Touching upon the director’s manual, I guess I wasn’t clear on what context of the manual would contain. From my own experience, I would have loved at least a calendar of events from the previous year as a reference. I worked at the school 3 years prior to becoming a director, and I was unaware that the director has a lot of behind the scenes work. For example, I never remembered when family’s reminders went out or when to sign up for family’s conferences. If I had a calendar to help me manage my time, it would have been very helpful. I don’t believe directors should fall into a “this is how it’s always done” mindset but my perspective on this is coming from a first time director. I felt like I was in survival mode most of the time, trying to stay afloat. So for that first year it wouldn’t have been bad to keep it like the previous year. For the most part, I did keep it my firs year as a director like the previous year and tried to do like it was always done previously. My way of thinking was to learn the ropes and just get use to the job. Then in my second year and I saw myself changing a lot more because I was use to the responsibilities and saw what worked and fixed what didn’t work. I also noticed that my staff was more acceptable to the change because it was gradual and it didn’t feel like I came in and changed everything around. I guess what I’m saying is to use the director’s manual as a reflection of last year and if need be, a guide for the incoming director.

Exchange Everyday’s article made a great point about getting your message across. In the article, it had a great quote "In my experience, people don't 'get' the important messages leaders try to send the first time around," Rosabeth Moss Kanter. It’s a great reminder for teachers that families don’t intentionally miss all the information we send out to them, and it’s a great reminder for a director that staff don’t intentionally miss all the information we send out to them. Many times especially as teachers, we are so quick to judge families and say “how did they not know?!?!” At our school, we do try to reach families in all different ways to help them remember especially when it comes to important announcements. We post it in our classrooms, we send out reminder notes, we post it on twitter, and for the older children we tell them to remind their parents. Usually, it’s the last one that really has been the most effective. At times it can be frustrating when your point isn’t made but this article reminds me to step back from the situation and remember that there is a lot going on in everyone’s life.

Chapter 6 had some great ideas on creating quality learning environments. I always get mixed emotions when it comes to reading these types of chapters. I feel inspired and while reading I build my ideal classroom in my head. But on the other hand, reality hits and I realize that because of many factors some of my ideas could never be a reality. My school rents from the church and we have a lot of restrictions on what we can and can’t do to the program. The hardest part, is finding the happy medium between their concerns and with our budget.

One thing I really want to look into is finding out what type of lighting we have in our classroom. It stated that traditional fluorescent bulbs leave children and staff tired at the end of the day (Decker, et al., 2005). We have some children that are there all day from opening to close and staff that work long hours. It would be interesting to see the difference from traditional fluorescent to full-spectrum or incandescent bulbs. I also heard that traditional fluorescent bulbs could be over stimulating to children who are sensitive to stimulation. We have fans on our ceilings and I have notice the change in the class when I turn off the light and just use the lights from the fans; it’s quieter and calmer.

Technology and the classroom have open many opportunities. Taking this class online, which is a first for me, has opened up my eyes to all new possibilities. It has now open opportunities for people that can’t take classes physically to attain degrees. Even though I am on Oahu, classes online let me have some insight to other preschools around this state.

The major point I really enjoyed in our book was from Chapter 4. I liked the idea of having an administration’s manual (Decker, et al. 2005). I took over the director position and I remembered my first year was totally just surviving. If I had an administration’s manual or an outline of the previous year it would have made my life so much easier. It’s funny to think how extensive the family and employee handbooks are but no administration’s manual. Even if I were to continue the next year, it would still be nice to see what we did the year before and how we can improve each year.

I really enjoyed the chapter on questioning evaluation quality in Early Childhood. I think uses those Children’s questions (Podmore) would make an impact on our evaluation. Our program has put a lot of emphasis on the families’ evaluation at the end of the year but I think I should also include an in-depth self-evaluation from the staff. We make goal at the beginning of the year and we review them throughout but I think there would be a bigger impact if we had a self-evaluation, especially using the child’s questions.

“I am convinced, we can develop the capacities required to ‘reinvent the future’ by creating ‘a new horizon of possibilities’ for children’s services” (Sumsion). This is a great quote. I feel that childcare needs more advocacies on the political side. We have gotten a lot of advocacy in the community and families are starting to see the importance of childcare. The reason we don’t have advocacy on the political level is because childcare is not a huge business that we can afford to have lobbyist working for our cause. I feel like the only time childcare is mentioned on the political level is to cut funding and/or closing services. Recently, I just received the letter that they will be cutting the preschool development screening and the early intervention center in Wahiawa. How can the children in our community get a head when they are cutting all of our programs? These programs that they are cutting will benefit the children in our community the most!

I recently read the Exchange Everyday, where it talked about the "millenials" (individuals born between 1980 and 1995) generation. It makes a major observation that this is the first generation to learn computers along side with alphabets (exchange everyday). Where I’m pretty sure the latter part of the generation learned the alphabets through the computer. I feel that since I am part of this generation it really made me reflect on how technology played a part into the other points it makes about the this generation, i.e. “superior team player, wanting to be a part of a community, having diverse social circles and networks being second nature, and social responsibility and awareness (Exchange Everyday).” How does technology affect our willingness to be a part of a community and how has our social networking become so diverse? America has become more mobilized, meaning we don’t typically stay in the same town we were born and raised. We go away for college, and we travel around the world. We don’t find a career that a community needs, we find a community that needs our career. This brings everything closer to us. This is the same with the Internet, it bring all parts of the country and other countries closer to us. It is so easy to stay in contact with people halfway around the world, via social networking websites, and web cams. These modern types of networking make communication with the rest of the world instantaneous. With the world at our fingertips, it’s only natural for us to have a diverse social circle and networking that much easier. The Internet and media have also showed us first hand how our way of living has an impact on the whole world therefore making us more conscious and aware of our way of living.

Chapter 2 of our book talks about different theories on early childhood development and how it is important to know when writing a mission statement. It also talks about the quality of programs and constant upkeep that needs to be done to have a program running at its peak potential. When talking about program quality and effectiveness it makes a point that quality teachers need to use reflective teaching practices aided by qualifies supervisors (Decker, et al., 2005). This is really important in keeping the quality of childcare centers. I have found that at the end of the month, and year the teachers should always be working together to reflect on what worked, what needs to be changed, and how we can further childrens' knowledge. It’s too easy for teachers to become so complacent in their curriculum and just recycle their old lesson plans from year to year when obviously the children are constantly changing. What I am constantly striving for when we have our meetings is to reflect on activities and projects happening in our classrooms. Ask questions like: if it didn’t work, why didn’t it work? Or if it did work, how can we take it a step further?

This chapter also talked about evaluations about the program. Every year we send out evaluations to families and staff and ask them to reflect on the past year. This really helps our program to see where we are lacking and what we need to change. As a result of last year’s evaluation, we have seen the need for more community involvement. This year it was our goal as staff to see how we can involve our school more into the community and how to get our families involved into their own community. At the beginning of the year, the staff brainstormed on how we can accomplish our goal and we made it clear to all the families during family orientation that this was our task for the year. The families have been very susceptible to our ideas and have provided their own ideas as well.

There were two major points in our book that made an impression on me about childcare. The first point that really got my attention was that childcare has to be available and affordable for working families (Decker, et al., 2005). This is an issue that I am facing as a director in these economical times. I am having more and more middle class families finding it hard to afford quality childcare. We accept all of the financial services that are out there but we have a selection of families that do not qualify for it but are barely paying for their childcare.

The book also mentions that the value parents place on specific aspects of a program may overshadow quality aspects (Decker, et al., 2005). Some parents are looking for childcare programs based on hours of operation, tuition, and convenience rather than class sizes, ratios and teacher qualifications. Granted there are many parents that have done research and have questions about the quality but it’s always sad to see a child leave because of our school hours.

I also read the article about childcare as a big business. It’s not a surprise to see that childcare has become a corporate big business. In the last 10 years, the demands for childcare have raises exponentially. Society has changed and moms (or parents) are no longer staying home and everyone has a career. Since there has been this change, a market for childcare has opened up so it was only a matter of time before for-profit, big business childcare would emerge. It works too because families want to feel comfortable with sending their little ones to a place they know or heard about. If these big business childcare programs are around, families will feel comfortable with sending their child to it because of it’s “name”. I definitely don’t want to be comparing childcare to Wal-mart but essentially that’s basically what it is. We are creatures of habit and no matter where we go, we are all familiar and comfortable with the inside of Wal-mart.