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Our Advocacy Network in Action: Adrienne Armstrong

Posted in Boston, Child care, Diversity equity and inclusion, Family child care, Literacy, Pre-K to 3, Standards and curriculum, Strategies for Children, tagged #EarlyEducators, #ece, #FamilyChildCare on May 18, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Back when Barack Obama was president, Adrienne Armstrong worked in corporate marketing. Today, she’s a family child care provider and a member of the second cohort of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network.

“My last job was at John Hancock. I was there for 15 years,” Armstrong says of the insurance company. Then she left. “It was the result of a layoff. You think the whole world is coming to an end, but I realized that was one chapter of my corporate career ending, and it was the beginning of my second career as an educator.

Armstrong used the time off to travel, work on her house, and figure out her next steps.

She had always loved children. She hadn’t had her own, but she had raised her niece and nephews. And when her colleagues brought their children to work, Armstrong would sit down on the floor, in her business suit, to play with the kids.

She decided to enroll at Endicott College and earn a degree in early education.

Then she decided to open her own child care business — Adrienne’s Day Academy — in Boston’s Roxbury community, where she had grown up.

“Now I joke that I’ll never put on another suit in my life. Who knew this transition would be so rewarding?” Armstrong says. She has now been an early education provider for 12 years.

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Our Advocacy Network in Action: Jayd Rodrigues

Posted in Boston, Child care, Early educators, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Standards and curriculum, tagged #AdvocacyNetwork, #EarlyEducators on April 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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When Jayd Rodrigues was 12 years old, she wanted to be a pediatrician.

“But not because I was interested in anything medical. It was because I liked working with children,” she says.

Today Rodrigues is the executive director of early education at Horizons for Homeless Children, a Boston nonprofit, where she oversees 22 classrooms. She’s also a member of the second cohort of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network.

Rodrigues’ story starts in Cape Verde where she was born.

“I immigrated here with my family when I was 2 ½ years old,” she explains. “So I’m from Boston. I grew up in Dorchester, as the middle one of five children, and I’m still in the neighborhood.”

Rodrigues’ parents, who have been together for 53 years, don’t speak English, so Rodrigues speaks English and Cape Verde creole. When she enrolled in Suffolk University, she did so as the first generation in her family to attend college.

“My parents are the catalyst for where I am today. Even though they don’t speak English, and they haven’t gone to college, they consistently are my cheerleaders. And they’ve allowed me always to be who I am without hesitation.” Which includes, Rodrigues says, her life as a member of the LGBTQ community and her role as a foster parent.

“Near the end of my time at Suffolk, Jumpstart came and did a presentation about their AmeriCorps program, which trains college students to provide language, literacy and social -emotional programming in preschool programs.”

Rodrigues signed up for Jumpstart and worked alongside students from Harvard, Boston University, and Wellesley College, but found herself sharing less than she might have – until a Jumpstart coach who saw Rodrigues’ passion for children said, There’s something special about you.

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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 #Advocacy, #EarlyEducators, #FamilyChildCare on March 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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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Massachusetts can do better: a call for more equity in education

Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Diversity equity and inclusion, Funding, Higher Education, K-12, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Standards and curriculum, Strategies for Children, tagged #ece, #Equity, #K-12 on September 20, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Massachusetts is a leader in educational excellence, but not for all its students.

As a new report – “There Is No Excellence Without Equity: A Path Forward for Education in Massachusetts” — from the Massachusetts Education Equity Partnership (MEEP) explains, “for a long time now, our state’s high overall rankings have masked deep inequities in student learning experiences and outcomes.”

Strategies for Children is a MEEP member.

The disparities the report cites were bad before Covid hit, and many have been aggravated by the pandemic.

“In parts of Boston and cities like Chelsea, Brockton, and Springfield, where infection and death rates were highest, the pandemic inflicted new levels of trauma and anxiety on families already facing significant adversity,” the report says.

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Innovating during the pandemic: moving early education outside

Posted in Boston, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Curriculum, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, equity, Funding, Higher Education, Play, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Social-emotional development, Standards and curriculum on June 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

In a recent exhibition, the teachers at Charlestown Nursery School (CNS) shared the important lessons they’ve learned from leaving their building and running their preschool program outdoors in their Boston neighborhood.

The move to the great urban outdoors occurred last fall in the middle of the pandemic. Every morning staff packed supplies into red wagons and pulled the wagons to a local park that served as a classroom. Children arrived in masks and weather appropriate clothing. Being outside helped mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

How did it go?

The teachers say it was the best year ever.

To heighten their point, they put together the exhibition — “The Qualities of High Quality: Why Reimagining School Matters Now More than Ever” – to engage policymakers in a discussion about access, quality, and how to optimize young children’s learning experiences. (more…)

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Leading the Way: TeeAra Dias builds bridges between Boston’s public school and community-based pre-K programs

Posted in Boston, Early educators, Federal, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Standards and curriculum on August 2, 2018| 1 Comment »

TeeAra Dias at a “Wonder of Learning” event held at Boston University / Wheelock College.

“Leading the Way,” is a series featuring the next generation of leaders in the field of early education and care.

When TeeAra Dias was 18 and working for Bright Horizons, a corporate child care provider, she asked herself a career question:

“Do I want to live in a birthday bear suit?”

Dias had been dressing up as a bear to provide entertainment at the children’s parties that were held at Bright Horizons.

She knew she had a passion for serving children. A Boston native, she had worked as one of the city’s summer youth employment “Red Shirts” at the Little People’s Playhouse in Roslindale. But was life in the bear suit satisfying enough?

To answer this question, Dias decided to get more education. She continued to work at Bright Horizons and attended Mt. Ida College where she met Eunice Perry, who ran Mt. Ida’s Longfellow Preschool Program.

Perry was “a mentor and really helped me better understand that early education was more than just playing with children, that I was actually a child’s first (more…)

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Next Generation MCAS released: Invest in kids earlier to level the playing field

Posted in Achievement gap, Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Standards and curriculum on October 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Kate Samp for Strategies for Children

Yesterday, Massachusetts officials released the results of the new MCAS, “an updated version of the test that was given for the first time in spring 2017 to students in grades 3-8 in English language arts and mathematics,” according to a press release.

The results show some good news. But the new test also reveals how much work Massachusetts still has to do to help all of its students succeed.

The new version of the MCAS “was created with input from hundreds of teachers following a thorough review and update of the state’s curriculum frameworks. The next-generation MCAS establishes high expectations to better reflect whether students are on track for the next grade level and ultimately for college and a career.”

“In general, the new standards for Meeting Expectations are more rigorous than the standards for reaching the Proficient level on the legacy MCAS.”

“Spring 2017 is a baseline year for a new test in grades 3-8, and spring 2017 scores should not be compared to previous years’ scores.” (more…)

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Why K-12 should be thinking ‘Birth-3rd’

Posted in Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, Family child care, Federal, K-12, National, Pre-K to 3, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Standards and curriculum, Strategies for Children, tagged #ece on September 29, 2016| 1 Comment »

Policy is changing for K-12 schools.

Photo: Alyssa Haywoode for Strategies for Children

Chris Martes, president and CEO of Strategies for Children. Photo: Alyssa Haywoode

Here in Massachusetts, districts and schools are unpacking newly released MCAS and PARCC scores and deciphering what these scores mean for learning and accountability. At the same time, Massachusetts is developing a next-generation MCAS that will be administered in the spring.

On the federal level, the “No Child Left Behind” law was reauthorized as the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); and state officials are working on our plan for this new law.

All of this is activity is important, but K-12 can’t achieve the success we all want without integrating early learning.

Learning begins at birth; the research on this point is clear. Children need a strong early learning foundation and a range of supportive efforts that stretch through their first eight years, from birth to third grade.

Despite the proven power of early learning, there are very few government mandates to provide these early learning supports. This absence does, however, (more…)

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How Three States are Building P-3 Systems

Posted in Dept. of Early Education and Care, Dept. of Elementary and Secondary Education, Pre-K to 3, Standards and curriculum, tagged #P-3 on September 20, 2016| 2 Comments »

Building State P-3 Systems

How can states build strong P-3 systems — the educational pipelines that start before birth and carry babies through to the third grade?

David Jacobson, a senior project director at the Education Development Center, tackles this question in a new report — “Building State P–3 Systems: Learning from Leading States” — that was recently released by the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes (CEELO).

The report looks at the P-3 (prenatal to third grade) work being done in “three case study states,” Massachusetts, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, which “were chosen based on their experience implementing P–3 state policies and developing significant grant programs to fund regional and local P–3 partnerships.”

“I think the biggest overall take-away is that there is a great deal states can do to improve quality and provide continuity for children throughout the first 8-9 years of children’s lives,” Jacobson told us in an email. “We are learning how to go about this through the lessons provided by these leading states.” (more…)