First 10 Blog

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Developing Strong Family-School Partnerships: Begin by Learning From and About Families

Children and families at 2024 York, PA First 10 Summer Institute.

Improved levels of academic achievement and healthy social-emotional development for students are among the many benefits of strong family-school partnerships. At the October First 10 Network Meeting, EDC’s Jenny Portillo-Nacu, Senior Team Facilitator for First 10, and Kristen Reed, Managing Director for Young Mathematicians, led a presentation on building strong...

Kind Summary of the Primary Years Agenda by Eye on Early Education

For a summary of my recent Kappan article, “The Primary Years Agenda: Strategies to Guide District Action,” see Birth to Third Grade: Seizing the Opportunities at Eye on Early Education. The Kappan piece will be available...

Five Practical Lessons about Birth–3rd Partnerships: Feedback Requested

A chief benefit of blogs is the interactive dialogue they can support. With the Birth–3rd Learning Hub, I have an opportunity to test ideas with people who are deeply involved in doing Birth–3rd work. A few weeks ago...

Does Your Design Process Look Like This?

Does your partnership sometimes “go wide” before focusing in on concrete strategies? For a helpful toolkit on designing new strategies, initiatives, and/or programs, see Design Thinking for Educators by the renowned design firm IDEO. Thanks for Bob Ettinger...

Ambitious Vision: Principal Leadership in PreK–3rd Learning Communities

The National Association of Elementary School Principals has published an ambitious vision of the principal’s role in PreK–3rd reform. This report, Leading Pre-K-3 Learning Communities: Competencies for Effective Principal Practice, outlines six competencies that together...

Putting Seattle’s Pre-K Ballot Initiatives in Context

While most of the country’s obsessive politics-watchers will be surveying a variety of hotly contested Senate, House, and gubernatorial races on November 4, the early education community will have an eye trained on Seattle, Washington....

What We’re Learning  

In last week’s post I showed how the work of Massachusetts’ Birth—3rd partnerships is “spilling over” in unexpected and promising ways due to the creation of new social and institutional relationships. These spillovers illustrate how...