Meeting Employment Challenges

Early Childhood Education Interview Questions

Suling Wang 300709634

1. Tell me something about yourself. I began my Early Childhood Education Program at September, 2012. I chose this program because I love children and I want to work with them. After two years study I understand what love is and how to love children. Love is "setting limits" but not "set rules". Love is "providing children with healthy food" but not "providing them with expensive food." Love is "being responsive to children" but not "just stay with them." Love is "playing and learning together with them" but not "telling them what to do." Love is "letting children to take responsibilities by themselves" but not "spoiling them". After two years in-class study and 3 field placements, I become confident, knowledgeable and ready to work with children and families. 2. What do you know about our center? I found your advertisement on the website of working in Canada posted on Mar. 4, 2014. I am interested in the job position because I believe that I meet the job requirements. Then I read all your web pages very carefully. I like the style of your web pages very much. It's bright and meaningful. I know that you are community based licensed child care centres and provide high quality, play-based learning programs for children ages 6 weeks-12 years. Your philosophy is to bring nature into the classroom and takes the classroom into nature, offering an environmentally aware foundation of early learning for children, from infants to school-age. This philosophy impresses and directs me to work in an wonderful environment like this. You are the 1st Certified Nature Explore Classroom in Canada! I know you have infant room, toddler room, nursery school, pre-school, JK/SK kindergarten, school-age, camps, before and after school programs. You also provide detailed information for parents. That's a good way to communicate with families. 3. What is the most satisfying part of child caring and educating to you (examples)? The most satisfying part to me is to plan and implement interesting and age-appropriate activities based on children's needs and interests. The experiences supported children's learning and exploring, and we had a lot of fun when we did the experiences. When I worked with kindergarten children we celebrated Chinese New Year together. The teacher in the classroom decorated the classroom with some lanterns and Chinese pictures. Because the children knew I came from China, so they always asked me questions about the Holiday. "What do you do?" "What do you eat?" "Do you get a lot of

gifts?" I told them my stories about the Holiday and read books about Chinese New Year for them. Then I prepared children's songs about Chinese New Year. We danced with the music together. It looked like they could understand the music and enjoyed the happiness, even they didn't understand the language. I also prepared red packets for every child. When I distributed the red packet to each of them, every one said Happy New Year to me in Chinese. This activity promoted the development of language, social, music, and movement skills. It based on children's interests and they experienced a different kind of culture. 4. What is the most challenging part of child caring and educating to you (examples)? The most challenging part for me is the safety of infants and toddlers. Infants and toddlers are rapidly changing and learning new skills. Child care settings should make the indoor and outdoor environment safe and promote the development of all domains. Everything used should be childproof. Infant and toddlers are active investigators and they are lack experiences of safety. When I worked with toddlers, I always positioned myself at the most suitable place to supervise all the children. I provided creative and suitable challenging activities to avoid withdrawals or aggressiveness. I remember one afternoon at about 4:30pm, the toddlers in my classroom looked irritable. Some of them grabbed toys from others, and some of them screamed and cried. At that time I thought they were waiting for their parents to pick them up and they were tired emotionally. I set up a tent and 5 children got inside of the tent. We played the game of peek-a-boo and I was the person who sought the children. Children focused on the game and laughed loudly. They didn't grab toys and fight any more. 5. How did you set limits in your classroom? Use an example to explain how you responded to children's inappropriate behaviour in your classroom? Setting limits is a way to teach children how to stay within safe boundaries and learn self-control. Limits are based on safety, responsibility, and respect. Limits are set with I-messages, choices, information, and consequences. Limits are set for these four reasons: --To ensure the safety of each and adult --To prohibit the destruction of non-disposable materials and equipment --To ensure that children accept responsibility for their own actions --To ensure equal and respectful treatment of all people

When I did my second placement, there was a 4-year-old boy in the classroom. One day during the free play time in the morning, the boy was playing with a pile of marbles for about 10 minutes. He poured the marbles from one container to another and reversed. Suddenly he took two marbles and was trying to put them in his two external ears. He said, "I will look very funny." I was playing together with the children. Just at this moment I saw what happened and took the marbles from his hands and grasped them in my hands. I said, "I feel scared when I see you are trying to put the marbles in your ears. I am worried about that your ears would get hurt if the marbles get inside your ears." The boy looked at me and had a puzzled look on his face. It looked like he didn't know why it's dangerous to play with the marbles like this. Then I said to him, "Marbles are very smooth and hard. They could get into your ears very easily. It's very hard for us to take them out. So your ears will get hurt. And sometimes we would get choked if we put marbles into our mouths. It's very dangerous." Then A. said, "Oh, I know this now. I will never do it again." I used I-message and giving information to set limits. 6. Have you ever worked with a crying baby? What did you do to respond to the baby? When I did the Infant and Toddler field placement, there was a girl who was 1 and half years old. On the first day when she was promoted to Toddler Room from Infant Room, she cried all the time and didn't take part in any activity. And she didn't eat anything during lunch time. It looked like she was upset because of the new environment. I tried to talk to her and show her different kinds of toys. But she always shook her head and say No. Then I thought she needed some water and I showed her water bottle to her. She reached out her hand to the water bottle and held the bottle tightly. She drunk a little water and then cried intermittently. I realized that maybe she liked something from home. Then I found her family picture was on the wall and I took off her picture and showed her the picture. She pointed the lady on the picture and said, "Mommy." Then we talked about her Mom and she looked relaxed gradually. She always held the water bottle and family picture for the rest of the day. And she ate some snack in the afternoon. On that day I told her Mom maybe tomorrow it's better for the girl to bring a favorite toy from home. Family pictures and favorite toys are good ways to help young children to cope with the significant transition successfully. For the next two weeks, things became better and better. The girl began to play with the other children and enjoy the activities gradually. 7. How did you share difficult information with a parent in an appropriate way (examples)?

I think the appropriate way to share difficult information with parents is based on the principles of respecting the others, being sensitive to different perspectives, and thinking the best of children and their families. I worked in a kindergarten room in one of field placement. There was a Chinese boy whose family were newcomers to Canada. In the classroom, children read different levels of books to teachers on an one-to-one basis. Then they sent different levels of books to every child's parents based on the children's daily progress. Parents would read the books together with their children at home. My ECE teacher told me that the new boy need to spent some time to recognize and write letters from letter A. Because they were Chinese, so my ECE teacher wished me to communicate with the parents. I knew that language learning took time but I agreed with my ECE teacher that parents should spend more time with their child to promote his language development. So one day I talked to the parents in a very sensitive way and told them that it looked that their son enjoyed the time in the class. He was making progress at listening and speaking. On that day the boy was the special helper in the class and he was proud of taking some responsibilities to help teachers and other students. Then the parents asked me what they should do to help their child to improve English. Then we talked the books sent back home every day. The father said his son always said he couldn't remember the pronunciations and printings of the letters. And his son didn't want to work on it. Then I told them there were some resources to make the learning more meaningful. After that, I searched information on the Internet and tried to find some websites to help him learn alphabet. I told them the resources. The parents and I always exchanged information with each other. We worked together for the best of the child. From this case I learned that maybe some parents wished to get more information from the school teachers. But some barriers make the communication difficult and we should take some actions to reduce the barriers. 8. Based on your observation, if you find that a child in your care changes dramatically in behaviour, how would you communicate with the family? As an ECE, the primary concern is for the well-being of the children in my care. If a child changes a lot behaviorally, the possible reasons are unstable family relationships, poor attachment, lack of support from mothers or fathers, or poverty etc.. What I should do includ: -Observing the child more carefully and recording the intensity and frequency of the irregular behavior. -Spending more time with the child and supporting the child emotionally and responsively. But I need

to know that it is important to maintain consistent expectations and firm yet reasonable limits, and not to over-protect or to indulge the child. -Identifying risk factors by interaction with the child. The child need to be listened in an honest and nonjudgmental way. Provide the child with opportunities and play experiences for self-expression such as play-dough, art, physical activity, dramatic play, or a place to be alone. -Talking with the other co-workers. -Talking to the parents in a very sensitive way about their child's situation. All parents are different. Some are open and willing to divulge information. While others aren't. These feelings must be respected and deferred to in future communications. If they don't need help and don't want to share information with me, I won't ask for more. But I will giving them the feeling that my duty is not to judge but to offer support. At the same time, I must know that there are boundaries when working with families experiencing stresses. If the parents need my help and support, I can refer the parents to appropriate community resources but I myself is not a counselor. 9. What would you do to work with children with special needs. If I work with children with special needs, I will --recognize and respect the children and their families' special needs. --put some story books about different kinds of disabilities for the class on the book shelf to raise the awareness of diversity and inclusion. --collaborate with children's parents and observe children to know their strengths, interests and areas of needs and know the successful strategies used at home. --connect with my colleagues and professionals from other disciplines. --identify my challenges and attitude to foster an environment that is safe, supportive and inclusive. --arrange for equipment or classroom modifications that might be needed, as recommended by a specialist. This may include accommodations for mobility equipment (e.g., wheelchairs, standing frames, walkers), supportive seating, supportive toilet seats and/or mechanical lifts. --determine if any changes to schedules will have to be made . --give clear and brief directions. I will give written or visual directions as well as oral ones. I will allow extra time for oral responses.

--break tasks into short, easy-to-manage steps. I will provide each step separately and give feedback and reinforcement along the way. --provide checklists, graphic organizers, visual referents and examples to help children plan ahead and to stay on task. --consider ways to adapt play activities and structure opportunities for play with peers. --provide support in transitioning from one activity or place to another. I will use cues, routines and purposeful activity during transitions. 10. Do you know some modernization happening in the early year education and service field? 1) Full-day kindergarten will be fully implemented and available to all of Ontarios four and five years old children. School boards, working with other early years partners, will continue to play an important role in shaping local early years services. 2) An effective approach to implementing Best Start Child and Family Centres will be created by September 2014. It will provide families and caregivers with universally accessible programs, services, and resources in easily accessible locations, and will be supported by an easy-to-use provincial website; provide quality programming that supports play and inquiry-based learning opportunities for children, guided by the principles of the Early Learning Framework; deliver programs led by qualified staff teams that include at least one registered early childhood educator. 3) The delivery of speech and language services will be improved. The Ministry of Children and Youth Services, working with partners across ministries and in communities, will re-engineer speech and language services to improve service access for children and families; reduce unnecessary duplication of assessments; reduce fragmentation of services; create improved service continuity for children and families, for example, as they enter school. 4) Stabilize and transform the child care system The government remains committed to the other important components of child care modernization to stabilize the child care sector, mitigate closures, and ensure families have access to high-quality child care. The Child Care Modernization Act is on discussion.