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A webinar series on high-quality remote learning

Posted in COVID-19, Dept. of Early Education and Care, Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, Developmentally appropriate practice, Family engagement, Pre-K to 3 on January 19, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Pixaby from Pexels

The pandemic has forced schools to offer remote learning.

Now Massachusetts is promoting high-quality remote learning. State educational officials have put together a four-part webinar series focusing on children in preschool-through-third-grade classrooms.

Register today for Part II, which is tonight at 6:00 p.m. This webinar will focus on building strong collaborations between public schools and community-based programs.

Launched last week, the series – sponsored by the Executive Office of Education, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), and the Department of Early Education and Care – covers a range of topics. (more…)

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A statement from Strategies for Children: Our work continues

Posted in COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Diversity equity and inclusion, Federal, MA governor, MA Legislature, MA state budget, NAEYC, National, Pre-kindergarten, Strategies for Children on January 12, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children

“We recommit ourselves to achieving racial equity in early childhood and school-age programs through advocacy, action, and policy change. Together we will stand up, speak out, and work to dismantle the historical systems of racism and inequity.”

These are the last two lines in our Collective Statement on Racial Justice that over thirty organizations signed on to in June 2020.

As we reflect on the horrific events this week – a violent assault on our democracy – we must redouble our efforts to work for the change we want to see in local communities, in Massachusetts, and across our country.

NAEYC has resources on trauma, stress, and violence for early childhood educators working to support children in many different settings along with the guidance in NAEYC’s Advancing Equity in Early Childhood Education position statement to support your conversations with them, as well as families and colleagues. If you need more resources or would like to sign your organization on to our Collective Statement, email us.

Despite the trauma of this week, democracy continues. (more…)

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Paving a national path of equity

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, National on October 15, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children

Early educators can be on the front lines of promoting social equity.

To show how, the Foundation for Child Development has gathered resources on equity and justice from a number of national organizations.

“Creating a coherent and equitable system that works for young children, their families, and the educators who serve them requires the ECE field to be explicit about the realities of poverty, racism, discrimination, and prejudice,” the foundation says.

The foundation hopes to “foster a shared understanding” of how to move forward.

Among the resources is a report from Arizona State University’s Center for Child and Family Success, which notes:

“The United States is at a crossroads. We can spend the next several years trying to get back to the broken, ineffective status quo in our learning systems, where children were falling—or being pushed—through the cracks at astonishing rates. Or, we can choose to address the core, structural inequities that have held generations of children, especially Black, Latinx, and Native American children, back. For the sake of our country, we hope policymakers respond to the multiple crises facing our nation, with the latter. The policy agenda presented here can help us get there.” (more…)

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The University of Texas releases a new policy vision for prenatal-to-3

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Infants and toddlers, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, National, Pre-K to 3 on October 1, 2020| 1 Comment »

A new policy roadmap charts a course for how states can help children thrive in their first three years of life.

The Prenatal-to-3 State Policy Roadmap 2020 was just released by the Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

The roadmap is “a guide state leaders can use to develop and implement the most effective policies to strengthen their state’s prenatal-to-3 (PN-3) system of care,” the roadmap’s executive summary explains.

“The science of the developing child is clear: Infants and toddlers need loving, stimulating, stable, and secure care environments with limited exposure to adversity. However, to date states have lacked clear guidance on how to effectively promote the environments in which children thrive.”

The roadmap calls on states to:

• prioritize science-based policy goals to promote infants’ and toddlers’ optimal health and development

• adopt and implement effective policies and strategies to improve prenatal-to-3 goals and outcomes

• monitor the progress being made toward adoption & implementation of effective solutions, and

• track outcomes to measure impact on optimal health and development of infants and toddlers

The roadmap says states should have 11 effective policies and strategies in place.

The policies are: (more…)

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It’s the Massachusetts Head Start Association’s annual fall conference

Posted in COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, Family engagement, Head Start, Health on September 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

This Thursday, the Massachusetts Head Start Association (MHSA) will launch its virtual fall conference, “Adapting to Change: Head Start in 2020 and Beyond.”

“2020 is a time for change and adaptation for early educators,” Michelle Haimowitz, MHSA’s executive director, says. “Our conference offers short professional development opportunities throughout October to help address our changing environment.”

The conference features eight virtual workshops that will take place from October 1, 2020, to Tuesday, October 20, 2020, and touch on the challenging issues of the day.

Kristin Tenney-Blackwell, a psychologist will kick things off with a workshop called, “Wellness: Taking Care of Yourself.” This workshop will “focus on understanding the importance of health and wellness of adults in a child’s life. Educators and program leaders will explore strategies and approaches to enhancing adult resilience,” the conference website explains.

Another workshop, “Supporting Children to Embrace Race: How we can & why we must,” led by Melissa Giraud and Andrew Grant-Thomas, two parents who co-founded the organization Embrace Race, will feature a “presentation and Q & A that considers some of the evidence for racial bias and steps we can take to push back against it – in our children and ourselves.” (more…)

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In quotes: New America’s video on reading to babies

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Infants and toddlers, Literacy, Quotes, Research on August 28, 2020| 2 Comments »

“The message is essentially to read the right books at the right time. So when you are reading to infants when they are younger, and you name characters in a book with a proper level name like Betty, they tend to pay more attention to those characters, and they learn more about those characters. It seems they are a little bit more engaged when the characters have names.”

— Lisa Scott, psychology professor at the University of Florida, “Read The Right Books At The Right Time: A Learning Sciences Exchange Fellows’ Project,” New America, August 26, 2020

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A new roadmap for family engagement

Posted in Dept. of Early Education and Care, Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, Developmentally appropriate practice, Family engagement, Health, Infants and toddlers, K-12, Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten on July 16, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Caroline Silber for Strategies for Children

One of the most powerful ways to help children succeed is through evidence-based family engagement efforts.

The challenge is how to do this work well, which is why a newly released state resource — “Strengthening Partnerships: A Framework for Prenatal through Young Adulthood Family Engagement in Massachusetts – is so important.

As this framework explains:

“Family engagement is crucial for healthy growth of children and youth in all domains of health and development.”

To help children achieve this healthy growth, the framework points to five guidelines:

• “Each family is unique, and all families represent diverse structures.”

• “Acknowledging and accepting the need to engage all families is essential for successful engagement of diverse families and includes recognizing the strengths that come from their diverse backgrounds.”

• “Building a respectful, trusting, and reciprocal relationship is a shared responsibility of families, practitioners, organizations, and systems.”

• “Families are their child’s first and best advocate,” and

• “Family engagement must be equitable.” (more…)

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In quotes: voices in the news

Posted in Business and economy, Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, National, Quotes, Social-emotional development on July 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

“At the family child care center she runs out of her Dorchester home, Dottie Williams has started asking parents to send teddy bears along with their kids.

“Ms. Dottie’s NeighborSchool serves children between five months and four years old, an age range for which Williams said touch is an important way of bonding. To translate the ritual of a hug to the COVID-19 era, she now asks the kids to hug their own teddy bear while she hugs hers.

“ ‘Children are very, very creative, and when you’re creative with them, they can adjust,’ Williams told lawmakers Tuesday.

“As advocates and child care providers continue to call for an infusion of public funds to help the industry cope with added costs and lost revenue associated with providing care during a pandemic, stuffed animal-facilitated hugs are among several short-term adjustments speakers highlighted during the Education Committee’s virtual oversight hearing.”

— “COVID-19 forcing innovation at child care centers: Ripple effects linger as key industry is strained,” by Katie Lannan, State House News Service story in The Salem News, Jul 7, 2020

“The critical role that childcare plays in society has never been more apparent. But as decisions get made about reopening guidelines and adult-child ratios, are we forgetting the rights of children and of those who care for them? (more…)

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Early childhood milestones: a video for parents produced in eight languages

Posted in Cognitive development, Developmentally appropriate practice, Family engagement on January 9, 2020| Leave a Comment »

Parents and caregivers can’t always know what to expect from their children. But thanks to a terrific video called “1, 2, 3 Grow,” they can learn more early childhood’s milestones.

The video features doctors and parents discussing milestones in four areas: movement, social relationships, communication, and thinking.

The goal is to give parents and caregivers a sense of what to expect – and what to ask pediatricians about – as their children grow.

The videos were produced by University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center and by members of the Massachusetts Act Early state team. (more…)