Part 1: Completing Your Capstone Project

Note: Part 1 of this Application Assignment is also a Major Assessment for this course.

Reflect on the professional journey you have experienced in this course. Starting with Week 1 up until now, you:

Thought deeply about the vast number issues in the early childhood field

Chose an issue that resonated with your passion

Identified a challenge this issue presents

Created your Ideal Community of Practice to guide and support your work

Researched the historical context of the challenge you chose

Researched the current context of your challenge including whether and how various agencies, organizations, and communities of practice are responding

Identified intended and unintended consequences

Continuously and purposefully revised your challenge and community of practice

Developed a viable response and specific, manageable goals

Analyzed and articulated your thoughts and goals related to leadership

Review and finalize your latest version of your challenge, your goals, and your community of practice.

Synthesize and further personalize your Capstone experience by writing an essay that articulates the following:

Your professional core (i.e., your current professional values, goals, biases, strengths, passion, and plans to be an advocate for positive social change in the early childhood field)

Ways in which each of the elements of your professional core, singularly and/or combined, influenced your choice of challenge, the development of your response to and goals for this challenge, and your ability to do work that will foster the well-being of young children, their families, and the early childhood field

What working on this project has taught you about yourself, your professional core, what you hope to accomplish in the course of your career as an early childhood professional, and how you will ensure your professional growth into the future

Submit:

Your final challenge, your response to this challenge, and at least three goals articulating what you hope to accomplish

The final version of your Ideal Community of Practice

A written essay as detailed in the synthesis section above

At least five scholarly sources that informed and/or substantiated your thinking throughout this course (cited in APA style)

Approximate length: 3-4 pages

Save your assignment.

The Week 7 Part 1: Completing Your Capstone Project Application Assignment is your Major Assessment for this course.

Combine Part 1 of this Assignment and Part 2 (below) into one document and submit both parts by Sunday of Week 7.

Part 2: Imagining the Future

Imagine that the response to the challenge you chose as the focal point for your Masters in Early Childhood Studies has been implemented and is highly successful. It is 15 years later, and you are at the height of your career-well known for your advocacy work promoting the well-being of young children, families, and the early childhood field. You are so well known that you have been asked to be the key note speaker at the International White House conference on Young Children and Families: Affecting Positive Social Change.

You are speaking to a mixed audience of political leaders, agency movers and shakers, and those who are just at the beginning of their work as agents of social change and the next generation of leaders in the field. Your challenge and responsibility is to inform and to inspire.

For Part 2 of your Application Assignment: Live this dream. Write the notes for your speech by responding to the following questions:
What organization are you now working for? What is your current project (e.g., perhaps you are an international expert on child development and family/community health who has just opened an orphanage in Zambia...remember, the sky is the limit when you envision your own growth and accomplishments in the field)?

What have been some of the high points of your career so far-contributions you have made to the field? (Describe at least three.)

What are your professional dreams for the early childhood field (i.e., what do you still want to contribute)?

What main message(s) do you have for people who are just starting out as enthusiastic and passionate advocates? What can they contribute as advocates and leaders in the field? What are your hopes for them with regard to the evolution of the field?

Approximate length: 2-3 pages

Submit: Combine Parts 1 and 2 of this Assignment into one document and submit both parts by Sunday of Week 7.

Note: You will also be posting Part 2 as the basis for your Discussion in Week 8.