In June 2011 the leadership of CEASE held its annual retreat in Somerville, Cambridge, and Truro, Massachusetts, hosted by our CEASE East members. We had a very productive several days, reviewing the past year, the current landscape of early childhood care and education, the challenges faced in the wider world by the children and families in our care, and also planning our activities for the coming year.
We took action:
We will develop the capacity and practice to communicate with our members more regularly by e-mail, with a postcard reminder going out to all members to that effect. We also will develop a new members’ kit, and update our Facebook page.
We will take vigorous action to urge the early childhood profession to take a more balanced view toward screen technology and its use by young children, recognizing the need for appropriate limits on screen time and the need to replace screen time with face-to-face interactions.
We will broaden the scope of our actions on nuclear perils to include the need to eliminate dependency on nuclear power.
We will join others such as Save Our Schools in resisting cultural and government attempts to push an exclusive focus on cognitive learning, including testing, on young children, who need to learn through play in a holistic environment supporting social and emotional growth. We also will push for equity in educational funding to compensate for geographic pockets of wealth and poverty.
We planned our CEASE/Violence in the Lives of Children seminars at the NAEYC conferences for 2011 and 2012. The CEASE/Violence in the Lives of Children Interest Forum will be co-hosting a Seminar at the 2011 NAEYC Conference in Orlando, Florida, in November, entitled: “How can preschools help before bullying begins: Removing discrimination toward Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered (LGBT) children and families before it starts.” The 2011 seminar, in Atlanta, is tentatively planned to focus on either a balanced look at technology and young children, or to push back against any developmentally inappropriate “Race to the Top” for young children.
Our 2012 Annual leadership retreat will be in Grass Valley, California, from June 21-24, 2012.
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