement and guidance.

Luckily I was blessed with a wonderful boyfriend when he found out I was pregnant, was very supportive. He was just as excited as I was. We had our son, got engaged 9 months later, and got married a year after that. I always wondered what it would be like had that notbeen the case. What if he had walked out? I would have needed a ton of support. Im sure my friends would be around for emotional support and to help me out. But my parents are the ones I would have needed the most support from. I imagine that I would have needed emotional support in many ways but also monetary support. We ask know that teachers don’t make much money and I would have needed help. I have to work. Therefore I would need daycare or family to help watch my son. That alone its a huge amount of monetary support. Daycare is expensive. I imagine that my support systems that I already have would be similar but much more magnified. I would be more dependent on others. I think if they were not there my life would be more stressful. It would run another and I might be a more effective mother if I had support.