Every Child's Champion

So your program is re-opening after a long period of quarantine. So much to do to get ready- so much stress! In this episode of the Every Child's Champion podcast, Sara gives you several key areas of focus and stresses the most important things you can do to ensure a smooth and healthy return for everyone. She shares a plethora of great resources for helping kids understand new routines, systems, and protocols; providing clear rules and routines; and building positive relationships right from the start. 

In this episode, Sara will explain the executive function skills of self regulation. Self Regulation capacities involve calming the physical body, understanding and expressing emotions, and having some problem-solving skills. Although developing self regulation depends on brain development, we know that brain development itself is highly dependent upon the relationships and interactions children experience with parents and teachers. In addition to providing a safe, nurturing place to grow, there is a great deal that teachers and parents can do to proactively teach self-calming, management of emotions, and problem-solving in relationships with peers. The more children have problems coping with expectations and frustrations, the more we need to focus on teaching self regulation skills. The good news is, with the right mix of patient, calm, co-regulation by adults, and some very explicit teaching of specific self regulation skills, children can learn to take control of stressful situations and get along with others in learning settings and at home. 

This week we are reviving part of our first broadcast on "How to enjoy your job". A year ago, we would have thought things couldn't get any more stressful when it came to the work we do and juggling it all with families, education, etc.....None of us was prepared for a pandemic! Our world has really changed, and so has teaching! So it is a great time to revisit the topic of stress reduction, and getting our mindsets in a positive place about the work we're doing. Never was creating a safe, consistent learning space for our students more important than it is at this very moment. And never was there a more critical time for guarding and championing our own health and mental health! Find out how in this podcast.

 Drawn from the e-book “Think UP! Developing High Level Instructional Supports – A Guidebook for Coaches and Instructional Leaders,” (which is currently in development!) this episode looks at teacher intentionality. The ultimate goal is for all teachers to become conscious and competent practitioners. In this podcast, Sara discusses the benefits of pushing oneself, as a teacher, to become more intentional, and what this means. Using some real classroom examples, we promote taking the initiative with our reflective practices and doing several things to move towards greater intentionality: 1)to carve out specific time each week to reflect upon our teaching practices and the outcomes they are generating; 2)to make more efforts to dialogue with colleagues about the individual instructional support strategies (CLASS™ indicators and behavioral markers) so that we deepen our own understandings; 3)to think about what connections to previous learning or to their own experience children might make; and 4) to mindfully plan specific instructional conversations, open-ended questions, analysis and reasoning strategies, advanced vocabulary, etc. when you do your lesson planning. In this podcast Sara outlines key behaviors of an intentional teacher, when it comes to engaging in high level instructional supports. 

Lions, and tigers, and bears – Oh My! Water, and sand, and air – what flies!?  Flowers, and weather, and bugs – these too! Planets, and textures, and weights – computers, machines, and tunnels and ramps! Hot and cold, smooth or sticky. Skin, fur, feathers, and scales! Experimenting, mixing, and cooking! All of these things fit in the category of science teaching and learning. It’s about things that that live, things that grow, things that move, things that happen, causes and effects, tools and technology. In fact, there are sciences concepts and processes to be found in every single topic and every single center in the Pre-K classroom. As teachers, many of us need to change our lenses and view Science as “the multitude of opportunities to WONDER” that the world around us holds for not only children but for us! With this podcast, I’m going to explore science in the early childhood classroom. We’ll talk about standards, learning objectives, planning, and questioning strategies you can use to promote inquiry, exploration, experimentation, and how to capture that sense of wonder that’s so, so important! With an open mind and an expanded view, we realize that there’s science in EVERYTHING, and we can capitalize on children’s innate curiosity and inquisitiveness to achieve high levels of engagement and open the doors for so much rich learning and deeper understandings of the world all around them. 

Math is a subject alot of teachers either shy away from or don't really know how or what to teach. Yet, research has shown that early Math skills are predictive of later math AND reading achievement; there is a strong tie between children's expressive vocabulary and their math learning in Pre-K. In this two-part podcast (episodes 012 and 013), Sara looks at the number and math items from the ECERS-3, and goes into depth on teaching math in meaningful ways. She reviews the many math concepts and skills teachers should introduce to students, and how to make math fun and meaningful by connecting these concepts and skills to the topics and activities children are most interested in. Challenging children's higher-order thinking skills by focusing in on the "how" and the "why" of things, utilizing number, measurement, shapes and spatial awareness to find the answers to children's important questions - all of this is done within the context of children's play and the every day routines and activities like outdoor time and making snack. Through this podcast, Sara offers some words of inspiration that will help teachers look at the teaching of math concepts and skills as an opportunity for fun, creativity, and student engagement.  

Math is a subject alot of teachers either shy away from or don't really know how or what to teach. Yet, research has shown that early Math skills are predictive of later math AND reading achievement; there is a strong tie between children's expressive vocabulary and their math learning in Pre-K. In this two-part podcast (episodes 012 and 013), Sara looks at the number and math items from the ECERS-3, and goes into depth on teaching math in meaningful ways. She reviews the many math concepts and skills teachers should introduce to students, and how to make math fun and meaningful by connecting these concepts and skills to the topics and activities children are most interested in. Challenging children's higher-order thinking skills by focusing in on the "how" and the "why" of things, utilizing number, measurement, shapes and spatial awareness to find the answers to children's important questions - all of this is done within the context of children's play and the every day routines and activities like outdoor time and making snack. Through this podcast, Sara offers some words of inspiration that will help teachers look at the teaching of math concepts and skills as an opportunity for fun, creativity, and student engagement.  

This podcast episode reviews the many health, safety, and sanitation recommendations recently issued by the Centers for Disease Control. These are the current recommendations; ultimately it will be the job of child care centers, Early Head Start and Head Start centers, and public and private preschool programs to meet the guidelines that are adopted by each state. The question is, how will these new practices, material goods, and capacity reductions be funded? This remains to be seen.Operating on the hope that the state and federal government will provide financial resources to enable programs to operate in these new ways, teachers and directors can (and should) begin now, creating their plans for new policies, procedures, procurement, and the organizational systems (such as staffing plans, parent communications, HR). Teachers should access the many free resources available online, for structuring and teaching new classroom routines. This podcast offers some recommendations for how these plans can be developed, and where to access resources.  

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week - and never before have parents had such a window in to their children’s teachers nor have they been so tied in to the actual learning process. Suddenly, parents have to manage their children’s days, make sure they get online at the right times, and then figure out how to keep their kids occupied for large stretches of time each day. After Covid19 will our society be more appreciative of teachers? What can you do to make yourself even more important and win the recognition of parents and administrators? In this episode, Sara discusses why teachers feel unappreciated, and encourages teachers to continue building relationships and growing professionally, as changes in society are redefining the roles of both teachers and parents and forging a new level of appreciation for the work teachers do. 

The COVID19 Pandemic is wreaking havoc on our individual and collective mental health in this country and around the world. As scary, stressful and anxiety producing as the quarantine has been on all of us, we can anticipate that there are some real consequences for young children and their development. Preschoolers' brains are still in a rapid period of development, and that is directly dependent upon children's experiences and relationships. We know that "serve and return" interactions with adult attachment figures is what matters most for children's brains to continue building healthy connections and lay down strong neuropathways for skills such as self regulation. But during these very uncertain times, parents high levels of stress as well as the economic ramifications of the pandemic, put in peril the very conditions (safety, routines, positive relationships) that children depend on. In this episode Sara addresses brain development and the negative impacts of trauma and toxic stress in young children, and shares with listeners the ways they can help their young students to overcome these impacts after returning to school, Head Start, and child care once it is safe to do so.