Excellence in Teaching Courses
Renewing the Spirit and Effectiveness of Your Work
How can teachers create an environment that engages even their most challenging children? How can they foster children's ability to think scientifically as part of their everyday experiences? How can they improve young children's literacy skills, not only in the book corner, but throughout the day?
These and other questions lie at the heart of Excellence in Teaching (EIT), a series of comprehensive professional development programs designed for early childhood teachers and their supervisors. Topics include children's challenging behavior and the ecology of the classroom, cognitively-challenging curriculum, science learning, and emergent literacy. Unlike other courses, EIT links the content and assignments to teachers' practice. "Sometimes you go into these kind of courses and people have great ideas but they've never worked in an early childhood classroom," says Anne Tucker, a teacher at Mansfield Discovery Depot who took an EIT course last year. "This was really geared toward teachers in the classroom, so you could try out what you were learning."
The Center for Children & Families (CC&F) at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) designs each course to help teachers and their supervisors learn how to reflect constantly on their daily practice. For example, Deborah Leichner, also a teacher at Mansfield Discovery Depot, describes how the behavior course helped change her teaching approach. "Before this class I had thought that if some of the children in the classroom had behaviors that challenged me, I needed to address the behaviors and the emergent curriculum would be the 'fun stuff' we could do once the 'behavior problems' were addressed. Now I realize that it's my behavior, specifically the way I manage the environment, plan the curriculum, and develop, sustain, and refine my relationship with the challenging child and the rest of the class that affects the overall classroom ecology and the behaviors that challenge me."
Typically, each course meets for three intensive two-day sessions, totaling six days of class time. In between these sessions, teachers and supervisors complete assignments that ask them to apply their coursework to their classroom teaching. "Connecting theory to practice makes the learning more meaningful and effective," says Ingrid Chalufour, an EDC project director and one of the principal developers of the EIT courses. "Learning is more powerful when teachers get out of their everyday environment, examine what works, and take time to build on what they are learning."
After taking an EIT course, Carmen Morales, a teacher at Central Baptist Preschool, says that she has become much more aware of ways to incorporate literacy into every aspect of her teaching and of the value of doing so for the children. "Every day, in my head, I'm asking myself 'how do I make this a literacy experience for the children?'" Morales explains. "I am much more aware now of how much I can give the children in literacy. For instance, I have a teaching bulletin board. My board always had the children's names but now the board has much much more print. It is full of print."
Value of Teacher-Supervisor Teams
By attending the EIT courses as teacher-supervisor teams, participants are able to analyze and reflect on their unique situations collectively. Using theory, tools, and guidance acquired in the sessions, they are able to work together to improve their classrooms. The courses also give teachers and supervisors the opportunity to strengthen their relationships with each other and to learn how they can collaborate most effectively.
Sandra Lamb, a supervisor and School Readiness Coach for the Hartford Area Child Care Collaborative, decided to take the course primarily because of the opportunity to learn with her supervisee. "I found that because we were taking in the same information we were in sync with one another," says Lamb. "When I spoke about literacy and young children she knew what I was talking about. We both learned. We both discussed. We were colleagues and we were able to become more reflective about our work."
Carmen Morales says that taking the course with her supervisor helped keep her focused on incorporating what she was learning and generated more excitement about its potential for the children. "My supervisor's enthusiasm about the course helped me stay enthusiastic about it. And now, I know she has expectations of me to incorporate what we have learned," Morales explains.
Promising Results
In addition to the praise from teachers and supervisors about the courses, research suggests that the literacy course has had a significant impact. The data show the course has helped teachers support language and literacy through classroom organization, curriculum planning, and working with families. The data also show that the course improves supervisors' ability to sustain effective practices, and that children's language and literacy skills benefit from these changes in teaching practice.
"The goal of all of the courses we offer is to promote the craft of teaching and the teacher as artist," says Joanne Brady, Director of EDC's Center for Children & Families. "We believe that with the right tools, teachers can reacquaint themselves with their own curiosity." According to Brady, the tools that help teachers reflect on and improve their effectiveness include:
- learning how to collect data on their teaching
- analyzing their practice
- having hypotheses about what works with children
- examining the evidence about children's learning and their own teaching to refine their practices
EIT courses help teachers and supervisors use these tools by exploring early childhood education theory and giving participants the structure and time to reflect on their own practice in relationship to this new information. "The assignments built on each other," Anne Tucker explains. "It was very methodical, it was very organized, it was very well presented. By the time I finished I really understood where I had been and where I was going."
Supervisors and teachers stress that the courses are challenging, but the rewards are extraordinary. For Sandra Lamb and many others, the experience renewed their approach to their work. "I got so excited about the course itself that I truly enjoyed going back into the classroom and working with the children," says Lamb. "The course was so exciting and stimulating that I wanted to try out things in the classroom."
EIT courses have been offered to more than 500 early childhood teachers and supervisors for undergraduate or graduate credit. Courses include:
- Children's Challenging Behavior and the Ecology of the Classroom
- Constructing Cognitively-Challenging Curriculum
- Cultural Connections
- Foundations of Supervision in Early Childhood Programs
- Literacy Environment Enrichment Program (LEEP)
- LEEP Online
- Responsive Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families
- Science Explorations: Facilitating Science Inquiry with Young Children
- Supporting Preschoolers with Language Differences
For more information about EIT, e-mail Jean Foley.
EIT Course Descriptions
Children's Challenging Behavior and the Ecology of the Classroom
Participants develop an understanding of three key factors that affect children's behavior: teacher-child and child-child relationships, the environment, and curriculum. Exploring how expectations and culture, physical environment, and classroom climate influence children’s responses and behavior, enables participants to identify strategies to promote productive classroom interaction. Participants then apply these strategies to develop engaging curriculum that will meet the needs of the most vulnerable child.
Constructing Cognitively-Challenging Curriculum
Using a conceptual framework designed to provide children with richer, cognitive challenges, participants learn to facilitate play that results in in-depth science investigations. In real classroom settings, participants build their understanding of the course content and try out new approaches to challenge children to problem-solve, imagine, hypothesize, and represent their thinking.
Cultural Connections
Drawing on a research-based framework that highlights cultural values, principles, and best practices (Connections and Commitments: Reflecting Latino Values in Early Education Programs, Heinemann, 2005), this course prepares teachers to enhance their teaching and their program's capacity to serve Latino children and families. The content includes four major areas: connecting with Latino families, understanding culture and first language's impact on childrearing and learning, relationship-based learning, and planning for cultural competence.
Foundations of Supervision in Early Childhood Programs
Participants receive an overview of the developmental approach to supervision and explore how they can use their role to improve early childhood education in their programs. Content focuses on opportunities that supervisors can use to support staff performance. Participants will be introduced to new techniques that they will apply in their work. If a supervisor has successfully completed one of the four-credit courses currently being offered and other teachers from her/his program want to attend that course, the supervisor can enroll in Foundations and meet the requirement for a teacher-supervisor team.
Literacy Environment Enrichment Program (LEEP)
Participants gain the information and support they need to apply the most current research to promote children’s language and literacy development, comprising early writing, book reading, and oral language including phonological awareness. As they become competent observers and assessors of children’s language and literacy development, participants also learn to evaluate and refine their own language and literacy-related practices.
LEEP Online
LEEP is also offered as an online course. After an eight-hour face-to-face session, students participate in six online sessions. Readings, application activities, online discussion, and performance-based assignments build students’ understanding of children’s language and literacy development and key instructional strategies. Sessions focus on early writing, literacy-rich environments, oral language, phonological awareness, book reading, and literacy rich curriculum. Students learn to assess children’s learning to refine their own literacy-related practices.
Responsive Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers, and Their Families
This course aims to improve the quality of infant/toddler care and education in center-based settings. Together, teachers and supervisors deepen their knowledge of early development and infant/toddler curriculum through interactive learning. Supervisors also learn how to support teachers’ application of new classroom strategies.
Science Explorations: Facilitating Science Inquiry with Young Children
Through hands-on explorations, examination of work from other classrooms, and application activities, participants come to understand how young children learn science and the role of the teacher as a guide in the process. Participants develop fluency with the science concepts essential to conducting content-rich scientific investigations with young children.
Supporting Preschoolers with Language Differences
Participants build their skills in identifying the developmental milestones of English language learners and the signs of language delay in all children. They will also learn to use classroom-based strategies that provide optimal support for both groups of children to promote their language development. Participants will gain an understanding of the social/emotional implication for these children and will apply specific strategies to fully involve them in the learning community.
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