Reflective Practice Portfolio

Professionalism

1.) The three most important professional qualities and behaviours I’ve demonstrated in placement this semester are: Team Player, Honesty, and Attentiveness.

Team Player- From the beginning of placement I’ve always felt that it was important to be a team player, and on the same page with the people I would be working alongside, and thankfully I carried that until the end of my placement. Examples, letting other teachers in the room know why a child was removed from a certain situation, why the child is crying, any messages that the parents have given me about the children either when they dropped them off or picked them up. I felt like this was important because when you’re a part of a group such as a daycare centre it’s important to rely on your co-workers for support with the children in cases where someone gets hurt, or during lunch time, when we get notifications from a parent/guardian/caregiver.

Honesty- I’ve always maintained honesty in my placement. I felt that this was one of the three most important qualities that I demonstrated because if you’re not able to be hon-est with the people you work with, and your teacher I don’t think that you can ever suc-ceed, and be greater than what you are. Being honest with things that happened during my placement, whether it be tardiness, or if the children asked me a question that re-quired my honesty I was always upfront about everything. I didn’t find it necessary to sway the truth, or not reveal the truth at all. I also believe that with my being honest about everything that caused my Agency Su-pervisor to never doubt me because she knew I had nothing to hide because she was already told everything there was to know.

Attentiveness- Being attentive was an important quality I had to choose for profession-alism because without it I would not be able to do what was required of me.When a person is attentive especially in the setting I am in it is extremely beneficial be-cause with children it can allow you to prevent incidents, to anticipate a reaction, a be-haviour. For example, I had a child in placement that needed the teachers attention very often, and once he came back from school to daycare we had to make sure that we were attentive and had the appropriate materials, and activities he needed. I was atten-tive and therefore would observe him and see that whenever we put out plasticene, or playdough he would remain very settled, and calm. So the next following days I did just that, as soon as he walked in the door he had either playdough or plasticene ready on the table for him to play with.

b.) A specific example that highlights how I grew as a professional is my communication with each parent. In the beginning of placement I was not very open with the parents,

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and I would avoid telling them how their child’s day went because I was timid, and was very insecure about how I could approach such a conversation so one day I just went up to one of the parents and explained how the child’s day went (good or bad), and what they did, how they ate, anything special they did that day. I’m glad that I was able to face my fears, and start communicating with the parents be-cause it is a part of being professional.

c.) The professional quality I would like to improve on is keeping things organized, and definitely making sure that I have everything I will need for the day/week. By improving my organizational skills I can be a better E.C.E have things prepared for the children, activities/trips, and also have things ready for weekly meetings with my Agency Supervi-sor. Another professional quality I would like to improve on is making sure that I adhere to the agencies policies, and standards for students. By ensuring that I can adhere to the agencies policies, and standards I can be even more successful in placement be-cause I am following the rules that they have for me, not the ones I’m bringing from my College. In doing this it shows co-operation.

d.) I am able to function very well when I’m a part of a team the reason being that I com-municate which I believe is a very important factor in being a team player. I communi-cate with the staff about the child’s health, achievements, improvements, safety etc. With my constant observations of the children it isn’t hard for me to pass on information to my co-workers such as “A did really well with her letters today, she started writing her name”, “B came in with a 104.5 temperature mom talked to me about her night, and said this just happened in the morning, i’ve written it all down in the staff notebook. From the beginning of placement I was able to take initiative. I am familiar with the re-sponsibilities, and the routines that go around in the daycare because I have a child my-self so I do know what goes into taking care of children. I would often times take it upon myself to start lunch, or p.m snack, and sign children in or out. I followed directions well when I was in placement, whether it be from my Agency Supervising Teacher or her peers, whenever I was told to start something such as reading circle I was there to do it. If the teacher discussed with me that a child did something that was not appropriate for daycare and they told me that they had already dealt with the child then I would follow those directions not to deal with the child anymore because we wouldn’t want to con-fuse the child with two different thoughts/ideas.I can take constructive criticism very well. I can take a comment that was made to be improved and improve on it. When I get constructive criticism I take notes on what was said and I think of different ways to improve on it, and then I pick the one that i feel is best from the options.

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e.) I decided to choose my daily log book as my artifact to represent my professionalism because I entered everything I had into my daily log book. All of my daily observations were in the book, any comments I’d have about the children, or parents were in there. I also kept information about my day, and possible trips I’d like to take, information that my teacher and I had discussed over the course of the day, things that my teacher may have wanted me to work on for that day I would write down in the book. Also I kept guidance strategies in there, and any conflicts between the children I wrote in the book. I also wrote down information that parents had given me about the children.

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Relationships with Children

a.) The most important thing that I’ve learned about guiding children is that every child is completely different. Prior to coming to this placement I was thinking that some of the strategies I use at home, or that I had learned from previous placement experience I could bring to the new placement, and that is completely wrong to even think about do-ing. When I came to this placement I certainly understood that every child is different, a guidance strategy that worked with one student in class did not work with another, and I also found that even among boys the guidance strategies I needed to use had to be completely different because they had completely different personalities, and reactions.I learned this by dealing with the children when I would sit down with them and discuss ways that they could change their inappropriate behaviour and the reaction that child A had, child B certainly did not have.

b) I have a great ability to promote self-esteem in children and the way I did that this placement was by dealing with a specific boy in my placement. Unfortunately this child had issues with his self-esteem, but I was able to turn that around and boost his self-esteem up. There was an incident between the boy(Child A) and another child in the classroom (Child B).

Child A was in line to wash hands for snack, and he noticed that another child had shoes that light up so he asked the child can I see your shoes light up and the child said “No”, so then Child A came to me and said “Sue, no one likes me”, and I asked him why he said that and he said because a child did not want him to see her light up shoes and I turned around and said “No don’t say that because I like you very much, and so do others and then I saw another child that was close by and asked her if she could show Child A her shoes and she did. The smile on Child A was so big, he was so happy that someone did want to show him the sneakers, and then he kept asking the child with the shoes more questions about where they got the shoes, and who got it from them.

c) I had, and still have a great relationship with the children in my placement. When I was one-on-one with the children I worked very well with them, one of the important things I do when I am having a one-on-one is i make sure that the person knows I’m paying sole attention to them, I want the child to know my feelings matter, my opinion matters and when the teacher is with me although there are other children in the classroom she is focused on our conversation. So when I am having one-on-ones I make sure to keep my ears wide open because preschool/school-agers have so many great ideas, and thoughts, and they are at the age where they require a re-sponse and it must match what they have said. So I make sure to keep my ears wide open, and to respond according to what was said. When I am in a group setting with the children I make sure that every one has a voice because more often then not the shy ones will get overlooked because the children with big personalities, and lots of ideas will want to say it all at once but I make sure that I give a chance to everyone . An important example of this and how I ensured that the children respected their peers was I bought in a “talking stone” that was used during circle time, so whenever

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someone had something to say they would put their hand up and I would pass the “talking stone” to them, and they would then be able to talk. The great thing that hap-pened with the “talking stone” was that everyone listened, and followed directions they would be eager to put their hands up so it could be their turn to have the stone.

d.) The strategies I used to encourage children’s prosocial behaviour were 3:1.) When children came to ask me for help I would tell them to first ask a friend of theirs.2.) I would make sure that when we did art activities and we needed glue I put less glue then there were children so that sends a message that I need to share because there isn’t enough to give out to individual people3.)There were times during lunch that I would ask for a helper to help hand out plates, forks, cups etc, and after a couple more times of myself and the rest of the teachers do-ing this the children started asking “Can I be the helper today?”

e.) This particular artifact that I chose was really special to me because it really show-cased my relationship with the children. I had made an observation of a child at daycare

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and she was walking around with another friend and they were “looking for treasure”. I got that observation and decided to create an experience our treasure hunt in our play-ground. So I made an eye patch, a map, a speech that I said prior to starting the hunt, and I ended my speech with Remember children “X” marks the spot! The children then went to look for the treasure and it was pictures of cars, and princesses that they could colour. They were all very excited, and so when we got inside we sat down and coloured our treasure. The great thing about this experience is that I saw the children working together for a common goal. In the end when it was time for some of the chil-dren to go home I gave each of them a certificate that says “Certificate of Bravery “ the children all loved it.

Working with Parents

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a.) The children at the centre spoke different languages, they are:ChineseSpanishRussianEnglishSwahili I found that with this placement the culture was fairly similar there weren’t parents who did things completely different than others, they pretty much all believed in the same way of discipline, and nutrition, health, exercise,etc.

b.) When it was regarding the children’s families I would mostly ask the teachers around me, but when it was nearing the end of my placement when I became more comfortable with the parents I started asking them questions. I did not make an activity around the children’s families.

c.) The efforts I made to communicate with families were simple but I feel effective. I just approached the families, and started talking about the child and sometimes they would in turn ask me something about myself and I would ask something about them, and we would be engaged in this conversation in which we got to know more about one an-other. For example, one child’s mother came in to pick up her son and I was telling her how his day was, and she pointed out something funny about her son, and I said really i didn’t know that, and then I told her an experience with my child, and asked her another question about her son.

d.) Two things I will do next semester so that I am confident and competent working with families is communicate more with them, and take the fear out and the thought tat I need to be close to them in order to have a relationship. I will take that step to ask them a question about themselves, discuss something funny their child did, an observation i had about their child. Second, I want to incorporate the families into my activity. I would like to invite the par-ents for a multicultural day where they can bring their traditional clothing if they have some, and we can discuss the different similarities, and differences we have at the cen-tre when it pertains to our backgrounds.

e.) This artifact is an example of my observation of the families, and also my knowledge from co-workers about the families. I made a visual that has all different types of fami-

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lies, it has a single parent, grandparents taking care of a child, same sex couples. I did this because it showed just exactly how our centre was. Our centre had a variety of dif-ferent types of families and at the bottom of the visual I put “ACCEPTABLE.”In this day and age people are still not all that comfortable with seeing a single parent, or grandparents raising their grandchildren, or same-sex I wanted to let the parents, and children know the outside world may not accept you, but all those different families are acceptable to us at the centre. I wanted them to confide in us , and trust that we will respect their family no matter how “normal” it is.

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