Learning from the Wraparound Zone Initiative
Last Tuesday representatives from six Massachusetts communities came together at the Turnaround with Wraparound Showcase to share their experiences improving the services and supports they provide to children and families. Select schools in Fall River, Holyoke, Lynn, Springfield, Wareham, and Worcester are all part of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s (ESE) Wraparound Zone…
News Round-Up
There have been a number of exciting Birth-Third developments in Massachusetts in the last month or so. I will occasionally do a news round-up to highlight pieces that I think will be of special interest to the Birth-Third community. I will also flag relevant summaries from Eye on Early Education, the blog published by Strategies…
Joint Professional Learning in Somerville and Springfield
Last week’s post described how both Somerville and Springfield have developed professional learning initiatives that bring together prekindergarten and kindergarten educators. The work of Somerville’s Kindergarten Readiness Group and Springfield’s Birth-Third PLC begins to suggest what the content of these workshops can be and what the participants get out of it. These examples also raise a number…
Learning from Exemplars: PreK-3rd in Union City, NJ
Somerville is graciously sharing a video of David Kirp’s talk about the Union City, NJ success story: https://vimeo.com/89543325. In addition to Kirp’s book, Improbable Scholars, see PreK-3rd’s Lasting Architecture: Successfully Serving Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Students in Union City, New Jersey (Marietta and Marietta) and Education Reform Starts Early: Lessons from New Jersey’s PreK-3rd Reform Efforts (Mead).
Bridging the Public/Private Divide
Joint Professional Learning for Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers Birth-Third is about improving the quality of education and care at three developmental levels—ages 0-3, 3-5, and 5-9—while improving alignment across these levels. A central alignment challenge is the divide between preschool and K-3 education, and particularly between community-based preschool and public elementary schools. Preschool teachers have…
High-Quality Early Education and Care Bring Health Benefits 30 Years Later
From the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute: Long-term Health Benefits for FPG’s Abecedarian Kids With substantial implications for health care and prevention policy, FPG is reporting today that children who received high-quality early care and education in FPG’s Abecedarian Project from birth until age 5 enjoy better physical health in their mid-30s than peers…
A Community Commitment: Berkshire Priorities and the Pittsfield Promise
The accident of birth is a principal source of inequality in America today. American society is dividing into skilled and unskilled, and the roots of this division lie in early childhood experiences. Kids born into disadvantaged environments are at much greater risk of being unskilled, having low lifetime earnings, and facing a range of personal…
Early Childhood Links of Interest
Teaching Children to Calm Themselves, a most-emailed article from the New York Times. Finland’s Approach to Child Care and Preschool Programs, a post from Strategies for Children’s Eye on Early Education. The more exemplars we have for motivation and advocacy, the better. See the linked Washington Post interview as well.
The Boston K1DS Project: Implementing a New Curriculum in Community-based Preschools
On a recent visit to the Paige Academy preschool in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, a group of students sit clustered on the rug in front of teacher Sister Paige.[1] Sister Paige leads the students in counting up to 10, with the whole class yelling the even numbers and whispering the odd ones. After a…
Welcome
The Learning Hub is launching this week. The website is a simple, homemade one that we can use as a sort of pilot. It will give us an opportunity to try out different ideas and approaches, and most importantly, to gather your feedback. I’ll be sending out a survey in a few weeks. In the meantime,…