Everywhere we look, on every news channel, all our social media feeds, all around us, we see race-related actions and expressions, both hate-charged and promoting of unity and healing. Racial attitudes have become blatant and polarized, more so than many of us can ever remember. And now we even have an extensive research base supporting the notion that many of our policies in education and child care have been influenced by racial bias. In this the first part of a multi-episode podcast, we lay out some of the topics and issues related to the problem. How we think about and how we treat children and families of color should be on the forefront of all of our minds, because we have a real problem in our country with suspending and expelling children of color at more than twice the rate of white children. Additionally, children of color make up a disproportionate amount of our kids who experience trauma and live in poverty another outcome of our inequitable systems. If we are willing to be open, be honest, and share our own narratives about race within safe coworker teams, we can all play a part towards creating more equitable classrooms and learning experiences for all our children.

Every Child's Champion

Equity and Implicit Bias, Part 1

So your program is re-opening after a long period of quarantine. So much to do to get ready- so much stress! In this episode of the Every Child&apos;s Champion podcast, Sara gives you several key areas of focus and stresses the most important things you can do to ensure a smooth and healthy return for everyone. She shares a plethora of great resources for helping kids understand new routines, systems, and protocols; providing clear rules and routines; and building positive relationships right from the start. 

018_Returning to School During Covid19: Getting off to a Great Start!

In this episode, Sara will explain the executive function skills of self regulation. Self Regulation capacities involve calming the physical body, understanding and expressing emotions, and having some problem-solving skills. Although developing self regulation depends on brain development, we know that brain development itself is highly dependent upon the relationships and interactions children experience with parents and teachers. In addition to providing a safe, nurturing place to grow, there is a great deal that teachers and parents can do to proactively teach self-calming, management of emotions, and problem-solving in relationships with peers. The more children have problems coping with expectations and frustrations, the more we need to focus on teaching self regulation skills. The good news is, with the right mix of patient, calm, co-regulation by adults, and some very explicit teaching of specific self regulation skills, children can learn to take control of stressful situations and get along with others in learning settings and at home. 

017_Helping Children Learn to Self Regulate

This week we are reviving part of our first broadcast on "How to enjoy your job". A year ago, we would have thought things couldn't get any more stressful when it came to the work we do and juggling it all with families, education, etc.....None of us was prepared for a pandemic! Our world has really changed, and so has teaching! So it is a great time to revisit the topic of stress reduction, and getting our mindsets in a positive place about the work we're doing. Never was creating a safe, consistent learning space for our students more important than it is at this very moment. And never was there a more critical time for guarding and championing our own health and mental health! Find out how in this podcast.

How to Actually Enjoy Your Job During Stressful Times

 Drawn from the e-book “Think UP! Developing High Level Instructional Supports – A Guidebook for Coaches and Instructional Leaders,” (which is currently in development!) this episode looks at teacher intentionality. The ultimate goal is for all teachers to become conscious and competent practitioners. In this podcast, Sara discusses the benefits of pushing oneself, as a teacher, to become more intentional, and what this means. Using some real classroom examples, we promote taking the initiative with our reflective practices and doing several things to move towards greater intentionality: 1)to carve out specific time each week to reflect upon our teaching practices and the outcomes they are generating; 2)to make more efforts to dialogue with colleagues about the individual instructional support strategies (CLASS™ indicators and behavioral markers) so that we deepen our own understandings; 3)to think about what connections to previous learning or to their own experience children might make; and 4) to mindfully plan specific instructional conversations, open-ended questions, analysis and reasoning strategies, advanced vocabulary, etc. when you do your lesson planning. In this podcast Sara outlines key behaviors of an intentional teacher, when it comes to engaging in high level instructional supports. 

Think Up! Becoming a More Intentional Teacher

Lions, and tigers, and bears – Oh My! Water, and sand, and air – what flies!?  Flowers, and weather, and bugs – these too! Planets, and textures, and weights – computers, machines, and tunnels and ramps! Hot and cold, smooth or sticky. Skin, fur, feathers, and scales! Experimenting, mixing, and cooking! All of these things fit in the category of science teaching and learning. It’s about things that that live, things that grow, things that move, things that happen, causes and effects, tools and technology. In fact, there are sciences concepts and processes to be found in every single topic and every single center in the Pre-K classroom. As teachers, many of us need to change our lenses and view Science as “the multitude of opportunities to WONDER” that the world around us holds for not only children but for us! With this podcast, I’m going to explore science in the early childhood classroom. We’ll talk about standards, learning objectives, planning, and questioning strategies you can use to promote inquiry, exploration, experimentation, and how to capture that sense of wonder that’s so, so important! With an open mind and an expanded view, we realize that there’s science in EVERYTHING, and we can capitalize on children’s innate curiosity and inquisitiveness to achieve high levels of engagement and open the doors for so much rich learning and deeper understandings of the world all around them. 

Create the Wonder! Science in the Early Childhood Classroom

Math is a subject alot of teachers either shy away from or don&apos;t really know how or what to teach. Yet, research has shown that early Math skills are predictive of later math AND reading achievement; there is a strong tie between children&apos;s expressive vocabulary and their math learning in Pre-K. In this two-part podcast (episodes 012 and 013), Sara looks at the number and math items from the ECERS-3, and goes into depth on teaching math in meaningful ways. She reviews the many math concepts and skills teachers should introduce to students, and how to make math fun and meaningful by connecting these concepts and skills to the topics and activities children are most interested in. Challenging children&apos;s higher-order thinking skills by focusing in on the "how" and the "why" of things, utilizing number, measurement, shapes and spatial awareness to find the answers to children&apos;s important questions - all of this is done within the context of children&apos;s play and the every day routines and activities like outdoor time and making snack. Through this podcast, Sara offers some words of inspiration that will help teachers look at the teaching of math concepts and skills as an opportunity for fun, creativity, and student engagement.  

How to Slay the ECERS-3 Math Items! Part 2

How to SLAY the ECERS-3 Math Items! Part 1

This podcast episode reviews the many health, safety, and sanitation recommendations recently issued by the Centers for Disease Control. These are the current recommendations; ultimately it will be the job of child care centers, Early Head Start and Head Start centers, and public and private preschool programs to meet the guidelines that are adopted by each state. The question is, how will these new practices, material goods, and capacity reductions be funded? This remains to be seen.Operating on the hope that the state and federal government will provide financial resources to enable programs to operate in these new ways, teachers and directors can (and should) begin now, creating their plans for new policies, procedures, procurement, and the organizational systems (such as staffing plans, parent communications, HR). Teachers should access the many free resources available online, for structuring and teaching new classroom routines. This podcast offers some recommendations for how these plans can be developed, and where to access resources.  

"I don't want to get sick!" What New Procedures Will We Need To Adopt?

It’s Teacher Appreciation Week - and never before have parents had such a window in to their children’s teachers nor have they been so tied in to the actual learning process. Suddenly, parents have to manage their children’s days, make sure they get online at the right times, and then figure out how to keep their kids occupied for large stretches of time each day. After Covid19 will our society be more appreciative of teachers? What can you do to make yourself even more important and win the recognition of parents and administrators? In this episode, Sara discusses why teachers feel unappreciated, and encourages teachers to continue building relationships and growing professionally, as changes in society are redefining the roles of both teachers and parents and forging a new level of appreciation for the work teachers do. 

Not Feeling Appreciated?? We Need to Change That!!

The COVID19 Pandemic is wreaking havoc on our individual and collective mental health in this country and around the world. As scary, stressful and anxiety producing as the quarantine has been on all of us, we can anticipate that there are some real consequences for young children and their development. Preschoolers' brains are still in a rapid period of development, and that is directly dependent upon children's experiences and relationships. We know that "serve and return" interactions with adult attachment figures is what matters most for children's brains to continue building healthy connections and lay down strong neuropathways for skills such as self regulation. But during these very uncertain times, parents high levels of stress as well as the economic ramifications of the pandemic, put in peril the very conditions (safety, routines, positive relationships) that children depend on. In this episode Sara addresses brain development and the negative impacts of trauma and toxic stress in young children, and shares with listeners the ways they can help their young students to overcome these impacts after returning to school, Head Start, and child care once it is safe to do so. 

How Trauma and Toxic Stress Impact Preschoolers and What You Can Do To Help Them Heal

Lots of teachers these days are asking "What the heck is going on with all of these insane behaviors kids are bringing in? Teachers are dealing with high levels of aggression, fighting, arguing, swearing and name calling -- on a DAILY BASIS! Whether it is because of trauma, electronic babysitters and parenting in the electronic age, lack of limits at home, or something we haven&apos;t identified yet--we are seeing a huge upswing in children who simply cannot handle the rules and interactions of the PreK setting. So what is a teacher to do if she or he has one or more children like this in their classroom? Well, regardless of the source of the problem, what we&apos;re dealing with here is a LEARNING PROBLEM. Children have LEARNED to use aggression to interact with others. Remember that these behaviors are not about YOU--unless you get into power struggles!! This episode covers the KEY strategies teachers must put into place in the classroom and follow through with consistency, in order to prevent the majority of bad behaviors from continuing. With positivity, time, and commitment to these practices, you can see major turn-arounds in a short amount of time!

Prevent 90% or More Challenging Behaviors with These KEY Strategies!!

Are you looking for a way to enjoy teaching more? Do you find kids disengaging from group time, acting bored, messing around when they should be listening? This podcast will challenge you to engage kids in "higher-order-thinking processes" as a way to get them more engaged, and deepening everyone&apos;s understandings much, much more! Asking "how" and "why" questions, comparing and classifying are a few of the "analysis and reasoning" practices we talk about in this podcast. When you challenge children to compare and contrast, classify, problem-solve, and use their powers of reasoning more, you engage their minds in ways you never thought possible. When they get used to being challenged, they will rise to the occasion and begin exercising parts of their brain like a muscle, they get better and better at with time. Deepen their learning by more fully developing the concepts that come from your curriculum. You can do this by focusing in on the "how" and "why" of things, rather than just the "what." Read stories numerous times, engage in creative projects, and keep those little minds very busy by engaging them in challenging discussions. Your teaching time will fly by as you observe and enjoy your students amazing thought processes. High levels of Concept Development are built on increasing the frequency of analysis and reasoning questions, brainstorming and creating, and engaging children in deep discussions to help them make new connections. Teaching becomes much more fun when you challenge both yourself and your students to THINK!

How to Make Teaching a Ton More Fun! Engaging with Kids in Concept Development

This episode looks at how to support language development in preschoolers, by intentionally modeling language, specifically through the use of Self and Parallel Talk. Language is how people communicate. Without a way to communicate, children have to 100% rely on behaviors to communicate their needs, wants, emotions, and everything else. In the hearing world, we use speech, or verbal language, to communicate. Researchers estimate that children learn between 2,000 and 3,600 words per year (and 10 new words per day) during each year they are in school. Children’s receptive and expressive language is predictive of their later reading achievement. The more words children know by kindergarten, the better they are at learning to read; and their expressive language is even more powerfully connected to later reading achievement! To learn language, children need to HEAR language, starting from day one. This is one developmental area we need to do all we can to support. And there are so many things we can do every single hour of every single day to promote and facilitate new language development in our kiddos. SELF and PARALLEL TALK are two such strategies. 

Why The Best Teachers Talk To Themselves All Day Long: Supporting Language Development

The emotional climate of the classroom is established by the teachers, and not the students! YOU get to decide what values are most important in your classroom. Things like kindness, patience, helpfulness, acceptance, and friendship are values you have to intentionally teach, promote, and reinforce on a daily basis, if you want them to be exemplified in your classroom. Establishing a positive climate begins with your Relationships with the children - which have to be thoughtfully cultivated!  But it also includes child-to-child relationships. Relationship skills such as "how to be kind," "how to give a compliment," "how to make be a friend," and "how to be respectful of each other" --these things have to be explicitly taught, and intentionally promoted every single day by the teachers. If you want kids to care about each other, you have to talk about that! Talk about how they feel if one of them hurts the another - and how they need to treat each other in order to be liked and to be friends. Teachers can be very intentional about building into daily routines, a variety of positive, community-building features that help children learn to take care of each other and develop the social skills they need to succeed in life. For helpful handouts and other resources, go to the Resource page on our website, at:  https://synapseearlylearning.com/resources-2/

Creating a Classroom Community

For Early Childhood Teachers and the Instructional Leaders who support them. This podcast gives you a thoughtful, informative look at the most important issues and topics in the ECE field. Hosted by a 30+ year veteran with wide ranging experience in Head Start, Child Care, and public schools, Every Child's Champion brings teachers and those who care about them needed supports, encouragement, inspiration, and FUN. Each week you will be challenged to take something specific back into your workplace and put it into practice. A great place to boost your reflective practice and absorb some new info and ENERGY for the most difficult work on the planet!

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Every Child's Champion

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