Let’s skip past all the reasons reliability on the CLASS measure is super important. Your CLASS trainees already know that improving teaching starts with gathering fair and valid observation data—hence the dreaded CLASS reliability test, to prove their coding skills are on point.  

Let’s skip past all the reasons reliability on the CLASS measure is super important. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably been to a CLASS training and already know that improving teaching starts with gathering fair and valid observation data—hence the dreaded CLASS reliability test, to prove your coding skills are on point.  

The Good

What’s so great about being a preschool teacher? A lot, actually. Working with kids can be an enormously rich, rewarding experience, one that’s regularly sprinkled with “I can’t believe I get paid to do this!” moments.

• Like the moment a child hands you a picture they’ve drawn for you of you.

• Like the moment a child’s face lights up when you start singing their favorite song.

• Like that moment when you’ve engaged all the kids in an activity that brings glee (sheer glee!) into the classroom.

Leveraging technology to support professional development for teachers is a growing trend in education—one that's really just getting started. If you've been keeping up with our blog posts, e-books, and research papers, you've heard us talk a lot recently about how technology is empowering teacher growth by:

Wishing you wonderful holiday season and a happy 2015 from all of us here at Teachstone!

Exploring the Readiness Continuum

We all have bad habits. We all want to change something about ourselves—a nicotine addiction, a lack of physical exercise, a relentless sweet tooth (like mine!), an ineffective way or relating to our children or significant others in times of stress, and on and on.

You and I both know: preschool teachers have their hands full. Literally!

Brad Groff has been acting as our Interim CEO for a little over a year now. We're thrilled to announce that as of January 1, 2014, Brad officially became the Chief Executive Officer of Teachstone.

Over this last year, I have had the honor to work with some pretty amazing early educators teaching in Head Start programs that serve American Indian/Alaska Native (AIAN) children around the country. Recently I had a conversation with a seasoned teacher about how she combines culture and language development in her classroom. We discussed at length the importance of building solid vocabulary in young learners as well as using stories that accurately represent the Native American cultures of the children we are reading to.

As you've heard us say before, Teachstone has a lot to be thankful for this year. Here's another one to add to the gratitude list: a fantastic 2013 holiday party!