Teachers bring a wealth of diversity from their own backgrounds to the educational environment. Reflect on your own skills and cultural perspectives, and examine how these will help you as an early childhood professional. Are there areas or skills you may need to expand on and, if so, what are some professional development avenues you could pursue?

Share something from your childhood that reflects your culture and that in some way influenced your past and perhaps current education choices. 

Ecological systems theory is a broad-based theory that encompasses many levels. Describe your own early childhood education workplace (or the one you hope to be in) and give examples of what and how your institution is addressing issues at all the levels of this theory. I work with infants birth – 18 month.

The Bredekamp and Copple reading describes 12 empirically based principles of child development and learning that guide DAP. As you read those, which of them struck you as either being a new idea or a vital issue that you had not explored before? Describe elements of this that really resonated strongly with you, either positively or negatively.