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North Seattle Community College Early Childhood Education CCE 160 Connecting to Children Four modules: D1, D2, D3 and D4, 2 credits each

	Dear Reader: I would like to tell you about my experience in completing Module D4, Attending to Initiative, Cooperation, and Perseverance. I believe that anyone who works with children should take the opportunity to do this. This is the essence of what we do as teachers. These three ideas are what it takes for a child to become a successful, happy child. If they get this, they will be successful for the rest of their lives. This class allows you, as the teacher, to study the children's learning and find out for yourself what initiative, cooperation, and perseverance mean in the children in your life. The most powerful part of this class is the final project. You will pick a child who you deal with each day who is having a problem in one of those areas in his of her life. Then you will have a chance to change her life forever by showing her how she can do it. This showed me the power I have to help children. If you can learn to do this, your job is done. This is the key to making successful kids. I urge anyone working in this field to take the modules. I guarantee you will learn more about being a teacher in this set of classes than any other class offered in the field. It will change the way you are with children. In turn, that will change who the children you teach end up being as they grow. Tim Sullivan
	To All Early Childhood Educators: I have just completed the four modules of CCE 160 Connecting to Children at North Seattle Community College. I would like to recommend that anyone who is serious about the early childhood education profession to complete these 4 modules. I have changed my way of being with children. I have learned that if a child has the ability to initiate play, work cooperatively with other children, and stick through tough times to complete a something hard then they will have what they need to be active learners in any classroom. I feel, as a teacher, it is my job to do my best to help children feel comfortable enough in their classroom setting to be able to take the risk of initiating something; we want all the children to be free to choose what they want and explore all their possibilities. We want children to be able to work together for a common goal; the children learn so much from each other; we learn from each other. We want our children to keep working for something that is important to them. We want children to be able to try, and try, and try, and try again; we want children to be self-motivated and we want to see their self-esteem blossom when they finally get it on their own. By taking these 4 modules of Connecting to Children, I learned how to better communicate with the children in my classroom. I learned how to play with the children, talk with them using informative talk, and how to respect each child as a person. When I treat children this way and stay with children in this way, I can make a huge difference in children's lives. I learned how to stick with it, myself, to persevere. Now I have the skills to help any child learn how to acquire the three dispositions of intiative, cooperation, and perseverance. I strongly advise you to consider taking these classes so you can learn how to change a child's life for the better. If you take the classes seriously, and work at practicing what you learn, you will completely change yourself as a teacher. Tom Sullivan