Reflective Narrative STANDARD 1: Caring and Nurturing Relationships that Support Learning "Early Childhood Educators establish professional

and caring relationships with children and families. They engage both children and their families by being sensitive and respectful of diversity, equity and inclusion. Early Childhood Educators are receptive listeners and offer encouragement and support by responding appropriately to the ideas, concerns and needs of children and families." (CECE, 2011) Artifact: Photograph and Responsive plan

What I have learned in field and in my courses at Humber College, in the Early Childhood Education program is that working collaboratively with team members, and families is beneficial to all parties involved. It is also vital to have a welcoming environment that engages both children and their families by being sensitive and respectful of diversity, equity and inclusion(CECE,2011). As a student on the come up to becoming a Registered Early Childhood Educator I must be able to provide a healthy, responsive and inclusive environment. This standard of practice helps for the Registered Early Childhood Educator, not only to observe children in order to capture where the child is developmentally, but to use this information to help families better understand in terms of what we plan to accomplish through the use of play. Early Childhood Educators establish professional and caring relationships with children and families(CECE, 2011), by sitting down as a team we can use the observations to plan developmentally appropriate experiences for the various ages and stages, to implement the experience in a way that they are able to learn from our planned experiences (activity) that the children and families get the opportunity to do. The standard relates back to my course work that I have done in Role of an Educator, Family Perspectives, Curriculum Design, Child Development and Observation classes, by helping me to understand the importance of planning responsive experiences, and to provide healthy and secure environments for families. As a team we work together to inhibit the development of various domains and skills of the children by setting up different areas in the classroom, that are targeted to promote healthy growth and development. This particular artifact that I am reflecting on today comes into play, in terms of expanding on cultural differences; I have posted various flags of the children in the room that relate to their backgrounds, which is discussed in my responsive plan, along with photographs for visual evidence. By first addressing my colleagues to find out what they had thought about the idea, then once we agreed, I approached families coming or leaving the centre about, what their particular childs background was. This experience was to this way I can helping the children to enhance their learning on different countries, but as well as expanding on their knowledge of not only themselves, but their peers as well. The flags were an addition I made to enhance the culture in the room, but in doing so, there were a number of teachable moments that the children were able to get out of it, for instance, they knew that the pictures were of flags, but did not know what countries they were, and as many of them were still young, they did not know how to spell their name, the reason why many children were able to figure out

where theyre cubbies were was when asked was that many know what their articles of clothing look like, but also through the repetition of hanging and taking their things out of their cubby. Now, after teaching the children about the various flags/countries and teaching them the spelling of their names, all that was left to do was to link their names to the flags to gain more of an understanding that, that was the culture that they belonged too. The parents asked questions about the flags once they were up, and made attempts to get the children involved in recognizing that they indeed did belong to a certain culture of people. For instance, one mother came in and said to me I see that you guys have posted flags on the cupboards, is that why you asked me what Child Es background was? I proceeded to say yes, she began to get ready to take child E home, I suggested, why dont you go take a look at the flags, as his name is on two of them, in order to get her to feel that it is okay to engage in the experience as well, she and Child E walked over to the cupboards where the flags were hung up, she then began talking to Child E can you show me where your name is?, how about, what flag that is?, she proceeded to ask him a couple more questions in order to get him involved in recognizing pictures and words, so that he could link them together with the purpose, and I say with the purpose as, once they finished looking at the flags she pointed to the two that had Child Es name on them and said that is what I am (pointing to the Canadian flag) and that is what daddy is (pointing to the Jamaican flag), which means that you are Jamaican and Canadian I then interrupted and said, that is why your name is on both the Canadian and Jamaican flags. My intention in providing this experience was to enhance the culture in the room, and to get the children to begin recognizing the flags not only as pictures, but the purpose behind what the picture meant (country) and why their names had been attached to them. The children were able to use this experience to expand on their prior knowledge of what they knew to be a flag, and get to know them as much more than that. By providing the children with different teachable moments, they had the opportunity to participate in a significant experience which they may never get the opportunity to engage in again. Besides the social interactions with parents, there was some interactions amongst peers, which helped to build on their social emotional skills, due to the fact that I purposely printed one flag for each country and then placed their names on them, was to get the children to interact with one another, especially the children that were a bit older and had the ability to read, even if it was just was to read their name. I wanted the children to learn that even though we may all appear to be different, there are other things that connect us, such as two or more different children being a part of the same culture. Although, I had originally thought that a majority of them had known how to spell their names, I quickly learned that it was only a minority of the children who had learned how to do so. I would no longer only be teaching the children about grasping the concept of backgrounds, but have the opportunity to use this experience to apply a number of teachable moments for the children to benefit the children, in learning about countries, their names, what they have in common with another child and that we all come from a place that we call home (Canadian Flag). Therefore overall I was happy at the various opportunities that bringing these flags into the room was able to accomplish, in order to assist the children in building on their skills, which they can be use for lifelong learning.