Exploring Roles in the ECE Community: Florida's Local and State Levels

While I am aware of many of the local and state early childhood organizations, agencies, and communities of practice, I never took the time to visit their webpages or get to know their inner-workings.  It was mind-boggling to come to the realization that there are so many organizations that ultimately work to better the lives for Florida’s children.

I looked deep into the Palm Beach County (PBC) Early Childhood Registry’s webpage (http://www.pbcregistry.org )  I live in PBC and am a Registry trainer, and yet, I have never spent time reviewing their web page.  My knowledge about the goals of the Registry are extremely limited.  My contact has been primarily submitting and re-submitting paperwork and workshops in order to get them approved for presentation.  I learned a huge amount of professional information.  The Registry’s goal is to support practitioners and trainers who work in early childhood in PBC.  The Registry has a strict program that must be completed prior to offering a trainer membership in this group. 
My purpose for becoming a Registry trainer was to elevate my capacity to present trainings in PBC.  After completing my training, I do receive recognition based upon my trainings, and the state will pay a fee for many of my trainings.   Was it worth the time to become a Registry trainer?  Yes, in many ways.  However, the amount of paperwork per training and the approval process is extensive, time consuming, and often, expensive.  So, in the long run, the recognition comes with a cost.  On the flip side, if I was a director and looking for local training, the Registry is a wonderful place to start, because I would be assured that the trainer and training has met specific qualifications.  In addition, there was a calendar of local trainings on their web page, which is extremely beneficial for early childhood educators.  The job openings listed were for lead and assistant teacher position.  For me, I am not currently interested in teaching a particular early childhood class, so it was not beneficial.  However, especially for those individuals directly out of school, these openings are worthwhile to pursue, certainly a starting point. 

Then, I went outside of my comfort zone, searching for an organization that I had not heard of.  As a result of my studies at Walden, I have become overwhelmed by the amount of children in South Florida who are hungry and/or homeless; it is almost like a bad dream.  I located the web page www.homelessvoice.org  Often, I see individuals collecting money at traffic lights for this organization (their vests have the name, Homeless Voice, imprinted on them).  As the name suggests, their mission is to provide shelter, food, and possible employment opportunities.  Their ultimate goal is to offer homeless individuals access to social services to enable their return to being self-reliant.    While employment opportunities as such were not listed, there were opportunities for individuals to volunteer and a listing of items that were always in need.  Several organizations and fundraising opportunities were listed as an opportunity to raise funds for their shelter.   I was taken aback and touched by their mission at ending discrimination against the homeless population.  Without a doubt, I was one of those people who had biases against homeless individuals; I referred to them as lazy.  My learning has eliminated these stereotypes, as I understand the reasons for homelessness.  I want to get involved.

Finally, I reviewed the Florida Head Start webpage (http://www.fl-hsa.org/).  My preschool was not a Head Start preschool, so as a director, I never had a need to review its mission.   Now, as an educator, I present workshops for many Head Start teachers, in addition to reading weekly at a Head Start school.  I have developed a newly found respect for the organization.  This assignment gave me an opportunity to learn more about Head Start.  I found the information to be up-to-date and the web page to be easy to navigate.  I copied and pasted several articles and/or information.   It was interesting to read their philosophy in reference to the importance of collaboration within the Head Start community; they stressed that such collaboration would enable various Head Start schools to share resources.

I had to search a bit to find where their job opportunities were listed.  Most of them can be found on the Palm Beach County School Board web page.  As expected, various Head Start schools posted jobs for teachers; each one, surprisingly, requested for ‘certified’ teachers.  I do not know what specifically was meant by ‘certified.’  There was an interesting job for a Curriculum Specialist in a Head Start Early Childhood Center.  Again, I do not know if I want to return to a particular school or classroom, but the ability to design a curriculum based on the needs of the students did interest me.  I actually called the school and hope to meet the director at a conference this up-coming weekend in Orlando.  It seems like a dream job, but I do not want it to alienate me as a presenter by associating myself with one particular school.  Several other jobs directly at the Head Start office were available, which would require ratings of schools.  Most of them require experience in the field of early childhood, and other than classroom teacher positions, a director’s credential is a necessity.  The jobs at Head Start require a college degree, but none of the availabilities specifically refereed to a degree in education or early childhood.  Since I am a huge supporter of the importance of a degree specifically in early childhood, the lack of such a requirement disturbed me.