Review the scenario provided, involving early childhood education settings. Examine the following aspects (covered within this subject) in the context of the scenario:
Scenario 1
Caren is a Kindergarten teacher working in an early childhood service. She runs a room of 20 four and five year old children with a trained assistant. Samantha is a very dedicated teacher who does her best to promote children’s health, wellbeing and safety. Today is a particularly busy day. Timothy’s mother has arrived and explained that he will require penicillin medication half an hour before his lunch today as he has tonsillitis. Caren is aware that Sabrina will be a new child arriving today and wants to make sure that her transition into the kindergarten is a smooth one for everyone involved. During the day Caren notices that Jordan is not himself, she wonders if he is not feeling well and if he isn’t what infection control procedures she will need to put in place. At lunch time Samantha, and the parent helper Zahidah, ensure that all the regulatory safety guidelines for food and drink provisions are maintained when they serve lunch. In the afternoon Nicola was riding a bicycle on the bike track and crashed her bicycle into Luke’s. Both children fell off their bikes and injured themselves and Caren had to implement actions for accidents. Late in the afternoon Johnny fell to the floor and began jerking rhythmically. He appeared to have difficulty breathing and his eyes were rolling. Caren needed to enact emergency procedures. At the end of the day Caren reflects on her maintenance of a safe, clean and hygienic environment. Next week Caren is planning to take the 20 children for a walk to the local fire station and she will need to make the relevant preparations for this. Samantha has also planned an evacuation drill for her service today. |
EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION SETTINGS
Introduction
Development of safe and hygienic environments in educational institutions is helpful to support children's mental and physiological growth. The following discussion focuses on different processes and guidelines to safeguard children during early childhood in schools in relation to the case scenario.
Guidelines for establishing a clean, safe and hygienic environment
Establishment of a clean, safe, as well as hygienic environment in educational institutions, is helpful for impacting on children’s mental and physiological well being. The guidelines as mentioned below-
Thus, it can be mentioned that Ms Caren can be able to maintain the safety and hygiene of children by following these guidelines.
Planning and monitoring supervision and care of children
The planning and monitoring supervision process and care of children can be maintained by following the below-mentioned guidelines.
Settling new children to the environment
Setting new children into the educational environment needs to develop a positive image to their parents with a developed care process. In this regard, Caren was found to be aware regarding newly arriving child Sabrina into their kindergarten. Moreover, she did not want any type of misunderstanding and conflict situation during the transitioning process of Sabrina. Development of a healthy parent-teacher group and enhancement of activity levels of children in schools can be effective ways to settle new children (Colorín Colorado, 2020).
Procedures and guidelines for infection control
The educational environment needs to be hygienic and free from any kinds of infections as the immunity power of children is lower than adults. First of all, a teacher can make the children habituated regarding personal hygienic methods such as washing hands with soaps before eating. In addition to this, classrooms need to be disinfected from time to time (Infection Prevention, 2020). It has been seen that Caren was careful about whether Samantha maintained safety guidelines during lunch service. Along with this, the harmful impacts of germs and illness need to be told to children as a safety measure.
Safe administration of medications
In order to implement a safe medication system, Caren needed to be careful to analyze if any one of children has allergies over a particular type of medication. Besides, the right doses of medicines and providing them at right times can be helpful to treat children with safe medications such as in the case scenario Johnny needed safe administration of medications for breathing trouble.
Regulatory and safety guidelines for food and drink provision
In order to maintain healthy food and drinking system in schools, Government legislation regarding Food safety Act needs to be followed. In addition to this, cleanliness in school canteen must be maintained with proper sanitization and a food safety supervisor can be engaged in this process. Gloves and masks can be used in the school kitchen during serving food and drinks to children. As stated by Ko & Kang (2019), maintenance of health hygiene is essential to support the proper physiological growth of children from early ages.
Roles of teachers in managing early childhood education environment
Teachers of an educational institution are the pillars to build a healthy student. Hence, it is their duty to avoid and eliminate issues regarding illness, threats of danger, emergency injuries as well as accidents in educational environments. In the case study, Caren can be considered as an ideal figure to support the educational environment in early childhood. She was equally focused to maintain environmental hygiene along with maintenance of personal care for injuries of children. A sympathetic and understanding teacher is essential to respond to students' injuries and takes instant initiatives to provide first aid and medications (Meissel et al., 2017). Besides, a teacher needs to be friendly to support children to face any type of threatening situation in the educational setting.
Responsibilities of teachers for monitoring travel and excursion
Not only in an internal educational setting, but also the efficiency of teachers is essential in terms of managing students in external educational environments such as excursion. In this respect, it is necessary to keep emergency medications in-store and guard the children while roaming about. In the case study, Caren needed to dress up the children in a secured manner for visiting local fire-station. Along with Caren, Samantha also planned for an evacuation drill as a part of the visit. Thus, it can be mentioned that providing immense care to children and safeguarding them from injuries are major responsibilities of teachers in the excursion.
Conclusion
Thus, it can be concluded that an educational environment needs to be supported in all aspects of health safety and hygiene. It can be helpful to maintain the prominent growth of children during early childhood. In the scenario, Caren has been found to be careful in all aspects to develop early childhood educational system in her kindergarten.