It’s no easy task for early childhood leaders to strategically disburse funds from PDG B-5, CCDBG, CLSD, and ARPA grants into the hands of LEAs and CCR&Rs. In fact, the alphabet soup of early childhood education funding streams can be a bit hard to digest, so to speak. In this webinar, state leaders will tell the stories of how and why they invested in initiatives for statewide implementation, as well as their visions for further expansion and impact.
LENA - Building brains through early talk
Webinars (15)
Setbacks and Solutions: Helping early educators navigate language and social-emotional delays
It’s more important than ever to equip early childhood educators to address children’s unique needs and help get their language and social-emotional development on track. There’s strong new evidence to suggest that LENA Grow, a language-focused professional development program for early educators, is effective at doing just that.
“Because of the data”: LENA Grow at Pasco County Schools
The Director of Early Childhood Programs and an instructional coach from Pasco County Schools, Fla., describe the why and the how of their LENA journey, touching on topics such as family engagement, CLASS scores, funding, and teacher job satisfaction.
Evaluating LENA Grow’s impact on early childhood education classrooms
Two independent program evaluations of LENA Grow show links between the professional development program and positive outcomes for early childhood educators and the children in their care.
A New Approach to Data-driven Quality Improvement in Early Childhood Programs
Hosted by the BUILD Initiative and featuring Jodi Whiteman, LENA’s Director of Partnerships and Growth, this webinar examines how state leaders at looking at quality improvement initiatives in terms of cost and scalability, alignment with philosophy, impact and evaluation, and provider perspectives.
Every interaction counts: Bringing back a thriving culture through early talk
Join ELC of Orange County and ELC of Sarasota County as they share their data and stories on how they’ve increased teacher confidence, competence, and CLASS scores while improving quality assessment outcomes despite the challenges of the past two years.
Staff retention and stress reduction: Bringing positivity (back) into the classroom with LENA Grow
What can we do in the here and now to keep our best educators in infant, toddler, and preschool classrooms? For one, we can rediscover just how wonderful classrooms can be.
Supporting early childhood educators now: strategies for building a voice and a community
Being an early childhood educator has always been challenging, but it seems to be getting harder. This webinar focuses on practical strategies to support educators by giving them a voice and building a community.
The return of in-classroom QRIS assessments: Building confidence among early childhood educators
There’s been no shortage of recent news about early childhood education. Join us for a discussion about a prominent challenge facing early education professionals that keeps a much lower profile: the return of in-classroom QRIS assessments.
What the Texas Rising Star QRIS can tell us about quality child care interactions
In Texas, the most recent review of the early childhood QRIS called for a greater emphasis to be placed on caregiver-child interactions. How is Workforce Solutions for North Central Texas using LENA Grow to help child care providers increase quality adult-child interactions?
Supporting teachers in building a responsive caregiving environment
There’s a wide variability of interactions across child care settings. What makes an interaction a quality interaction, and how do we reduce teacher stress while supporting their drive for quality interactions?
Connecting Cradle to Career: Why Universities Need to Care About Early Childhood
Learn how Adelphi University and the University of the Pacific have taken on innovative roles in their communities’ cradle-to-career (C2C) pipelines.
Integrating Innovative Professional Development for EHS/HS classrooms into Statewide Systems
Mississippi is piloting a systems-level approach to supporting Early Head Start/Head Start providers in order to meet their school readiness goals. Learn how they’re rolling out job-embedded professional development designed to increase the quality of caregiver-child engagement.
Integrating Professional Development for Family Child Care Providers into Statewide Systems
Family child care providers face unique challenges. Colorado is trying to combat these challenges with job-embedded professional development. Learn more about the initiative and its early results.
Building Classroom Quality Through Language
How can organizations support teachers in building classroom quality through interactive language? See where we stand and learn about the challenges and opportunities associated with increasing interactions.
Blog Posts (24)
For early childhood education, Women’s History Month must be more than a “Hallmark holiday”
The American Rescue Plan Act acknowledges an “acute, immediate child care crisis.” Women in early childhood education deserve dignity and prosperity.
Reflections of a former family child care provider
There’s no shortage of resources out there for family child care providers, but extra time in the day is not one of them.
Engaging families in LENA Grow
Family engagement is one of the most important parts of any child care professional’s job. We’ve created a Family Engagement Toolkit to help our LENA Grow partners.
Virginia Beach adapts to virtual programming to boost child outcomes, reduce caregiver stress
When the coronavirus pandemic hit, the team in Virginia Beach knew that they couldn’t afford to wait to transition to virtual programming for families and teachers.
State of Colorado helps FCC providers build confidence, self-esteem, and relationships with children with LENA Grow
The professional development program has been built into Colorado’s statewide initiative to improve quality in infant and toddler care.
CLASS Scores Increase After Using LENA Grow at The Primary School
Early childhood teachers at The Primary School in East Palo Alto, Calif., used LENA Grow professional development to better understand and improve interactions in their classrooms.
To improve quality in child care, Dallas nonprofit looks to LENA Grow with virtual coaching sessions
Coaches have created a new system to ensure teachers are still receiving crucial PD on how to support early brain development.
Simple, timely resources to build resilience in child care through talk
As child care programs navigate disruption this fall, a focus on maintaining positive interactions can help reduce stress and build responsive relationships.
Family child care provider used LENA Grow to connect with parents, children
For Pamela Robinson, a family child care provider in Georgia, using LENA Grow was an opportunity to show parents all the brain-building interaction that happens during the day in her home as she watches children.
Survey results: How COVID-19 is impacting child care providers
Our team surveyed hundreds of people working with young children – including teachers, family child care providers, and center directors — to better understand how they have and will continue to adapt to protect the wellbeing of their children and staff during the coronavirus outbreak.
Q&A with Elliot Haspel, author of “Crawling Behind: America’s Child Care Crisis and How to Fix It”
We were delighted to welcome author Elliot Haspel to our staff book club discussion.
Now is the time to support child care providers in building positive interactions
It’s time we acknowledge that early childhood teachers are brain architects.
Implementing statewide PD for ECE teachers in Mississippi: Questions from the webinar
We had the privilege of hosting a webinar featuring our partners in Mississippi to learn how they implemented LENA Grow at a statewide level. Here, we answer common questions that arose during the webinar.
How to harness the untapped potential of family child care providers
We sat down with Jessica Sager, CEO of All Our Kin, to learn how boosting support for family child care providers can help solve America’s child care crisis.
Q & A with Elizabeth Szymanski: Supporting family child care providers with business services
Elizabeth Szymanski shares about how family child care providers could help end America’s child care crisis, the resources and support they need to thrive, and how MyVillage eliminates common challenges.
Early pilot results show teacher approval, improvements in child language skills in classrooms using LENA Grow
A pilot of LENA Grow in nine classrooms in Kansas found that teachers responded well to the program’s data-based coaching and children demonstrated better language skills after participating.
Equitable and inclusive classroom experiences: Your questions answered!
We’re answering questions submitted during our webinar about how to create equitable and inclusive classroom experiences for children with Dr. Iheoma Iruka of HighScope, Ellen Roche of Trust for Learning, and Lauren Cooper from LENA.
Teachers and coaches share their experiences with LENA Grow
We’ve interviewed LENA Grow participants nationwide for an inside look at what it’s like to complete the professional development program for early childhood teachers.
Sequatchie Valley Head Start uses LENA Grow to meet performance standards for professional development
Sequatchie Valley Head Start uses LENA Grow to meet federal coaching requirements and work with teachers geographically separated over five counties.
Early learning classrooms in Fort Worth ISD using LENA Grow increase CLASS® scores
Classrooms that used LENA Grow, an experiential professional development program for early childhood teachers, increased scores in key CLASS domains compared to classrooms that did not use the program, a pre-post evaluation shows.
How coaches can help teachers take a deep dive into LENA data
Explore ideas and strategies to support teachers get the most out of their LENA reports and drive changes in interactive talk in the classroom.
A Message to Early Childhood Educators — We see you!
We see you washing paint off little fingers for the tenth time today. We see you using silly voices to make shared reading fun. And we see you putting your heart into your work.
LENA Grow: Lessons from our learning site
We launched a learning site to gain hands-on experience implementing our professional development program for early childhood teachers. Read what we learned about establishing trust, engaging staff, and what’s next.
New report from Escambia County on LENA Grow Shows CLASS® Gains
Data from the first year of partnership with the Early Learning Coalition of Escambia County (ELCEC) shows that classrooms using LENA Grow, our professional development program for early childhood educators, showed gains on CLASS® assessment scores.
Articles (1)
Teachers use technology too!
A teacher describes how she used LENA technology to help create a richer language environment in her classroom.