My Personal Advocacy Journal-Week 6

    My advocacy plan is on Early Intervention (EI) which I first learned about around 10 years ago when my nephews needed the service.  I had seen other children getting therapy but I did not know that some of them received the services through EI.  I plan to put an advocacy plan in action to introduce EI into the required in-service training hours that teachers need during the first year that the start working in childcare in Florida.

     I am inspired and excited to be doing this because as an educator I believe that it is important for all teachers to know about EI and how it can help young children and their families.  I have been teaching for over 20 years and for the first 10 years I did not know about EI and I wish that I did because looking back I can think of many children that could have used help because they had some sort of delay that could have been helped through speech, physical, or occupational therapy. 

     The biggest challenge that I feel I will have is having someone in the Department of Children and Families (DCF) willing to talk to me and listen to why I think EI should be added to the in-service training.  I also feel anxiety about having to get so many people to listen to my thoughts and me. 

     I think that I can be most effective my writing letters and emails to the supervisors at DCF in Tallahassee.  I plan on also going to different childcare centers and talking with owners and directors to get their thoughts on how important they think it would be to incorporate EI training for new teachers.  I am hoping that we can start a petition or enough owners and/or directors will write to their representatives to encourage enough people to start doing the training, even if only they start it in one county at a time.

     I think that the best way to encourage others and myself is to just show support and be willing to help others in their plan.  For example, I would be willing to not only help others with their plan but to also help them research or anything else that they may need.  I am also willing to any ideas from my colleagues and others on how to make EI more effective and available.  Not only to the teachers that do not know what it is but also parents that might want to take a training on how to detect who needs EI and how to help them get the services.