Reflection and Goal Setting

Question :

Identify two or more topics we discussed in this course which were especially meaningful to you.

Please discuss why these topics were meaningful to you and how they may influence you in your work with young children.

Set two or more goals you have for yourself as an early childhood educator based on our study of positive guidance, identify steps you will take towards reaching your goals, share what may be your greatest challenge(s) in reaching your goals.

Finally our opening page of our course included a quote from Frederick Douglass; "It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men". Please reflect on this quote in the context of our study over the past weeks, what does it mean to you now? What are the steps to building strong children?

Answer :

Reflection and goal setting

All the topics covered in this course are very significant and meaningful. But I found The Piaget Model and False-Belief Tasks very interesting the meaningful. I found these two topics very interesting and meaningful considering their contribution to the cognitive development of children. The Piaget model states that every child understands differently. Their reasoning ability also differs. According to this model, all children go through a set of cognitive stages of development. The rate of passing the stage may differ for every child (Lind, 2017). Hence, based on this the ability of a child to understand things can be identified. On the other hand, false-belief tasks are used to determine whether a child is able to distinguish between feelings and thoughts he or she himself/herself currently has with those which can be possibly held by another. It helps children to learn and infer the intention of others. Based on this, a child can significantly distinguish between feelings and thoughts.

The following are the two goals which I focus to achieve; 1) to build trust with the children (students), and 2) to help the kids to make friends and work together. In order to achieve the goals, I would follow the following steps;

i) Writing down the goal on a piece of paper

ii) Setting the deadline 

iii) Working on the mindset

iv) Developing the skillset 

v) Developing activities to achieve the goals

vi) Implementing the activities or taking the first step 

vii) Evaluating the outcomes

Developing the right activities to achieve the goals is one of the greatest challenges in reaching the goals.

The meaning of the quote is that the focus should be on developing strong children so that he or she cannot be broken in his or her life. It is important to make children good people at a young age. The following are the steps to building strong children.

• To teach specific skills and competencies 

• To let children make mistakes

• To teach children to develop a healthy self-talk

• To encourage and motivate children to face fear head-on

• To let children feel uncomfortable 

• To build character

• To make gratitude a priority

• To affirm personal responsibilities

• To teach the skills to regulate the emotions

References

Lind, G. (2017). Attitude change or cognitive-moral development? How to conceive of socialization at the university. In Moral Judgments and Social Education (pp. 25-48). Routledge.