For more than 20 years, Early Learning Corps has been supporting the cognitive and social development of children aged three to five. Thanks to the great work of our tutors and partners, over 123,000 kids have started elementary school better prepared to learn. To increase their impact and reach more children, the Early Learning Corps team and partner sites recently began pursuing the possibility of supporting even younger children through proven educational techniques.
“We thought, ‘What can we do to make these strategies as efficient and effective as possible for children?’” says Coaching Specialist Anne Jenkins. “The answer is that we want to support those first years of life when the brain’s pathways are being built: Research has shown that our brains are 80% developed by age 3.”
A New Way to Support Children’s Development
From this idea came the Infant and Toddler Initiative — an innovative program within Early Learning Corps. The Infant and Toddler Initiative trains Early Learning Partners to serve at childcare facilities and preschool classrooms and use evidence-based techniques to support cognitive and emotional development. The program got its start in Minnesota late last fall, with a small initial cohort of just ten members at five partner sites. As the year wrapped up, the feedback from parents, caregivers, and partner sites alike was overwhelmingly positive.
“We are so happy to be part of the Infant and Toddler Initiative,” says Nicolee Mensing, Senior Director of Head Start and Early Head Start at Ramsey and Washington County. “I’ve heard from our staff, our internal coach, and our teachers that all the direct services to kids and more individualized attention have been great.”
Proven Strategies for Learning
Much of that direct and individualized attention comes in the forms of activities that seem simple on the surface and often feel right at home alongside familiar forms of play and learning. The specific techniques that Early Learning Partners use with children are based on research, which indicates they do even more to foster learning development.
“A lot of my day is about developing their language skills,” says Lara, an Infant and Toddler Initiative member who works with toddlers ages 16 to 33 months. “We have four core strategies, and they seem so simple, you almost couldn’t do the job without them: proximity, self-talk, parallel talk, and serve & return.”
Proximity is self-explanatory: the closer members can stay to children, the more involved the children feel during activities. Lara explains that self-talk involves members explaining in simple terms exactly what they’re doing – anything from washing their hands to opening a bag of snacks – which help kids connect words to corresponding actions and objects. Parallel talk means describing out loud the actions the kids are doing themselves, further strengthening the concepts of different word sounds to their real-world counterparts.
Serve & return requires members to engage kids on a conversation topic that specifically interests them and keep the dialogue going back and forth, even if it’s just a single word at a time. Lara has a soft spot for the strategy because it was the key to her helping one child break out of his shell.
“My first year in ITI, there was a child who wasn’t very verbal but loved animals,” she says. At first the student wasn’t receptive to much interaction at all, but Lara had a breakthrough when she let him take the lead, then began using serve & return. “One of the few things he would say was the name of the animal toy he was holding. I learned that if I repeated it back to him and made the animal sound, then he would let me hang around and even show me more of his toys! It felt really fun to crack that barrier and form that bond.”
“That one-on-one interaction and those relationships, they feed and strengthen all those neural connections at that young age. It makes an incredible difference for creating that strong foundation,” adds Jenkins.
An Interactive Approach to Storytime
Another technique members use to engage children and babies is interactive reading aloud. Research shows that reading books out loud is a great way to get kids involved in reading before they’re ready to try it on their own. An interactive read aloud goes a step further: asking questions every other page, highlighting vocabulary, and turning the activity into a conversational experience. The more interactive the exercise, the more children can build language skills and mental maps of different topics.
“The very first day of my service last year I met this little boy,” remembers Jennifer, an Early Learning Partner in her second year with the program. “He was pretty nonverbal at the time. Slowly, we would read the story together, then we’d be acting it out, and I’d ask questions. He loved that book so much it basically fell apart. I saw him over the summer, and he ran up to me, telling me about everything he was learning! I thought, ‘How is this the same kid?’”
Adding Capacity to Childcare Facilities
Beyond the specific strategies that Early Learning Partners use to support children’s growth, the extra capacity they add benefits the entire class. More trained adults in the classroom means each child gets more individual attention and opportunities to learn. The team has also gotten feedback from teachers that having members in the classroom provides them a great boost and helps ensure all children get the care they need.
“I have seen firsthand that the kids have easier days with less meltdowns and have their needs met quicker when there are more caregivers in the room,” says Lara. “We’re here to guide, but also at this age, a lot of the guidance is emotion regulation.”
The results have been so promising that for the Infant and Toddler Initiative’s second year, the program is expanding. The number of members has already doubled this fall to 29 members across 10 partner sites and the program hopes to bring in even more Early Learning Partners to start in January 2025!
“We’re hoping to scale up to 40 members throughout this school year!” says Jenkins.
Making a Difference for Local Kids
Whether you’re looking to give back or try something new, serving as an Early Learning Partner is a great option. The program also works for many working parents: scheduling is flexible, and some members serve right at their own child’s daycare!
The Infant and Toddler Initiative is also a phenomenal way to kickstart a career in education. Childcare directors and principals say that teachers love being mentors to the ITI members and have encouraged them to apply to the site as full-time staff after they complete their service.
If you want to help the youngest learners in your community, visit join.readingandmath.org to see open positions and learn more! The deadline for January opportunities is December 13th, so don’t delay!