Week 5: Getting to Know Your International Contacts—Part 2 Excellence and Equity

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the
habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing
attitude.

Colin Powell

When discussing the issues of excellence and equity with my primary international early
childhood  education contact, Petra, at first she was a bit confused as to what I meant by excellence. I explained to her that here in the US, the ECE field strives for excellence and providing the most current, appropriate, and most importantly effective services to children. However, this goal is often met with various barriers such as inadequate teacher training and experience, unequal allocation of financial and other resources, high professional turnover, etc.
Petra shared with me that the same issues are being faced by ECE professionals in the Czech
Republic. She discussed with me that though government may have a higher respect for ECE careers and it would seem the US has, they also struggle with sparse resources and high rates of teacher turnover. Petra shared with me that she has been working in her current school for about 4 years and is one of the senior most teachers in the school. This is concerning to her because she does not understand why teachers are not “rolling with the punches” that are present in the ECE field in Czech.

Petra and I agree that compensation for ECE professionals is entirely unequal compared to some other fields in both our countries, and this is an issue which needs to be addressed and improved rapidly, if we are to attain our goals of being effective in our advocacy for children and families!