First 10 Blog

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Maine’s Distinctive Approach to First 10

Bookshelf of selected books for young children and a First 10 sign, with a First 10 Sanford team member standing in front of the bookshelf.

Maine began working with First 10 Director David Jacobson in 2018, implementing  First 10 practices in 13 schools across the state. This early work led to the creation of a state-level, cross-agency team that promotes connections between early education initiatives. Currently, the Maine Department of Education provides a state level...

Communities of Practice in Lowell: Supporting Family Child Care and Center-based Providers

As discussed last week, there are multiple entry points for understanding Lowell’s Birth-Third work—the Leadership Alignment Team, the use of the CLASS tool, the emerging school readiness agenda—but a good place to start is with...

Building a Common Vision of Quality across the Birth-Third Continuum

Birth-Third projects often begin with a focus on aligning community-based preschool and kindergarten. For the leaders of Lowell’s Birth-Third initiative, it was important from the outset that their project be broader in scope, spanning the...

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,...

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...

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...

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,...