Laid off Educator Shares COVID-19 Impact on Life, Families

by CI Guest | Apr 6, 2020 | Preschool, COVID-19, SYS

How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting your corner of the early care and education world? Please email Ashley Walker at ashley@childinst.org if you or someone you know can help us to illustrate the on-the-ground reality for educators, families, small business owners, child health workers and others.

Caitlin Curtis

Early Educator and Advocate, Portland, OR

In this time of fast-paced transition and response, we spoke via email with Caitlin Curtis, a preschool teacher from Portland about the personal and professional impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As an early childhood educator, how is the pandemic affecting your work and your life?

Because of the pandemic, my school has closed. There was enough in reserve to pay teachers for one pay period, but we are a non-profit so we do not have the funds to stay open and continue paying employees. For the month of April, and possibly longer, we have been laid off, and the majority of us will be filing for unemployment.

As for my life, I’m social distancing in my apartment alone so it gets pretty lonely, especially going from a busy classroom to just me by myself at home. But I’ve been able to stay in contact with my friends, family and co-workers, so it’s all good.

And although we’ve been laid off, teachers at my school are staying connected to our families. I hold virtual meetups on Zoom three times a week, we send out emails with resources and supports once or twice a week to our families. I record myself reading stories and send them to my families. We also have a google photo album the parents can upload pictures to and we are organizing a pen pal situation.

How is the pandemic affecting the families you serve?

Well, they currently have no child care, so they are tasked with caring for their children and, for most of them, working from home. We do have some families who are essential workers and one parent in particular who had to send their child to stay with family in order to keep them healthy, which I’m sure is very hard. Many parents are juggling working from home and also caring for their children full time and trying to keep them occupied and engaged, which is probably a challenge.

How have you been staying connected and informed?

I listen to the news on the radio, OPB to be exact. I receive updates from the Oregon legislature, my local representatives, and I follow media around what’s happening in Oregon. I do limit the amount of information I take in, in order to not panic. It’s a fine balance between staying informed and feeling overwhelmed.

I’ve been reaching out to my legislators to share my experience in child care during this pandemic, watching webinars on how child care is affected and what we can do, and signing petitions by different advocacy organizations to get more funding for childcare in the relief packages. I’ve been sharing ways to do this with other child care workers at my school and other centers, as well as with our families, so they can advocate as well. I think many people don’t realize their voice is so important during this time and that you can advocate while social distancing! We’ve also been sharing the information on getting emergency care with our families so they can apply if they qualify.

Thank you, Caitlin, for sharing your story with us, and for the work you continue to do for Oregon’s young children.

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Layoffs, Uncertainty Ahead for Preschool Owner and Staff

by CI Guest | Mar 21, 2020 | Child Care, Oregon Policy, Preschool, COVID-19, SYS

How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting your corner of the early care and education world? Please email Helen Shum at helen@childinst.org if you or someone you know can help us to illustrate the on-the-ground reality for educators, families, small business owners, child health workers and others.

Allison Morton

Owner and Executive Director, Small Wonders Preschool

We are one of the first child cares in Oregon to acquire a five star quality rating. It is a point of pride that we offer high-quality early childhood education and care across two sites.

Last week was fraught with grief. I saw on our teachers’ faces their worry—about their health, job security, and many looming unknowns.

I knew I could not ask them to return to work and so they were told to remain home for the remainder of the week with pay. This week is a previously scheduled (paid) spring break closure.

Last Tuesday, the administrative staff and I extended our services to any family in need. Of our 200-plus client families, just 22 children were present.

A classroom at Small Wonders in the Grant Park neighborhood of NE Portland. Photo courtesy of Small Wonders.

Ultimately, we found we could not balance the childcare with the health concerns of our teachers and our community. Few teachers could be reasonably expected to show up for work, we would not be mitigating exposure as deemed our social duty, and many of our client families are now facing their own immediate hardships, making it near impossible to claim April tuition payments.

That means we have to lay off our teaching teams at both of our sites in Northeast Portland—dozens of professionals who were paid well under their worth, but above industry standard. We are looking hopefully towards a May 1 date for resumption of services, but cannot say for sure. We have other obligations beyond payroll and should this crisis and closure extend beyond this time frame, the longer-term forecast looks grim.

My team and I are exhausted. I want to teach. I have supplies in a corner next to April lesson plans. I stepped back into the classroom this year, leaving the daily administrative duties to my strong and loyal team. I want to laugh and comfort my kids, but I knew that we could not sustain ourselves providing only emergency care. We want to offer consistency and routine, but the current climate does not allow for this. Our programming is fully compromised.

The Potential to Transform K–12

by CI Guest | Nov 13, 2019 | Instructional Alignment, Benefits of Preschool, Early School Success

By Dr. Perla Rodriguez, principal of Echo Shaw Elementary School in the Forest Grove School District.

Forest Grove is one of two districts selected to participate in Early School Success, Children’s Institute’s newest initiative connecting preschool and elementary school instruction.

I am extremely proud to serve as the principal of Echo Shaw Elementary School, especially because our school was the first in our school district to offer an aligned preschool program staffed with our very own teachers and assistants. Our school is a full dual language school with a goal of creating bilingual and bi-cultural children. And though we are a Title I school with over 85 percent of our students qualifying for free or reduced lunch, we are rich in culture and learning.

Using federal funds, we had offered full day kindergarten for several years. However, we struggled to meet the challenge of “school readiness” even with a full day program. When we began our preschool program, we thought it would be an academic boost for our students. What we quickly learned was that we had the entire idea of what “school readiness” really entails all wrong!

This is our seventh year with a preschool program. Our first cohort of students are now in fifth grade! And while the families of our students often thank us for the program, we are the ones that should be thanking them for allowing us the opportunity to learn with their children. We are learning to adapt our school to the developmental needs of our students, rather than expecting our students to fit a dated model of early kindergarten.

For example, two years ago we had a student in our preschool program we could not figure out. He displayed behaviors that were explosive at times. His disposition would switch quickly and with little warning he would have huge blow outs that none of us could explain. After exhausting all the reasons that we could think of, I thought we would have to chalk it up to parents that were spoiling their son. (I will add something here about poor parents! School systems always blame them when we can’t get it right.) Right before throwing in the towel, our district’s occupational therapist and behavior specialist agreed to observe him.

We learned that he wasn’t a spoiled little boy. He displayed behaviors consistent with sensory sensitivity and he was easily overwhelmed by input. His inability to filter the input led to his impulsivity. With the support of the occupational therapist and behavior specialist, we learned about the importance of multiple sensory breaks, and about deep pressure activities. We were also reminded that children do not come to school with the tools that are required for working with other children. We need to teach children how to be part of a group.

I know for a fact that had our first experience with this student been in kindergarten, we would have had him referred to our special education program. He is now thriving in first grade and was recently recognized as the student of the month in his classroom for being “polite.” There was nothing wrong with him. We were the problem. Our lack of knowledge about how his 4-year-old brain worked was the problem. I think about him a lot and feel deep gratitude for the learning that took place while he was in our preschool. The greatest lesson was that one size does not fit all.

Over the past seven years we have begun to shift our thinking. We began our preschool by looking at K–12 and mapping backward from there. I want to reverse that. I want to take what works in preschool and look forward, to use what we learn from preschool to transform what happens in K–12. Why is the kindergarten and elementary school system not built to support students the way preschool does? I still care very much about academic outcomes. But I’m learning that if we can meet the needs of our students, beginning with their basic developmental needs, then academic success follows.

My goal is no longer to make a preschool program that fits into our current K–12 system. We need to change our system to fit with what we are learning from preschool experience. This is what Early School Success will help us do and I am so excited to see where it will take us.

Two months into the school year, we are already benefiting from our collaboration with Children’s Institute. Children’s Institute helped us launch our school year with professional development for our district’s preschool through first-grade teachers: three hours of learning about early childhood education, with our early childhood educators! Our teachers are amazing, hard-working, loving, and determined individuals whom our school system has failed. We have assumed teachers need constant training strictly on the mechanics of teaching content; we’ve overlooked the need for shared learning on early childhood development.

Children at Forest Grove Elementary School.

After the professional development session, a 21-year veteran teacher said, “The training validated what I’ve often thought about young children. My only regret is that I didn’t get this professional development when I was a first-year teacher.”

Our school staff is energized and so am I! We are ready to learn more and to do things differently—in a way that nurtures and supports the natural development of our students. There is no magic wand for success in kindergarten and beyond. But with the help of Children’s Institute and Early School Success, I know we are on the cusp of transformational change.

Originally delivered as a speech at Children’s Institute’s “Advocacy in Action” dinner, October 10, 2019

What State Leaders Can Do to Help More Students Start Their Education on the Right Track

by CI Guest | Mar 18, 2019 | Policy in Other States, Benefits of Preschool, Early Works, School Readiness

By Allan Golston

Reprinted from Medium with permission from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Allan Golston visits with students at the Earl Boyles preschool.

Principal Ericka Guynes could see the problem clearly. Students at Earl Boyles — a Portland, Oregon elementary school where more than four-out-of-five students are eligible for free or reduced-priced lunches — were starting kindergarten at least a year behind where they needed to be, socially and academically. And data showed that despite the school’s best efforts, gaps that started before kindergarten were persisting into later grades. The question was what to do about it.

Following a survey of the community and working closely with the school district and the Children’s Institute, the school started an early intervention classroom. After more than a year of additional planning, the school opened its own preschool in partnership with Head Start/Early Intervention. Fast forward to 2019, Principal Guynes and the team at Earl Boyles now face a different problem…

“Students are now coming into kindergarten where they need to be, and we’ve actually had to adjust our curriculum and increase the rigor in later grades because our students are ready to learn at that level. It’s ever-evolving,” Principal Guynes explained to me during a visit to Oregon to meet with early learning leaders last month.

Visiting with Principal Guynes and meeting with some of the teachers and parents at the school, I was inspired by the progress they’ve made, as well as their commitment to meeting the needs of their community and ensuring that students are starting their educational journey on the right track.

There are schools across the country that have similarly focused on Pre-K as a critical milestone for students (which research backs up) and acted on that information. But it does raise the question — is there more policymakers can do to help more kids attend high quality Pre-K programs like the one at Earl Boyles Elementary? (Spoiler: the answer is “yes!”)

Currently, 1.5 million children are being served by state Pre-K programs across the country, with another 730,000 4-year-olds enrolled in Head Start. And as governors from across the country gather in Washington, D.C. this week to discuss crucial issues facing states, I hope they will spend some time discussing ways those children can be better-served through consistent, high-quality Pre-K programs.

While the majority of our foundation’s investments are directed towards supporting secondary and post-secondary student success — particularly among low-income families and students of color — our Early Learning strategy is centered on learning and codifying strategies for improving quality of state-administered Pre-K programs. We are doing this work in partnership with Washington State, Oregon, and Tennessee. As we work with partners to improve the quality of Pre-K programs in those states, we hope to learn best practices and share those lessons with other states.

Based on work we’ve done with researchers, program leaders, advocates, and other funders, we have a much clearer sense today of what it means to be a “quality” public Pre-K program. Certain program elements — things like a strong curriculum and positive interactions between children and families — help secure lasting gains for young learners. When these elements of quality are in place, it makes sense to maximize public investment.

There are also policies states can put in place that make delivering quality programs more likely and reliable. Here are three policy considerations that deserve more attention:

1. Increasing funding for Pre-K is great. But increasing predictable, streamlined, and sustained funding for quality Pre-K is even better. While many states are increasing funding for Pre-K, early learning programs across the country don’t have the resources to improve their quality. And where there is funding in place, the complicated nature of tangled funding streams across federal, state, and district dollars both increases unpredictability and puts a large administrative burden on school staff — which can detract from emphasizing quality.

2. Support early learning educators with professional learning opportunities. The low wages Pre-K teachers are paid, coupled with the expense of continuing their education and certification, often leads to many Pre-K educators leaving their classrooms in pursuit other opportunities. As a result, we’re losing lots of great Pre-K teachers across the country. States should prioritize professional learning for educators that can help them grow, earn degrees, and continually improve their craft, which will make it more likely they’ll stay in Pre-K classrooms.

3. Use data not just to track compliance, but to drive improvement. The story of Earl Boyles Elementary reinforces the power of providing leaders with quality data they can use to engage their community and improve the type of instruction students receive. Pre-K program providers, K-12 schools, and communities can similarly use data to “connect-the-dots” and show how students are doing as they start kindergarten, how they progress from grade to grade, and to make sure that the social, emotional, and academic gains students receive in quality Pre-K programs are being sustained over time.

Research has shown that if students receive a high-quality Pre-K experience that includes strong teacher-child connections, skilled and supported educators, and a strong curriculum, they are far less likely to fall behind in the first place. They are also more likely to read earlier, graduate from high school on time, and are more likely to go to college. School leaders like Ericka Guynes and the team at Earl Boyles are making those opportunities a reality for their students. I hope state leaders in D.C. this week explore how they can do the same.

The Foster Care Fix: Invest in the Services Proven to Keep Kids in Their Homes

by CI Guest | Mar 6, 2019 | Oregon Policy, Home Visiting, Oregon Research, Parents and Families

Guest Column by Leslie Brown, Program Director, Children’s Relief Nursery at LifeWorks NW

Oregon’s Child Welfare System needs help. Our system for reporting abuse and neglect can be confusing, we do not have enough foster families or child welfare workers, and there are currently 84 foster children who’ve been sent out of state for care. These issues hit young children hard: according to the Oregon DHS 2017 Child Welfare Data Book, 45 percent of children in the Child Welfare System are under 6. While additional funding to improve this system is important, it is even more critical that we invest in programs that help keep young children out of foster care.

Fortunately, we know what it takes to keep kids in their homes. Relief Nurseries offer tailored, trauma-informed services to support families with children ages birth to 5. As a clinician working in the field of early childhood for 40 years and Program Director for the LifeWorks NW Children’s Relief Nursery, I have seen firsthand the impact Relief Nurseries can have on a family. We provide wrap-around services to families that reduce parental stress and social isolation. We teach parenting skills, strengthen bonds between parents and their children, and provide targeted services that reduce child behavioral problems and improve social-emotional development in very young children. These services include therapeutic classrooms for children, respite care that enables parents to take care of personal or family matters, regular home visiting to help families achieve family goals and build healthier parent-child relationships, and access to family counseling and consultation with an early childhood mental health therapist. Research shows that these types of primary prevention activities build the protective capacity of parents, keeping kids out of foster care.

According to the most recent evaluation conducted by Portland State University, the families Relief Nurseries serve have an average of 16 risk factors associated with abuse and neglect. This same evaluation shows that 98.5 percent of children working with Relief Nurseries between 2008 and 2010 avoided foster care placement. Children already in foster care who work with Relief Nurseries exit the system twice as quickly as those who don’t. Relief Nurseries provide additional benefits to parents and children, including increasing the percentage of parents reading to children, decreasing emergency room visits, and improving family economic stability.

LifeWorks NW is one of 31 Relief Nurseries and satellite sites operating in 17 counties in Oregon. According to a Children’s Institute interview with Cara Copeland, Executive Director of the Oregon Association of Relief Nurseries (OARN), these sites serve roughly 3,000 children in 2,600 families. But there are many more families across the state who could benefit from these services: based on the number of cases of reported abuse and neglect among children ages 0–5, OARN estimates that there are more than 36,000 young children across the state whose families need these programs.

Oregon has an opportunity in 2019 to keep children out of foster care by investing in Relief Nurseries. Governor Kate Brown, supported by a coalition of early childhood advocates, has called for a $5.6 million investment from the state to open two new Relief Nurseries and seven satellite sites, as well as expand the capacity of current programs. This is a smart investment for the state not only because Relief Nurseries have been proven to keep kids out of foster care, but also because for every $1 that the state invests in these programs, Relief Nurseries raise an additional $1.80 in private revenue.

I hope Oregon’s lawmakers will support this common-sense approach to fixing our state’s over-burdened foster care system. We should improve our Child Welfare System so that we no longer need to send foster children out of state for care. The best way we can do that is to provide families with the support they need so that children can remain in their homes receiving the love and care they need.

Laid off Educator Shares COVID-19 Impact on Life, Families

Layoffs, Uncertainty Ahead for Preschool Owner and Staff

Related Content

The Potential to Transform K–12

What State Leaders Can Do to Help More Students Start Their Education on the Right Track

The Foster Care Fix: Invest in the Services Proven to Keep Kids in Their Homes