Make the Difference

I have recently completed my certification in Early Childhood Special Education. This semester I was enrolled in three classes given by the United Federation of Teachers at Brooklyn College. During our classroom discussions, my colleagues constantly came upon the topic of the difficult cases of children with special needs that they had encountered as substitute teachers or as paraprofessionals in the school system. Being the only infant/toddler development person in a room of 30 elementary, junior high and high school teachers (including my professor), all I could think about were the recent budget cuts that were made to the New York State Early Intervention Program and how it will impact the population of school age students with disabilities in the public school system. The Early Intervention Program was created under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to serve children under the age of three who have a disability or developmental delay that is physical, cognitive, communicative, social-emotional or adaptive. Developmental delays prior to age three can and usually will lead to some learning and behavior problems when the child reaches school age. Early Intervention catches these delays just as its name implies…early, and provides therapy for the children so that their risk of having issues when they reach school are much smaller than if they had not had any type of interventions or therapies. So why has Governor Cuomo allowed a 10% budget cut for the New York State EI Program? Your guess is as good as mine. It seems to me that it is like skimming money off of the top just to end up using it elsewhere to deal with a problem that the skimming off of the top created to begin with. The more children that enter school with unaddressed developmental delays and inadequate readiness for school, the more money that will be spent on special educators, school psychologists, social workers, speech language pathologists, occupational therapists and child psychologists on school aged children in the public school system. Why not prevent children from having issues when they get to school instead of working twice as hard to help them overcome the inevitable difficulties that they will now face for possibly their entire academic careers?  The growing number of autistic infants and toddlers that need the correct stimulation and interactions from EI therapies to help them to make their way in life as early as possible are now receiving less services. There is no doubt that this will greatly decrease their developmental progress and make it even more difficult for them to function in society. The cuts took place earlier this year and I have already seen the profound effect that it has had on the availability of services to the infants and toddlers in the Early Head Start Program where I have been the Education and Disabilities Coordinator for the last five years. Prior to the cuts, I saw children enter our program as infants and receive multiple EI services. By the time the children turned three years old and left our program, they no longer needed any additional therapeutic services and were able to continue their education without receiving any Special Education services in their new childcare and school settings. The cuts have resulted in the decreased frequency of services for children who desperately need them as well as a lower rate of service approval even after the evaluations deemed the children as delayed and eligible for the services. It is a frustrating process to watch the children go without what they need when the resources are right at our fingertips. So now the question becomes-how do we fight further budget cuts and begin to restore the much needed services to children? There are a variety of ways to reach those who make the decisions. The United New York Early Intervention Providers and Parents as Partners (UNYEIP) is an organization of over 1500 members that work with or are in some way connected to the EI services in NY. Their Action Alert page is full of links that contact members of the assembly, the governor and organizers of movements and protests against the cuts. There are ways for all of us to stay informed and to get involved in advocating for our children. There are also resourceful articles and fliers located on this site that will further inform the public of what is taking place and assist advocacy efforts. I’m definitely going back to my program equipped with the specific information that is impacting the children and families that we are working with on a daily basis. So often we go about our days as teachers and service providers forgetting that we can make as much of a difference in the lives of our children on the state level as we can during our one on one interactions with them. Take that small step and make the difference.

Starting at the Beginning

So this all began for me when I attended a workshop at the Bank Street Infancy Institute this summer, facilitated by Susan Ochshorn, where the topic of discussion was bridging professional practice and policy. Myself and a group of other early childhood educators from various backgrounds discussed the importance of advocacy to our profession and the various areas of our field that policy impacts. It was this discussion that made me begin to realize on a larger scale how little about this area I knew and how little that I have done. Over the next few days after the workshop, I questioned myself repeatedly. "Why is this so foreign to me?" It shouldn't be. I have been in this field for over ten years. I'm no stranger to Early Childhood conferences, I've completed my Master's Degree in this field, and worked with leaders and individuals that are early childhood advocates, but still, I felt very uncertain about what my role as a child advocate was. The information that I received at the workshop was solid and there were tons of resources that I walked away with. I was genuinely excited and ready to take action-but how? "Taking action" sounded great and responsible and like the right thing to do, but after a few days of this feeling of being fired up and empowered, I had to come to terms with the fact that I had no idea of how to do what I wanted to do. I started to consult the different organizations that were given in the list of resources from the Bank Street workshop. It was great to see that there were so many organizations that supported child advocacy and links to early childhood education policy. I quickly realized that there was a lot going on out there and a great deal to take part in. I was still so uncertain of where I fit in with my knowledge of legislation and the resources that I had.Like I said before, this was not the first time that I had the opportunity to become involved in policy or the first time that I was exposed to world of child advocacy, but it was certainly the first time that I felt at all equipped to begin to try to figure out my place in it. I continued to consult organizations especially Zero to Three and the NAEYC online to read as much as I could on what early childhood advocacy was all about. I was flooded with info. Again, I was pleasantly surprised at how many ways there were to become involved, but still bombarded with so many avenues that I didn't know which ones to choose and pursue. One of the suggestions that the NAEYC listed to those like myself that were looking for their place in the world of child advocacy and policy was to learn how a bill becomes a law. I was totally floored and disappointed in myself when I thought about this. I'm being very candid and frank about this next statement. Try not to judge me too harshly. I'm a well educated, 35 year old American citizen and I had no real idea of how a bill became a law. After I got over feeling ashamed and thoroughly beat myself up about it, I decided to figure it out. Is there anything that one cannot find out through the magical powers of Google? So I did just that. I started with one of my favorite sites-Youtube. I went to the bare basics-I Youtube searched the "School House Rock" video on how a bill becomes a law. We all know it, "I'm just a bill, yes I'm only a bill..." (If you're too young to know what "School House Rock" is, I'm not sure that I want you reading this at all. Okay, you can keep reading, but you better have searched it on youtube as soon as your done because everyone should experience its greatness.) It was a cartoon and an extremely basic lesson on the topic, but it was a logical start for me and it actually really helped. So from there I started to google terms and definitions and sometimes had to google the definitions of definitions to really begin to understand the legislative process. I started conversing at a very basic level with friends and family about public policy and politics, law, legislators, who our local representatives were and so on. The questions and explanations went on and on and they continue on and on.

As I started educating myself, I started to wonder how many others were in the same position that I was in. How many of us who are early childhood professionals don't really know very much about policy and advocacy and why? Is it simply because we have gotten too caught up with the millions of things that we have to do as teachers and administrators on a daily basis that we overlook our roles as advocates? Have we fallen into the thought that we are so low on the totem pole that our actions really don't have any weight when it comes down to the serious issues that affect children and professionals in the field? Whatever the reason, it's not acceptable for any of us to think that we don't have a role to play.

I'm continuing to respond to the excitement that I felt when I left the Bank Street workshop nearly a month ago. There is still so much for me to learn. As I continue to figure out my role as an advocate for children and become involved in early childhood education policy, I will share what I'm learning with anyone that cares to read it. While chronicling my discoveries on this journey, I hope that I can help to inform others that are like me, but don't know quite how to go about learning more or that I can inspire those that are familiar with advocacy and policy to educate and empower others.

I am most inspired by this quote from the "NAEYC Advocacy Toolkit" that very truthfully and simply states: "...early childhood professionals need to be the lead voice on what policies are needed to promote our goal of a well- financed, high quality system of early childhood education for all children. Others will speak for us if we do not use our voices in constructive ways. We can be change agents, or we can be the recipients of changes that we did not influence."

The statement speaks to me as an early childhood professional too honestly and to the point to be ignored. 

I've committed to learning all that I can about Early Childhood Education Advocacy and Policy and I've decided to chronicle my process of discovery here. I'll share the resources, articles, discussions, discoveries etc. that I come across. Hopefully I can help to bring some knowledge and awareness to others as well as be influenced by those who are more well versed and active in this area. So, here I go down the road...