MOM Art Annex: Exhibition & Education Center

Apr
15

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How Do You Know When to Give a Pre-K the O.K.?

Category: Birth, Classes, Featured, health, Internships, motherhood, Opportunities Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Researching children’s early education options is an important process new parents face. Decisions about schooling include paying attention to a particular family’s needs, individual learning styles and preferences, and access to available resources. Many parents feel pressure to find the “perfect” preschool or daycare program to nurture their young child’s mind. Children are capable of learning at a rapid rate during the early years of life. Educational experiences are maximized when parents, communities, and educators work together for the optimum development of young people.

Choices about schooling revolve around personal preferences as well as access to available resources. As a parent, it is important to follow your intuition about what might be best for your child. Also, consider factors such as the location of the school, zoning, special operating hours, and after-school care services that comply with family work schedules, as well as any additional community programs or locally subsidized childhood education programs in your area that you may be eligible for. Some examples of programs include Head start and The Child Welfare League of America.

If you have special requirements for your child, don’t’ be afraid to research by asking around your community for reviews. You can even contact local parent forums. The best way to advocate for education is to educate your self about what is available! Examples of federal organizations that provide resources to parents for children with disabilities or special health care requirements include Family Voices, The National Council on Disability (NCD) or the U.S. Department of Education (ED) website.

After you have identified programs available in your area, create an outline of what you are looking for. If you have a sense of what kind of education style would best benefit your child, reach out to your most valuable asset: your community. Some resources might include your pediatrician, community center, or other parents in the area. You can also use the internet to find out about potential problems within specific facilities. Many parents have social networking platforms where they are willing to share ideas and recommendations. Additionally, The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) website provides insight into preschools based on zip codes and information about accreditation. Once you have narrowed your options, you should visit the institution and schedule meetings to glean the first impression as well as to meet the staff in person. Come with a list of questions! Priorities should always include cleanliness, safety, and children’s health and wellbeing.

In the Tampa Bay Area, there are multiple local programs and schools to choose from. The R’Club Child Care organization is a non-profit dedicated to providing early childhood learning programs. Their focus is on quality early learning and development for youth in and around Pinellas County. They believe in strengthening children and families, as well as a growing community. Their four foundational values include: Respect, Responsibility, Resourcefulness, and Responsiveness. They also host many local community events to boost family involvement and promote fun family activities!

The Early Learning Coalition of Pinellas County is another nonprofit organization dedicated to providing high-quality early childhood development programming along with educational opportunities. Their vision is to have every child enter kindergarten equipped with the skills and the learning tools for success. Their mission is to transform early learning opportunities and to inspire children, prompting family involvement. They also aim to support educators in order to accomplish their goals. They provide an abundance of local resources, including childcare scholarships, access to VPK-Florida’s free voluntary Prekindergarten program for 4-year old’s, training and background screening for child care providers and developmental screenings for children (including visions and hearing). Additionally, through partnerships with local organizations and community partnerships, they serve as an excellent resource for families looking for referrals on childcare.

Lastly, PARC is a local institution which provides over 40 services to children and adults with developmental disabilities, via a “person-centered” approach that promotes an individual’s independence and encourages them to live and experience life to the fullest. They are dedicated to promoting new experiences, seeing to the accomplishment of individually strategized goals, and encouraging everyone to live a healthy quality of life. At PARC, children and their families receive early intervention services from an interdisciplinary team including teachers, social workers, nurses, behavior analysts, and therapists. Service availability range includes provisions on the PARC campus, at a child’s home or even in the desired environment chosen by the family. PARC also runs Discovery Learning Center, which serves as is a local hub for learning opportunities, therapy, music, art, school readiness and a multitude of other programs. Children’s services are led by instructors with verified credentials, and host instruction in classrooms designed to offer infants through pre-kindergarten age a unique, state of the art experiences promoting the necessary skills to successfully enter school. Each child works within their individual plan and goals established by family and staff. Early Intervention, VPK (Voluntary Pre-Kindergarten), Head Start, Family Respite, Family Focus, and Behavioral Support services are provided for over 140 children annually.

Additional Resources of Early Learning Tips for Parents:

Article Info Sources:

Local Resources Weblinks:

This article was researched and made possible by Alexandra Valdes as part of a service-learning internship with USF. Read more below or click the image to find out more about our student authors:

https://motherhoodfoundation.files.wordpress.com/2019/03/usf_interns_2019.pdf

Mar
6

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Women’s History Month at Manhattan College

Category: Conferences, Featured, Feminism, gender, History, Internships, manhattan college, motherhood, Sociology Tags: , , , , , , , ,

March is Women’s History Month! Find out more about The American Women’s History Initiative, which aims to “amplify women’s voices to honor the past, inform the present and inspire the future.” (Smithsonian Institution: Discover more online here). It seems we are all working towards the same goals.

Here at the MOM Pop Up, at Manhattan College in the Bronx, we have installed an exhibit in the lobby of the O’Malley Library. The exhibit is in collaboration with the LWGRC promoting Women’s Week, April 1-6th on campus. We are pleased to highlight just a few of the amazing American women who have helped pave the way for the rights, liberties, educational content, and social justice initiatives still relevant in our society today.

The installation will be onsite through April 4th and was coordinated through the Museum of Motherhood internship program. Please meet our newest intern Hannah Rome (in her own words).

Hannah Rome, Manhattan College Internship with the MOM Pop Up

My name is Hannah Rome and I was born in Northampton Massachusetts. I am the daughter of two wonderful mothers and the sister of two amazing sisters. Being from a small town in western Massachusetts, I had always to experience what it was like living in a big city. That is one of the reasons why I decided to attend Manhattan College

Right now, I am a current senior at Manhattan College majoring in Urban Studies and minoring in Sociology and Spanish. I decided to major in Urban Studies because of my interest in cities and people. I became a sociology minor because of the interesting course list offered at my college. Finally, I pursued a Spanish minor so that I could study abroad in Spain during the Spring semester of my junior year.

During my past four years as a student at Manhattan College, I have earned membership into two honors societies. First, I am a member of Epsilon Sigma Pi which is considered to be the highest scholastic honor that can be earned by a Manhattan College student. Second, I am one of the very first two inductees into Upsilon Sigma which is the Urban Studies honors society.

Alongside my academics, I have worked as a student coordinator at the Manhattan College Multicultural Center since my sophomore year of college. I coordinate a number of events such as HerStory, which is a panel discussion composed of women of color in the arts. I also coordinate a week-long leadership summit for undergraduate students to learn about New York City governance.

About Internships with M.O.M.: Each year the Museum of Motherhood (MOM) welcomes interns from a variety of disciplines. Each internship seeks to balance individual goals and needs with those of the museums’. Study labs, online courses, individual projects, visual displays, research, and guest docent opportunities are just a few of the ways MOM has worked with university and graduate students since 2011. Onsite and remote internships are available for the academic year. Write Director, M. Joy Rose: Museum of Motherhood; online, the MOM Pop-Up at Manhattan College in partnership with the LWGRC, and the MOM Art Annex 538 28th St. N. St. Petersburg: info@mommuseum.org, or to find out more about internships, follow this link.

Also, please see the latest media content featured in the Quadrangle Paper about bringing Mother Studies to the Manhattan College Campus with Professor Martha Joy Rose and the Sociology Department. Click on the photo to read the full story:

May
1

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Annual Academic MOM Conference, NYC 2019: Rewriting Trauma

Category: Birth, Blog, Digital Media Internships, Internships, Media Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

REWRITING TRAUMA & VISIBILITY

Motherwork, Pregnancy, and Birth

Manhattan College
Bronx, NY
APRIL 5-6 2019

The MOM Conference 2019 is sponsored by the Lasallian Women and Gender Resource Center and the Manhattan College Department of Sociology

Calling all sociologists, women’s, sexuality, and gender scholars, masculinity studies scholars, birth-workers, doctors, maternal psychologists, motherhood and fatherhood scholars, artists, performers: This conference call for papers focuses on uncovering, naming and rewriting traumas of motherwork, pregnancy and birth. We especially aim to make visible those topics related to (dis)abilities and other marginalized positionalities, relying on Patricia Hill Collins’ conceptualization of motherwork as mothering that is designed for the survival and success of the next generation in the context of oppression. We recognize traumas in multiple forms, originating before, during, and after pregnancy and birth and throughout motherhood, contextualized by the intersectional identities of those traumatized. We encourage presenters to unpack the sociocultural domain and the medicalized environment within which traumas often occur, embracing and analyzing meaning-making, as Barbara Katz Rothman and others would have us do, in the areas of maternal health and well-being.

We intend the conference to serve as a site of resistance as we reframe and reconstruct the landscape of embodied trauma within motherwork, pregnancy and birth and the ongoing labor of mothers and caregivers everywhere. We recognize the scale, variance, and duration of trauma and hope to support and empower those who most need it.

Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Intersectional identities as the context of motherwork, pregnancy and birth traumas

Motherwork, pregnancy and birthing with (dis-)abilities, illness, and children with special needs

Biomedical and cultural discourses of motherwork, pregnancy, and birth, including issues related to marginalized identities, fertility treatment, gender, and intersex identities
Normative constructions of gender in motherwork, pregnancy and birthing

Child and maternal psychology interventions, alternative therapies, and results

Breastfeeding ambivalences, obstacles, and outcomes

Future wombs, including transplants, artificial constructions, cloning, and surrogacy

Art as healing and activism as visible resistance
Embodied resistance to socially constructed proscriptions and conventions about motherwork, pregnancy, and birth, especially as contextualized within marginalized positionalities

Narratives surrounding:

  • High-risk pregnancies, pregnancy-related illnesses, and birthing complications
  • Cesarean Section, Episiotomy and other Obstetric Violence
  • Stillbirths or Therapeutic Terminations
  • Pregnancy loss, Alternative Therapies, and Healing

Individuals conducting research, making art, working in hospital or alternative birth settings, and presentations by mothers, family members, and students as well as auto-ethnographic perspectives are welcome

All submissions for this conference should be considered for submission to the Journal of Mother Studies (JourMS), an academic, peer-reviewed journal devoted to Mother Studies. You may also submit for the conference only if you wish. Abstracts must include a title and 50-150 words for individual papers, panels, and other submission types (e.g. performance, media, music). Go to MOMmuseum.org and look for the “Conference Submissions” tab or submit a word doc. to info@MOMmuseum.org by Dec. 1

The international MOM Conference is an annual event that features research, scholarship, and creative collaboration in the area of Mother Studies. Each year, the academic committee organizes university experiences that are interdisciplinary and highlight scholarship in the area of reproductive justice, maternal health, feminist theory, gender studies, literature, and the arts. The conference is organized through the Museum Of Motherhood (M.O.M.) and has partnered with multiple institutions throughout the years (2005-present), including Manhattan College, USF Tampa, Marymount Manhattan College, Columbia, ProCreate Project, Mamapalooza, and ARM now renamed MIRCI to name a few.

DOWNLOAD_CFP_MOM_Con_2019_PDF

Jan
17

By

Hello From Cortney – M.O.M.’s Spring Semester 2018 Intern

Category: Internships Tags: , , , , , , ,

Hello,

My name is Cortney Roquemore. I am a senior at the University of South Florida St.Petersburg. I major in psychology. I am proudly doing my spring internship at (M.O.M.). (Museum Of Motherhood). M.O.M. is not just a museum, but it’s an empowering facility that shares the “information and education about the art, history, and science of motherhood from an international perspective.” My duty as an intern is to cultivate new relationships with people, institutions, and scholars in the St. Petersburg community. I will be inviting students from USF to come to M.O.M. for tours as well as utilizing social media to let people in the community know about this new incredible resource. I will also be learning about grant writing and crowdfunding for non-profits.

During the month of January, I will alphabetize and organize the library including the Demeter Collection of books and learn how to add resources to the museum’s scholarly collection. I will be adding this data to Excel. In February, I being my community outreach. The first week in February I will speak with some of my former professors and invite small groups of students (5 at a time) to come and tour the Museum. I will set up a schedule for this. On February 9th, I attend the Tampa Bay Breastfeeding Coalition where the director of the museum, Martha Joy Rose is presenting on the topic of racial disparities with regard to the visibility of breastfeeding in the public arena. Then, on Feb. 16th and 17th I will be helping out with the Annual Academic M.O.M. Conference. This conference, recently renamed the I :> M.O.M. Conference is in its second year in St. Petersburg. This year’s conference is going to be held on the USF campus in collaboration with the Women’s and Gender Studies Department of USF and made possible in part by a ResearchOne grant. This promises to be an exciting start to February.

After the conference is over, I will be learning all about how to lead tours of M.O.M. Then, I will be interacting with students who visit from USF (as well as the general public).

When March arrives, I will also be turning my attention to the business side of the museum and learning more about how a non-profit organization is properly managed. March 15th I will be attending a Greenhouse workshop (available for free through the city of St. Pete), on fundraising called “SPAA –Grant Writing/Development Research” from 8:30AM- 10:30 with Ms. Rose.  On March 22nd I will participate in another workshop with Ms. Rose from 6:30-8:30PM on “How to be Successful Via Crowdfunding.” In between these workshops, I will be identifying one specific project we hope to raise money for.

April will be a good opportunity for me to synthesize the skills I’ve acquired after getting familiar with M.O.M.’s library and exhibition resources, leading tours, and participating in multiple workshops and events. I will use the remainder of my internship to work with Ms. Rose remotely (via e-mail and Skype) on fundraising initiatives for one museum project as well as curating and promoting social media initiatives. I will actually write one grant and create an online Crowdfunding campaign. My internship requirement is 120 hours. By working on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1-5 or 6 PM (4-5 hours depending on the week, plus special events), I will easily be able to fulfill this mandate. This internship will help me form good working skills. I will have the opportunity to interact with my community. Most importantly, I get to learn more about the psychological aspects of motherhood!!

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