Words of Inspiration the becomes Motivation...

Deborah Leong, Ph. D…

Co-Author of Assessing and Guiding Young Children’s Development and Learning is the only text that shows assessment as a process teacher can use to improve teaching and ensure student learning. It incorporates current trends in assessment with examples and approaches being used in early childhood classrooms. The assessment strategies presented are compatible with all approaches to educating young children. The social, cultural, legal, and ethical context of assessment and its implications for teachers and teaching are realistically presented.

Co-Author of A Framework for Early Literacy Instruction: Aligning Standards to Developmental Patterns and Student Behaviors-Pre-K through Kindergarten. It articulates a set of standards and benchmarks that is based on current national and state standards documents and that reflects the foundational knowledge and developmental differences representative of the research on early literacy development and the prekindergarten and kindergarten levels. It also provides sufficient and appropriate information aligned with the standards and benchmarks to aid prekindergarten and kindergarten teachers in assessing the early literacy development of their students. For standard 1, "Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the reading process," five benchmarks are outlined. For standard 2, "Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the writing process," three benchmarks are established.

Marian Wright Edelman…

“I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.”

“The legacy I want to leave is a child-care system that says that no kid is going to be left alone or left unsafe”

“We must not... ignore the small daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee.”

J. Hagel…

“Passion comes from within each of us; it cannot be imposed or mandated from outside. At the same time, it compels us to move outside and to engage with the world around us”. – Wk 2 Discussion

My Favorite Children's Book

My favorite Children's book is The Mixed-Up Chameleon By Eric Carle. I love this book because it tells the story of a little chameleon who hates the fact that he changes color to match his surroundings. From what I've learned in the short amount of time that I've been interacting with children, other than my son, they do not like when they are first introduced to a different environment. I've learned that they often tend to mimic each other, just to get along.

 From the first page, there are already new concepts to grasp, such as seeing the chameleon turn "brownish" after it moved onto a "brown" tree, "reddish" on a "red" flower, and "yellowish" on the "yellow" sand.  Subsequently, my son would then read out loud, how "I wish I could be HANDSOME like a flamingo,"..."smart like a fox",..."funny like a seal" at which point he'll go "hahahahaha". The story has a moral to it too, about how the chameleon, after wishing to be all the things it wasn't, ended up so mixed-up that it finally wished "I could be myself." Which is what I teach all of the children I come in counter with to be...THEMSELVES!! I believe each one of them has a great gift inside of them and unless they are themselves the world will never know the real person they are!

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