Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Investing in mentorship can help the teacher retention crisis

Key points:

  • While mentorship is key for professional growth, it is often missing from training programs
  • Mentorship can provide crucial help to early childhood educators in navigating challenges and overcoming obstacles
  • See related article: Empowering educators through holistic teacher PD
  • Get the latest news on teacher PD by visiting eSN’s Educational Leadership page

Mentorship is an essential aspect of professional growth and development for early childhood educators, but for many training programs, mentorship components are either not well supported or are missing altogether. Experience shows that it can be highly valuable for both the mentee and the mentor as well. Being a mentor to someone else is a rewarding leadership experience that allows one to give back to the profession and help shape the future of early childhood education.

If structured and designed well, a mentorship program can help early childhood educators grow and develop in their current careers by gaining new insights, knowledge, and skills from a more experienced colleague. The early childhood education field and its many training programs, certifications, specializations and professional training should invest in a quality mentorship component.…Read More

Frog Street Pre-K Curriculum Linked to Improved School Readiness

DALLAS (PRWEB) — Frog Street, an early childhood education company designed around the latest science in early brain development, has announced the results of a study conducted by the  Johns Hopkins School of Education evaluating the efficacy of the Frog Street Pre-K curriculum with students in Texas. The study found that using  Frog Street Pre-K curriculum was associated with positive gains in critical early learning domains and increased kindergarten readiness. Frog Street provides a bilingual pre-K curriculum organized into five subjects, five skill-content areas and supports for social-emotional development.

“Ensuring that children are prepared for kindergarten is crucial for their future academic success,” emphasized Jessica Bobo, Head of Product at Frog Street Press and a former Texas early childhood educator and leader. “The data speaks for itself: our students are developing a love for learning and building a strong academic foundation that will serve them well for years to come.”

The study analyzed approximately 78,000 Pre-K students from 316 school districts in Texas who were instructed using Frog Street Pre-K curriculum as their primary curriculum during the 2021-2022 academic year, compared to students who used a different Pre-K curriculum. The researchers assessed the performance of both sets of students in areas like reading, writing, language, health, and mathematics domains using the CIRCLE assessment from fall 2021 to spring 2022. Key findings include:…Read More

Why design thinking is important in early childhood education

In early childhood education, most parents are aware of the importance of teaching key academic skills such as early literacy and mathematics skills. Recent research also suggests that problem-solving is an equally important skillset to teach young children. While the design thinking model is implemented in K-12 education, it is relatively new in early childhood education but highly effective.

What is design thinking? Design thinking is an iterative process used to solve real-world problems. At its core, design thinking has several steps: Identify a problem, design potential solutions, test the solutions, redesign as needed and share the solutions with a wider audience. Design thinking is used regularly in many fields (engineering, business, IT, health care, etc.) and has recently gained wide popularity due to the effectiveness of this problem-solving approach.

Why is design thinking important? As pediatrician Laura Jana notes in her book, The Toddler Brain, 65 percent of today’s children will face unknown careers and problems when they are adults. Children will always need to solve problems throughout their lives and the difficulties they face will grow in complexity as they mature. Design thinking is a lifelong skill that children may use to tackle complex problems throughout their lives, so it is a valuable skill to learn early in life, particularly within the first five years. According to Dr. Jana, there is a direct connection between early skills and workforce development. The 21st century competencies valued by today’s business world are one and the same with the core social, emotional, language and executive function skills that can be fostered in early childhood. Forbes explains that design thinking is a way for businesses to increase productivity, foster innovation and eliminate wasted time and money on guesswork-based development by empowering front-line workers to collaborate on diverse teams and explore new ideas. Design thinking helps children build a resilience-focused mindset and teaches many of the 21st century skills, such as the four C’s: creativity, collaboration, compassion and confidence. These are skills children can use to address increasingly complex problems throughout their lives.…Read More

7 educators share back-to-school action plans

This year, classrooms are opening with a combination of optimism and uncertainty. On one hand, this is the first truly “normal” back-to-school opening since the fall of 2019. But on the other, teacher burnout, educator shortages, and mass teacher resignations have plagued districts and states across the nation. Pandemic-related learning loss and student mental health remain among educators’ top concerns.

But, ready or not, back-to-school season is here. Seven educators shed light on their own back-to-school experiences, from early childhood education to STEAM and robotics and teacher recruitment.

Here’s what a return to classrooms looks like for these educators:…Read More

Scholastic Launches Early Childhood Program to Start Every Child’s Learning Journey with Both Academic and Social-Emotional Support

PreK On My Way™, Designed in Collaboration with UTHealth’s Children’s Learning Institute and Yale Child Study Center, Brings Together the Latest Early Childhood Education Research in Language, Literacy, Math, and Social-Emotional Development

NEW YORK, May 20, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Scholastic has announced the launch of PreK On My Way, a comprehensive PreK program, with print and digital resources available in both English and Spanish. At the heart of the program is the Mind Builder™ skill-building methodology, developed with the Yale Child Study Center to support social-emotional learning, executive function skills, motivation, and creativity. PreK On My Way also incorporates UTHealth’s Children’s Learning Institute’s Developing Talkers/Hablemos Juntos research model, which is proven to significantly expand children’s receptive and expressive vocabulary skills.

To learn more, visit: www.scholastic.com/prekonmyway.…Read More

SDI, Inc. Launches Mobile App for PPE-As-a-Service to Simplify Procurement for Schools

In light of President Biden’s  executive order supporting the reopening of schools and early childhood education providers,  SDI, Inc., a leader in digital supply chain services and solutions, is launching a mobile app to streamline the process of procuring Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other essential supplies, and complement its  PPE-As-a-Service offering. Powered by SDI’s ZEUS technology, the app supports both iOS and Android platforms, and enables users to view and order PPE and other essential supplies.

“We’re eager to leverage the comprehensive features of our ZEUS technology and provide additional convenience to our partners,” said Kelly Kleinfelder, Chief Information Officer & SVP, Information Technology at SDI. “Demand for PPE remains at an all-time high and is unlikely to decrease any time soon; our new app ensures users can order items as needed and monitor usage anywhere, and at any time.”

Key features of the app include:…Read More

Top ways to choose and use tech in early education

Proper early childhood education technology use is critical

early-educationMaking sure that young children benefit from technology isn’t quite as simple as handing a child a mobile device with age-appropriate apps. But using a series of questions and requirements can help ensure that technology in early childhood education environments makes a big impact.

Research has already established some key steps to better early childhood technology use, and ensuring that technology resources and software meet certain requirements can enhance young students’ experiences and learning.

Technology tools are just like paper, blocks, or crayons–they’re materials from which teachers can select to facilitate learning and play.…Read More

5 new findings about early childhood data use

New findings indicate more coordination is needed; report offers 3 recommendations for policymakers

childhood-dataA new survey reveals that most states cannot answer the most basic questions about early childhood care and education, including whether young children up to age 5 are on track for academic success and if early childhood educators are adequately trained to teach and prepare young children, because data system on young children are house in separate and uncoordinated systems with different managing agencies and processes.

Because of this, policymakers and early childhood education professionals, as well as parents, need timely and accurate access to data in order to make informed decisions.

Early childhood education professionals in particular need data about young children’s development in order to inform and personalize instruction, according to 2013 State of States’ Early Childhood Data Systems, the latest survey from the Early Childhood Data Collaborative.…Read More

Budget for 2014 is a mixed bag for schools

Early education sees more money, and sequestration cuts are rolled back—but many programs are still funded below 2012 budget levels

budget
Title I grants for disadvantaged students will receive $14.4 billion, and IDEA will get $11.5 billion.

Congress has passed a federal budget for the 2014 fiscal year that includes more money for early childhood education, a priority of President Obama.

The budget also restores most of the funding cut from education programs such as Title I and special education under sequestration last year. But the funding for these large formula-grant programs still falls short of 2012 levels.…Read More