Archive for the ‘Developmentally appropriate practice’ Category

Standing up for Developmentally Appropriate Practices

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, NAEYC, National, Pre-kindergarten, tagged , on May 9, 2023| Leave a Comment »

In 2020, Barbara J. Cooper was appointed Secretary of the Alabama Department of Early Childhood Education by Governor Kay Ivey. Cooper is also a member of NAEYC’s Governing Board. 

Last month, as NPR reported, Governor Ivey replaced Cooper “over the use of a teacher training book, written by a nationally recognized education group, that the Republican governor denounced as teaching ‘woke concepts’ because of language about inclusion and structural racism.”

The book in question was NAEYC’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice in Early Childhood Programs Serving Children from Birth Through Age 8, Fourth Edition, also called DAP.

In response, to the circumstances of Cooper’s dismissal, the national nonprofit organization Zero to Three released a statement, which says in part: 

“When young children enter the classroom, we should be united in making their success our top priority. That means acknowledging years of research underscoring the simple fact that kids can’t learn math, science, and reading if they don’t feel seen, safe, and supported.

“NAEYC’s Developmentally Appropriate Practice Book represents the best guidance from the early childhood education community, based on broad consultation with educators and experts, including ZERO TO THREE. Governor Ivey’s decision to reject DAP based on a few cherry-picked excerpts puts politics ahead of the best interests of Alabama’s children. 

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Our Advocacy Network in Action: Leea Cooley

Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, English language learners, Family child care, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Professional development & preparation, Social-emotional development, Standards and curriculum, Strategies for Children, tagged , , on March 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Leea Cooley has been interested in working with children for a long time. As a child growing up in Indiana, she liked to play school. As a teenager living in Agawam, Mass., – where her family moved for her father’s career – she loved to babysit. 

But it wasn’t until she was a newly divorced mother of two children talking to her divorce attorney that she thought about weaving her interest in children into a profession.

“My lawyer told me that she thought a good career for me would be family child care. She saw the way that I cared so much about children. So I pursued my license, and I got it. And my lawyer put her two children in my program. Along with my children, they were my first customers. And since then, I’ve been running my family child care business for 25 years right here in my house.”

It’s a career that has been full of joy, generosity, and hard work. And one that has led Cooley to join Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network, so she can formalize the work that she has been doing for parents for decades.

“One of the main lessons I’ve learned,” Cooley says, “is that parents need help. They need advice. They need guidance. They’re working full time jobs and then they’re going home and caring for their families, and they don’t always have time to access the information that they’d like to have.

“Over the years, my biggest aha moment is I need to be that resource for families.”

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In quotes: addressing misconceptions about the brains of bilingual babies

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Infants and toddlers, Language development, Quotes, Research, tagged , , on February 24, 2023| Leave a Comment »

“During a recent BabyTalks webinar Beth Zack, PhD and Marley Jarvis, PhD shared research findings on infants’ and toddlers’ inherent capacity to learn multiple languages and identified strategies that educators and adults can use to support DLLs’ [dual language learners’] development. Through the course of the webinar, Zack and Jarvis also addressed several misconceptions about language learning in the first three years of life.

“Misconception 1: The brain cannot accommodate learning more than one language in the early years.

“Reality: Infant and toddler brains are more sophisticated than adults give them credit for and there is no better time to solidify bilingualism. As Zack and Jarvis shared, language development starts before a child is even born as babies begin to hear their parents’ voices in the womb during the third trimester. Because of this, babies can actually identify their parents’ home language as soon as they are born, and what is more, they are born being able to distinguish between the different sounds of all languages. Additionally, research has shown that babies can recognize a “foreign language,” that is, a language that differs from the predominant language used in their environment. They are also more interested in sounds from foreign languages because they are less familiar with them.”

— “Dual Language Learning Among Infants and Toddlers: Addressing Misconceptions About Babies’ Brains,” a blog post by Leslie Villegas and Nicole Hsu, New America, February 8, 2023

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Learn about The Early Childhood Agenda’s newly released plan

Posted in Child care, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, Family child care, Funding, K-12, MA governor, MA Legislature, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, tagged , on January 26, 2023| 1 Comment »

The Early Childhood Agenda has been released!

On Tuesday, early education advocates gathered at the Massachusetts State House for the release event. Watch a video replay here. And check out #EarlyChildhoodAgenda on Twitter.

“The Early Childhood Agenda imagines, prioritizes, and builds collective action around equitable and impact-driven solutions by providing a space for the early childhood community to work across sectors for better policy development,” a newly released brief explains.

It’s an exciting plan for unified action that can improve the experiences of young children and families in Massachusetts.

The Agenda includes the input of more than 1,000 people who contributed to a conversation that identified 10 priorities. They are:

1 Work with state government to “pass and implement comprehensive early education and care legislation that addresses family affordability and establishes a career pathway and funding mechanism to drive investments in workforce compensation.”

2 Ensure “early childhood professionals across multiple sectors have access to competitive wages and an affordable benefits package (health care, paid leave, retirement, child care)” by drawing on “operational grants, state-funded benefits, an opt-in group health plan, unionization, and premium assistance programs”

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In quotes: Testifying before the EEC Board about the benefits of the CFCE grant program

Posted in Dept. of Early Education and Care, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, Family engagement, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Play, Pre-kindergarten, Quotes, Social-emotional development, tagged , , on November 18, 2022| Leave a Comment »

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Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

“My name is Gillian Budine. I have been a Coordinated Family and Community Engagement (CFCE) grant program coordinator for many years, including during the Community Partnership and Family Network days. Locally we call our CFCE program the Community Network for Children (CNC) Program and our priority communities are Erving, Leverett, New Salem, Shutesbury and Wendell, but our programs reach families beyond those five towns to neighboring towns with our CFCE programming.”

“CFCE programs have been a crucial hub of support and resources for families. Especially in our small rural communities.”

— Testimony submitted to the Board of the Department of Early Education and Care, p. 6, November 8, 2022

* * * *

What parents said:

“Working with CNC has been incredible throughout the time we have been involved, from last trimester of pregnancy to current days of our daughter being 1. Our daughter has learned so much and is quite advanced as a result of this program and what it offers.”

“My son and I have been attending CNC programs since he was a few months old. He now has such a fondness for music and stories. During the pandemic, we have been so grateful to have a safe, welcoming environment to attend, learn, and grow. Without the CNC programs, my son would not have had the opportunity at his young age to listen to live guitar, [engage in] singing as a group, read alouds, and exploration. Thank you for this incredible opportunity!”

“Our playgroups in Shutesbury and Erving have been of utmost importance in maintaining social connections and parental support throughout the pandemic, especially during the winter months. We have appreciated the efforts of all staff involved in planning, coordinating, and implementing these groups. My daughter lights up with excitement to see Ms. Katie play guitar and sing songs. She practices social skills of waving and taking turns when with her peers. She’s developed a sense of pride and independence when giving supplies back to Ms. Gillian to help clean up. To see other parents has also helped give me support and comfort during these times of being in isolation throughout the cold months.”

— Testimony submitted to the Board of the Department of Early Education and Care, p. 7, November 8, 2022

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Creating high-quality, outdoor spaces for young children

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, Facilities, Head Start, Infants and toddlers, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, National, Play, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , on November 17, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Playing outside is a source of joy for children — and an opportunity for early educators to teach amazing lessons.

But many early childhood programs don’t have the information and resources they need to build engaging outdoor play spaces.

A policy brief from New America — Rethinking Outdoor Space for High-Quality Early Learning –addresses this by sharing the many options for creating an engaging “outdoor learning environment” or OLE.

The brief starts with a story about butterflies:

“Tiny monarch caterpillars arrived at the school, not floating through the air, but with the thud of a package on concrete.

“Our postal carrier had no idea how many lessons were going to emerge from that box for the prekindergartners at our public school in Washington, DC. First, we created a mesh net habitat and placed it in the tiny side yard of our concrete school building, which is just a few feet from a busy street known for nightlife, not nature. Within a day, the caterpillars doubled in size and the students watched, fascinated, commenting on the bite marks in the plants and listening closely for crunching.

“Over the next four weeks, children took turns watering the plants in the garden beds and tore off leaves to place in the mesh cage for the very hungry caterpillars.”

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Mo Barbosa: from zero to 24 and beyond

Posted in Pre-kindergarten, Achievement gap, Infants and toddlers, Cost and affordability, Developmentally appropriate practice, K-12, College/career readiness, Strategies for Children, Boston, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Child care, tagged , on November 9, 2022| Leave a Comment »

One of the most important lessons you learn in a conversation with Mo Barbosa is that everything in youth development work is – or should be – connected.

“The better we do with zero to five,” Barbosa says of working with young children, “the better we’re going to do with the next 10 to 15 years of development.”

Barbosa is the senior director of Community Engagement at Health Resources in Action, where his goal as a trainer and facilitator is to professionalize the youth work field. He is the facilitator for convenings of The Early Childhood Agenda, which are hosted by Strategies for Children.

Barbosa’s sweeping focus is on the zero-to-24 age range – “or 24-ish” he says, “as we’re starting to understand the brain, we’re going a little bit later.”

But instead of a well-paved road that leads from birth to early adulthood, children and families in Massachusetts — and the rest of the country — face a fractured system. 

“There has been this historic difference between where you get child care and how much of it is early education and how much of it is just a place to put your kid,” Barbosa says. “And that difference has dictated quality. It has dictated pay. And it has dictated opportunity.”

Barbosa recalls running an early childhood program in St. Louis where children who lived in local housing projects would not go to kindergarten because they could not pass the screening test. Instead, they would enter first grade as six-year-olds with no early childhood classroom experiences.

The solution?

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A Prenatal-to- 3 policy roadmap shares how states are doing and how they can improve

Posted in Child care, Cognitive development, Cost and affordability, Developmentally appropriate practice, Diversity equity and inclusion, Family engagement, Funding, Head Start, Health, Infants and toddlers, National, Pre-kindergarten, Social-emotional development, tagged , on October 27, 2022| Leave a Comment »

What are the best ways for states to help young children?

The Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap has answers that were shared earlier this month at a virtual summit that drew “thousands of national and state leaders, scholars, and practitioners.” Videos of that event are posted here.

Released by Vanderbilt University’s Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center, the roadmap is an annual guide that draws on the science of child development. Specifically, the roadmap looks at:

• young children’s wellbeing

• proven, evidence-based policy strategies

• states’ implementation of 11 effective policy and strategy solutions, and

• how policy changes impact young children and their families, and how these changes reduce racial and ethnic disparities

Those 11 policy and strategy solutions are:

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The Early Childhood Agenda kickoff

Posted in Child care, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Social-emotional development, Strategies for Children, tagged on October 25, 2022| 1 Comment »

Last week was the kickoff of The Early Childhood Agenda, a brand new effort to develop a broadly inclusive agenda of early childhood policy priorities. So far, nearly 400 parents, providers, and partners have signed up to be part of this effort. To join them, click here.

The Agenda, as its new website explains, “takes a whole-child approach, working across sectors for better policy development and to identify effective solutions that may not be visible from one sector’s viewpoint.”

The Agenda’s goal is to help Massachusetts make historic and sustainable progress.

Missed the kickoff event? You can watch it by clicking on the video posted above. Related materials are posted here.

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The vital role of play in early childhood — and how to explain this to more adults

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Higher Education, Play, Pre-kindergarten, Research, Strategies for Children, tagged on August 9, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Play is important for children.

However, what’s missing from this important idea, a new report says, is a clear understanding of how play can be an effective learning strategy in early childhood settings – and how best to share this concept with the public.

The report – “The Role of Play in Designing Effective Early Learning Environments and Systems” – explores “questions and debates” about play by drawing on interviews with experts and stakeholders. 

The report is the capstone project of Yael Schick, a Saul Zaentz Fellow and recent graduate of the Ed. M in Education Leadership, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Strategies for Children served as the host site for Yael and offered project guidance.

Guiding questions for this project include:

• What is play, and what makes an early childhood program “play-based?”

• Why does play remain a divisive issue? What are the misunderstandings and misconceptions about play-based pedagogy?

• How do we ensure that all children have the opportunity to learn through play? And,

• How must we communicate with policymakers, practitioners, and parents about the effects of play in young children’s learning and development?

While there are no set definitions of play or play-based learning, there is a great deal of useful research on these topics. Among the findings:

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