When I Think of Child Development

Children need love especially when they do not deserve it-Harold Hubert

We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that he is someone today-Stacia Tauscher


You can learn many things from children. How much patience you have for instance-Franklin P. Jones


When I think of Childhood Development, I think Children are precious, and we are the caretakers. I am excited about all the new information I have examined, researched, and learned this semester.  I am hoping that we are able to stay our course, and become the Masters of Child Development.

Testing for Intelligence?

  In all that I have discovered this semester the most profound for me was about emotional intelligence. I think of it as emotional maturity, and I believed this used as an assessment will determine a view of the "whole child". According to Tominey,O'Bryon, Rivers,and Shapses(2017),:"Emotional intelligence is a set of skills associated with monitoring one's own and other' emotions, and the ability to use emotions to guide one's thinking and actions". "Emotions impacts our attention, memory, and learning; our ability to build relationships with others; and our physical and mental health"( Tominey, O'Bryon, Rivers, & Shapses (2017). Emotional intelligence helps the child to be engaged in a structured environment, to maintain  control of their reactions.  There is controversy about the part reading " others emotions", if a child or person was wrong in their reading of someone else emotions, this would not take away their effectiveness in maintaining their own. Personally. I have lived by; it is not what happens to me but how I react to it. 
       Since most education systems are different, I looked for the most successful school system in the world.  This successful school system was in the small country of Finland.  All their children get high-quality early care for free. Each teacher in this early care has a bachelor degree.  The children go school proper at  7 years of age. They use no standardize national tests. Instead they use self-assessments, and a total of three-yearly assessments of knowledge  and skills at 15 years of age. The Chartered Institute Educational Assessors(2017), states that:' The purpose of assessment in Finnish schools is quite simply to improve learning. Finnish assessments are supportive, it is about guiding, encouraging, studying...".
      I like how the Finnish distinguish what they use assessments for, and I think that this is our purpose, to identify the children's needs, skills, and to determine the best ways we can make sure we are helping.  I think teachers should have self-assessments to ensure we do not lose sight of out goals, and to see where we are in accomplishing them.  Observations and assessments are geared for the children, and it would give us insight on how to encourage and guide our children.

                                              References
Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (2017). Focus on Finnish     
    assessments. Retrieved from http://ciea.org.uk/focus-finnish-assessment/

Tominey, L. S., O'Bryon, C. E., Rivers, E. S., & Shapses, S. (2017).
     Teaching emotional intelligence in early childhood. NAEYC.
     Retrieved from  http://www.naeyc.org/yc/emotional-intelligence-
     early-childhood