The CLASS Learning Community is a community of teachers, observers, education leaders, and other educators dedicated to helping every child reach their full potential by measuring and improving classroom interactions.
The CLASS Learning Community is a great place to connect with others in the early education field. Members enjoy:
What’s the best way to teach empathy to an infant, toddler, or preschool aged child?
Joanna Parker joins the Teaching with CLASS® podcast to answer that question. Joanna has spent her entire career in early care and education. She’s worked with Head Start, Early Head Start, child care, early intervention, public PreK, and home visitation programs at the local, community, state, and national levels.
Joanna explains that defining empathy in early childhood is all about understanding social-emotional development. Children will not display empathy the way adults do because they are still developing social-emotional skills. But educators can instill foundational skills for children to build upon as they mature.
Burnout among early childhood educators is at a whole new level within the last couple of years. Administrators, teachers, observers, and staff feel different levels of burnout, and there isn’t a magic cure or quick fix. On this episode of Teaching with CLASS®, our guest Colleen Schmit returns to the podcast to help educators recognize and work through burnout.
Together, Sara and Michelle provided tips for helping educators dig deeper in their interactions and feel more confident in their teaching practice. Before diving into the tips for building confidence and consistency, Michelle shared a powerful quote from Lori Archer, a Head Start teacher:
Meltdowns and tantrums in the classroom can be a frustrating experience for both the educator and child. It's important for teachers to support children through their development of essential social and emotional capabilities.
The first day a young child spends away from home, whether it's at a preschool, a home daycare, or other child care setting, can be as exciting as challenging. The two environments not only look different, but feel different too.
November is National Family Engagement Month. As educators, we’re often focused on supporting children’s academic, social, and emotional growth in the classroom. But, it’s important to remember that families are a child’s first teacher. This month, we’re celebrating how to take learning home and support families’ opportunities to impact their child’s development and learning through the power of interactions.
As part of your family engagement initiatives this month (and beyond!), consider how you can help families understand and leverage their interactions at home. To help, check out these tips and tricks below that you can share with the families in your early childhood program!
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.
In the CLASS® dimension Regard for Student Perspectives, there is an indicator called Support for Autonomy. This means the ability to self-govern or make your own decisions about what, how, and why you do what you do. I recently have had a life lesson in autonomy.
