Professional Goals, Hopes, and Dreams

Where I'm working right now, we're attempting to hit specific ratings to up our accreditation. Our quality ratings need to go up and as such we've been working new standards into our program. Weekly curriculum has been reestablished (something we started pre-COVID that fell to the wayside) and each portion of the curriculum needs to be hitting the guidelines from Supporting Maine's Infants and Toddlers: Guidelines for Learning & Development. It's part of a way to get our rating to rise and make sure that our quality as a program moves higher. On top of that, we've been using Maine Roads to Quality (MRTQ) to give teachers and staff the ability to have training through work that can help us raise in the ranks as professionals. It's a good system that makes sure that those working in the program are those that want to be here and want to do the best for the children that they watch after every day.

Right now, I'm signed up to actually take another training in the coming months so that I'm able to grow as a professional. There are a number of trainings to take over the course of the year that will allow me to work towards attaining my Infant/Toddler Credential (ITC). It's a step to not only grow as a professional for the program, but also a step that allows me to be able to work with infants when my program eventually broadens the horizon and has the ability to bring in children younger than the current 18months that is our youngest group.

I want to make sure that the trainings I'm taking and the classes that I take within this program for my degree are ones that help me to understand kids from different walks of life. I want to be able to work with kids from different cultures, different religions, and different levels economically. Having the tools to help any kind of child that walks through my doors is important to me because every child that comes through my program should get the same care as the others. Their backgrounds shouldn't change how we interact with them or the care that they get. Part of what I want to see in my own program is to see the ability to work with all kids by the inclusion of tools that help us to help them. English translation dictionaries, translation apps, knowing cultural or religious things that may help us help the child get adjusted in our room: it's all things I'd like to see so that we can help the children we care for on a daily basis.

Professionally, I want to finish my master's degree so that I have the proper schooling that I need to really hold my current job title and maybe take the step further eventually and move from assistant teacher to lead teacher. Not to mention that I would in fact like to get my Infant/Toddler Credentials just because it's another thing I can put under me belt for the future. It'll be another thing added to my grade as a teacher which will help up our rating as a program as well. I want to be a helpful asset to my program, want to be someone that helps increase the quality of it. The better our quality, the more helpful we'll be n the long run. And that is what I want to see.