Hello everyone, I am Xiao, first grade master student from the Empowerment
Sciences Lab. I would love to share with you the 6th Empowerment Cafe of
this school year.
We started the morning with the empowerment meeting for the universality
of high-quality child care support. First, all the professionals gathered and
shared their opinions about the revision of the Childcare Educational
Environment scale. Contents of the discussion included discussions about
word choice questionnaire (to make it easier to understand), making the
manual easier to understand, making the scale easier to check, and so on.
The aim for our support is to gather the smile of both parents and children.
A book about the evidence-based practice of this scale is planned for
publishing next year. It is very important to have such a great chance
to hear valuable opinions before taking the scale into practice.
Today we also introduced our mascot character, Amely, to all meeting
members. Afterwards, a discussion about how to appeal her to other
people and the design for childcare power up homepage was made.
A lively discussion then continued even during lunchtime, about the
meeting plan and schedule for the coming school year.
After lunch time and a short break, the Empowerment Cafe started.
Childcare professionals from all over Japan took part in the workshop.
Members were put in groups to do the workshop filling the empowerment
model. First, a case example was introduced by Kato-sensei. The case
described a young child who did not developed as fast as other children.
Members discussed from their personal insight to see what they can do
to help the child. Support methods including looking for strengths of the
child and praise him, searching for help from seniors, using illustration or
pictures to promote communication with child, having periodic
communication with caregivers, and so on. An important element is
empowering childcare workers themselves, for self-empowerment can
have great impact on peer-empowerment. Also it can be very helpful
to use evidence-based tools when supporting children.
The next example focused on facilitating the connection between the
nursery, kindergarten and primary school, which was introduced by
Aoki-sensei. There are lots of differences between nursery
(or kindergarten) and primary school, and 98% of people think there
is a need to facilitating the connection. After an interesting discussion,
we came up with several methods including training for children to get
prepared for primary school, increase the chances for communication
for teachers, and so on.
In total, today’s meeting was extremely successful and fruitful. At the
end of the day every member gave us their precious impressions,
talking and sharing views with each other. Anme-sensei also gave us
the key word ‘fruit punch’ for the day. Not like the mixing juice that all
the fruits are putting together and becoming only one color and one
taste. In supporting children, just like when making the fruit punch, we
should make sure to keep the original color and taste for each individual,
with beautiful harmony as a team, and thus make the world full of possibilities.
