Nutrition/malnutrition

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Nutrition/malnutrition is more meaningful to me because I grew up very poor and can remember as a young child,  walking the streets for blocks in search of bottles to sell back to the store in order to purchased Polly meat and crackers to eat. There was no such thing as foods stamps or SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) during that time. We all know the causes of poverty include poor people’s lack of resources, disproportionate income allocation in the world and within developing countries, conflict, and hunger.

“Niger is a developing country, and consistently ranks as one of the lowest ranks of the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), 186th of 187 countries in 2011. Much of the non-desert portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought and desertification. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the more fertile south, and the export of raw materials, especially unranium ore. Niger remains handicapped by its landlocked position, desert terrain, poor education and poverty of its people, lack of infrastructure, poor health care, and environmental degradation”(Wikipedia).

Today the U.S. offer all kinds of nutritional programs to make sure that its youth are not suffering due to nutrition/malnutrition. In spite of its efforts, there are still children who are lacking the nutrition/malnutrition needed for healthy development. Studying this course broaden your thinking because child development is a very broad course that covers every aspect of child development. The information I’ve read here will help me in knowing the signs to look for when a child is under nourished.

Reference: Retrieved January 20, 2013 from Wikipedia, Niger

My Birthing Experience

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My own child birthing experience is one that I chose to write about, probably because it was my first and for some reason or another you always remember your first pregnancy. My sister-in-law  Diane had been trying to get pregnant; she had made up this chart to keep up with her most vulnerable ovulation period and taking her temperature, just doing all kinds of things in order to get pregnant. Me on the other hand never tried because I thought I couldn’t have children and of coarse when I told her I was pregnant , she was more excited than I were. I had signed up to take birthing classes and Diane was just as excited of being my coach. These classes were designed to teach you techniques in breathing when giving birth among other things that I don’t remember. But, as the months pasted I was becoming more and more anxious to have my baby. But unfortunately, my baby wasn’t ready and the doctor had extended my delivery date by ten more days. After the ten days had passed, I was scheduled to have induced labor. My mother was very worried about me, she lived thousands of miles away and she knew that that was a long process and that I had a heart murmur that could possibly affect the baby as well as me. I finally gave birth to a healthy girl who is now 27 years old and have two kids of her own. Whenever I talk to her about my pregnancy while carrying her, I never mention the hard labor I went through. I tell her about the time when I had a craving for movie popcorn and jumped in my car and went to the nearest theater.  Ran up to the door and banged on it to ask the clerk if I could come in to buy popcorn, they saw my condition and opened the door right away for me. I feel that women should do everything they can to make sure that they have a healthy baby. Get under a doctor’s care throughout your pregnancy as soon as you know you are pregnant. Take prenatal vitamins, and eat healthy meals to ensure your unborn is getting all the vitamins and nutrients needed to be healthy.

In comparing the differences and similarities of birthing experiences, I chose to compare that of Africa to that of the U.S. In comparison, like the U. S., most people in Africa do not have access to affordable primary health care, have high rates of malnutrition and most are not in good health during pregnancy. The biggest direct causes of maternal mortality in Africa include hemorrhage (25%), sepsis (15%), hypertension disorders (12%), complications from abortion (13%), and obstructed labor (8%). Not to mention indirect causes such as malaria, anemia, and HIV/AIDS (Cressy, 2008).  From my reading of Africa’s child birthing, they have a high mortality rate not to mention a high rate of birth defects as well. Also, women have no social control of their reproduction, therefore, lacking the ability to advocate for heir rights, needs and interests.

Reference: Cressy, Allison (May 5, 2008). Childbearing in Contemporary Africa: Situating Local Realities in Structural Inequalities or: What Uchafu has to do with Foreign Debt.

Retrieved January 11, 2013 from http://www.mtholyoke.edu

Assessement & Measures

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Throughout this course we have studied and discussed the things needed for infants, toddlers and young children to have healthy development. I believe children should be assessed and measured for the purpose of determining if they are getting the intended learning outcomes and for the continued improvement of our children. Also, I believe there are valid and productive approaches that is unbiased to the assessment of measuring children learning outcomes beyond their test scores. Test scores doesn’t necessarily show whether a child is learning or not. How many times have we tutored with a child and that child appeared to know the subject at hand but when given the written test he failed.
In England, Silvermail (1996) found that schools provide multiple measures of performance that
serve multiple purposes. Schools assess student progress through both a national examination
and teacher-made tests when students reach the ages of seven, eleven, fourteen, and sixteen.
These exams are primarily used to measure the effectiveness of the schools in delivering the
national curriculum. All schools must follow nationally prescribed content and pedagogic
methods and set targets for individual pupil learning (Whetton, Twist, and Sainsbury, 2000).
Gipps, Clarke, and McCallum (1998) assert that this system places too little emphasis on
assessment of learning and too much on assessment for learning.
Young children have curious minds, using the authentic classroom assessment in my opinion is a more valid and productive approach. It allows them to experience real world task and what better way for them to learn than hands on experiences

Gipps, C., Clarke, S., & McCallum, B. 1998, April. The Role of Teachers in National Assessment in England. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, California (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 419 836).
Silvernail, D. 1996. The impact of England’s national curriculum and assessment system on
classroom practice: Potential lessons for American reformers. Educational Policy, 10(1),
46-62.
Whetton, C., Twist, E., & Sainsbury, M. 2000. National tests and target setting: Maintaining
consistent standards. Paper presented at the American Educational Research Association Annual
Meeting, New Orleans, Louisiana (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 441 849).

Stressor

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As a child I grew up and an abusive home. My father was a heavy drinker and would come home and fight my mother after drinking all night. My sister, brothers and I were too small to actually do anything to help my mom, so we would just cry. After so many years of violence my mother finally got the strength and means to move us out of an unhealthy environment. The thing is I was a very young child around 3 or 4 years of age, yet I can remember my father knocking my mother down and she hitting her head on the concrete steps. My parents married very young, so my mother said that she had to grow up very fast. We were never exposed to that type of atmosphere again and my mother remarried a man that was not only good to her but my sister, brother and me as well.
I chose Africa, we all no that their many stressors aloes Africa. Starting with Aids/Hiv, as a result of death and migration, family members, including dependent children, often move in and
out of households. Caregivers change and siblings may be split up, leaving them often traumatized and suffers a variety of psychological reactions to parental illness and death. Steps have been taken toward educating the people of Africa in the treatment and prevention of this disease.

The principle goal of edu…

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The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.” ― Jean Piaget

If you are willing to con…

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If you are willing to conceive education as the

process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and

fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.” [John Dewey]

“If you are willing to conceive education as the process of forming fundamental dispositions, intellectual and emotional, toward nature and fellow men, philosophy may even be defined as the general theory of education.” [John Dewey]