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.