Establishing Professional Contacts and Expanding Resources

Part 1

When we discovered we were having a second set of twins, we decided that an AuPair was the best childcare option for us.  It was less expensive than having all of them in day care and we wouldn’t have to take all of them of the house in the mornings.  Our first AuPair was Emma and she was from Sweden.  Our second AuPair was Regina from Switzerland.  Emma is currently in college, but she used to work with her mom at a childcare center in Sweden.  Her mom currently works at the childcare center and I am attempting to contact her through Emma.  Regina currently works full time as an early childcare teacher and plans to make early childhood education a career.

Because of my position with the government, I cannot establish new contacts with foreign nationals.  Emma and Regina are already documented in my background investigation therefore I am able to continue contact with them.  They are my only options to use for this assignment.

I have sent emails to both girls to ask if they would participate in this assignment for me.  Regina has already responded and agreed to help.  I am still waiting to hear from Emma.  My intent is to contact them via email and Skype to exchange information.  I am very excited to use them for this assignment. Regina currently works full time as an early childcare teacher and plans to make early childhood education a career.  Emma and Regina both spent a year with us so they became part of our family.  I have attempted to maintain contact with them and this assignment will allow me to really catch up with them.

Part 2

I chose to study the National Institute for Early Education Research (NIEER) website.  I visited several of the other websites listed in the reference section, but this seemed the most interesting to me.  I am currently receiving newsletters from Zero to Three and visit that web often for information.  I could have used that website for this assignment, but I have read several articles published by NIEER and was interested to learn more about it.   As for the websites I visited and did not choose, a few of them seemed a little difficult to navigate, a few seemed dull or bland (for lack of better terms), and one website had a political spin to it that I did not like. 

I look forward to navigating the NIEER website over the next few weeks and learning more about it.  I signed up for the newsletter today and looked through the special education section.