Three reflections that will inspire you to become culturally responsive and make children feel seen, accepted, and recognized.

I moved to the United States years ago when I was a teenager. I felt confused, scared, and out of place in my new school. As soon as I learned English, I decided to stop speaking my native language to hide who I was. I thought that by hiding my identity people would not notice I was different, and accept me.

In recent years, mindfulness has gained popularity in our society including in the early childhood education field. In fact, resent research has shown that mindfulness has many benefits for young children including supporting their self-regulation skills.

In this blog, we explore the importance of supporting self-regulation during the early years. We discuss self-regulation and its impact on children; not only during their first years of life, but the benefits that stay with them in their adult life.

In addition, we define and explore mindfulness focusing on two developmentally appropriate mindful activities to support self-regulation in young children which are mindful breathing & mindful yoga.

Looking for ways to help educators reflect on how teachers perceive “challenging behaviors”? There is a wonderful podcast interview Reframing “Challenging Behaviors” and How our Response Matters to listen to AND an exciting workshop that follows up on the conversation about three tips to help with Behavior Management in Early Childhood Environments at the InterAct Summit 2022 presented by Michelle Galindo.

It’s no secret that teacher burnout has become a massive issue in the education industry today. At a time when education and childcare services have been hard hit by the pandemic, teachers have already endured a long struggle to cope with an increase in workload, understaffing, and shifting pandemic challenges that make it difficult to teach effectively. 

In the recent webinar Beyond Black History Month: Supporting Black Children, Families, and Educators All Year, education experts Carmin Issa, CLASS® Specialist, Teachstone, and Dr. Nefertiti Poyner, Early Childhood Specialist and National Trainer, Devereux Center for Resilient Children, led a candid exploration of how educators can best support the specific needs of Black children and how education leaders can support Black educators. Doing so requires resilience, preparation, self-care, and cooperative efforts from across all aspects of early childhood education including policymakers, program leaders, and classroom teachers.

With everything that has happened in the last two years, educators have had to look at teaching in a whole new way. We have learned that the things we used to do for children who experienced trauma, now apply to all children.

If you are preparing for the new school year, a new child, or returning from remote learning, here are some ideas to help welcome your children in every morning. After all, when children feel safe and like they belong at school, they will be ready to learn!

Teachers everywhere have yet another new challenge⁠—supporting students and their families from home. We know that high-quality interactions, including interesting, hands-on experiences that are facilitated and supported with feedback, scaffolding, and higher-order thinking questions, best support young students' learning. So how do you help your students' caregivers offer the same high-quality interactions while at home? Well, Rachel Giannini has some super fun ideas to share! The following are ideas she shared during her session at our recent InterAct CLASS Summit. 

We recently came across a really interesting article that examined both the academic and emotional aspects of teaching mathematics and we were excited when the lead author agreed to answer some of our questions about the study.  Read below for our conversation with Rebekah Berlin, Program Director for the Learning by Scientific Design Network at Deans for Impact. 

The United States is grappling with three major emergencies that are compounded by systemic racism: COVID-19, the bleak economic outlook, and police violence. The poor outcomes for people of color, particularly African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans (CDC, June 2020, retrieved 6/1/2020), infected with COVID-19 reflect racism against individuals, disinvestment in communities, and discriminatory policies and laws.

One of the initial directives from the COVID-19 pandemic was shelter-in-place. To fuel this approach, life as we knew it changed immediately. Many of the venues that were a part of our normal lives were no longer available to us. We could not eat out in restaurants, go to movies, enjoy fellowship in churches, attend plays or concerts, and the list continued to grow. Suddenly, we found ourselves confined to our homes simply because there was nowhere else to go. Shelter-in-place limited the opportunities to spend time together. For educators, our relationships with our students and colleagues were snatched from us without any warning. They were just gone.