Iman Warrick WRA

Ever wanted to major in a field where you could watch people grow up into inspirations? Well that’s me. I chose my major which is Child Development as a last minute resort because I was so confused about what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. However, I grew to love it. This gave me an opportunity as to where I can teach little kids and watch them grow into young adults. In this paper, I’m going to talk about the background of Child Development, what Child Development is, internships, teaching qualifications, the classes and programs I need to take part in, how I became interested in it, the pros and cons of this, how I view this, how other people view it and what I wish to do with my degree.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Child Development comes from the college of education and human development. The child development major is deliberately for students who wish to study children from the infant stages until early childhood and the major family, cultural, peer, school, and neighborhood contexts of where they live. The major is here to provide a strong background in the social and behavioral sciences related to the development of a child, an engaging understanding of the scientific study of children and the contexts in which they develop, and a chance for direct and independent investigation on aspects of child development in ways that facilitate students to connect theories and previous researches to design and to collect data on children's development. The child development curriculum ensures that students develop a background in the liberal arts and sciences and have a clear understanding of the theories, major research findings, and research methods that are essential to the field of child development. Also to have an understanding of the area of focus or meeting the satisfied requirements in child development.

WHAT IS CHILD DEVELOPMENT?

Child Development falls under Social Science. When majoring in this, usually the student is interested in working directly with children and families or they want to work indirectly for children in directorial, support, helping, or researcher roles. Child Development acquires an ample understanding of how children grow and develop from birth through adolescence. The five important things about Child Development include the foundations of child development, child and ecological assessments and studies, evolving backgrounds, professionalism, and critical thinking. In the first semester of my freshman year, I know what my lesson plans are and what skills I must obtain in order to graduate.

INTERNSHIPS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

There are three different levels of internships that I must experience and I need a total of 250 hours or more. The first level is witnessing and working with children at a preliminary level in an agency helping children. The second level is hands-on work with children in campus child laboratory facilities. The final level is as a member of a professional team in one of over 40 social service agencies that provide a comprehensive range of amenities to children from birth to 18 and also their families. I’ll receive academic credit for each of these internships. I’m also allowed to explore different types of internships or custom-designed programs on my own based on my career goals. After having several discussions with my academic advisor, we both came to the conclusion that it’ll be best for me to start doing my internships and going to child development laboratories in the fall semester of my sophomore year. We thought that this would be best to take at this time because I have to take a lot of classes dealing with family studies, therefore I’ll have more experience from actually being there in the environment and dealing with certain situations that goes on in children lives just from being in a classroom with them. (Child Development)

TEACHING QUALIFICATIONS

In order to gain multiple subject teaching qualifications to teach at an elementary level, supplementary assessments and coursework is needed. In order to get to this point without the extra coursework I was told that you could double major in child development and liberal studies which could be completed in four years and this includes multiple subjects credential fundamentals while preparing students for competency exams that is a necessity to take. The minor in Child Development complements coursework in many majors such as liberal studies (as mentioned before), psychology, social work, recreation, health and community services, human resource management, foreign languages and others that are non-essential. (Child Development)

HOW DID I BECOME INTERESTED IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT?

I became interested in Child Development after I started taking courses in the fall semester of my freshman year. I also became interested in the different professions that came along with this. I picked this major as a last minute kind of thing. I always had a fetish for young kids and the child part grabbed my attention. After taking my first HDFS (Human Development and Family Studies) course I realized that I really love dealing with families and helping them with their issue because once I earn my degree in Child Development, I’ll be certified to be a social worker and a certified preschool through grade 8 teacher. I realized how much I really cared about kids after the lectures in HDFS about child abuse, rape, child neglect, step families, children after divorce, children who fight, sibling rivalry, plus more. It prepared me to grasp the fact that some children actually go through a lot and the majority of them have to come to public schools and face the humiliation if they are not good at hiding their home life. (Allen)

PROS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

The pros of Child Development for me will be doing something that I get pleasure from doing. I benefit from working with children for the simple fact that I have the opportunity to observe them grow and turn out to be immense people. I also think that there is a lot of trust in this profession. It’s tough for parents to depart their children for a phase of time with someone that’s not a relative. It’s even harder to know that you are not fully familiar with the other children who are in the classroom so basically their child is left alone with strangers. The parents of the children puts all their reliance in me to make sure that their child is secure and well nourished throughout the time that the child is in my care. I think it’ll be hard for me to leave my infant child in a classroom but I’ll have to put all my trust into the caregiver at the moment. Another pro will be learning activities in which the children learn how to fluently repeat their alphabets and learn how to count. This is something that once you learn, you’ll know forever. It’s an amazing feeling to me and I believe that the children will always remember me because I taught them something that is relevant and also a necessity to know for the upcoming school years. Child Development as help students reach career goals and it promotes personal and intellectual growth.

CONS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT

Child Development also comes with many cons and also me questioning the future. One con that I have is dealing with children that are disobedient. I’m superior when it comes to dealing with children, however I’m not so great at working with the disobedient ones. I don’t like to raise my voice and I don’t like show a mean side of me because I honestly do not have one. I also don’t want to see children who have been abused in any type of ways. Child abuse is very common and it happens to a lot of children, especially from step parents. If a caregiver see any signs of abuse we are required to ask the child what happened then report it immediately to the school’s counselor. If we don’t report it, it could be held against us. I’m now preparing myself to be able to deal with seeing a child suffer from child abuse because it really hurts my eyes and heart to see someone endure pain that they can’t do anything about until the state gets involved and this starts with me reporting any signs that I see. I sometimes question if I’m ready to deal with this for the rest of my life but after a while I’m pretty certain that it will become a part of me. In other words, it’ll be natural for me.

WHY I CHOSE CHILD DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR?

I view Child Development as an opportunity to start a career in which you help children get through certain situations in the classroom. A teacher is more than a teacher. (Allen) A teacher plays the role of a protectant at times. For instance, a couple years ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut a gunman enter the school at which his mom worked at and went throughout the classrooms shooting the kids execution style. (Zinx) One of the teachers hid the children that was in her classroom and saved their lives. The gunman then opened fired and that killed her.

WRITING COURSES

Writing courses are university requirements so that should tell you that writing courses are important. They are very important in Child Development because in our future career we will deal with a lot paperwork and anything of that nature. We have to be able to read, interpret, and respond to letters, paperwork, and also work that we give to our students or patients if you plan on being a social worker or psychologist.We also have to be able to have the writing skills that will allow us check students papers and be able to revise it properly. This will allow us to teach our students to be some of the best writers. I want my students to have the ability to write at a secondary level even though they’ll be in primary school. I don’t think there is a grade limit of how to teach children good writing skills as long as they can comprehend.

CONCLUSION

Child Development is a career I would recommend to someone who enjoy small children. I wouldn’t recommend this to someone who have little patience or get annoyed fast. I say this because sometimes kids are kind of difficult to work with and only because you have to take your time when dealing with them. I think the end result of how the children will turn out to be will be my motivation for being one of the best to master in Child Development.

WORKS CITED

Allen, ShRhonda D., Ms. "Education." Telephone interview. 03 Apr. 2014.

"Human Development & Family Studies | Michigan State University." Child Development. MSU, n.d. Web. 12 Apr. 2014.

Paula, Zinx, "Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting: What Happened?" CNN. Cable News Network, n.d. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.

Iman Warrick WRA

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