Suze Wehr, Author at Children's Institute

We’re Moving!

by Suze Wehr | Feb 8, 2024 | News, Announcements

It’s official – we’re moving!

The Children’s Institute team is excited to announce our relocation to a new office in the heart of downtown Portland. We’re eager to embrace our new neighborhood and continue to envision a brighter future for Oregon’s kids. Over the last decade, we’ve cherished working for the early childhood movement at our Morrison Street office. However, with our team expanding and the demands of our organization evolving, we recognized the necessity for a change in our work environment.

Group of CI Staff members from the Operations team standing in front of CI's old office doors on moving day.

“From inviting collaborative workspaces to convenient paths for walking meetings, our waterfront office will provide elements conducive to the team’s wellbeing as well as productivity,” Eli O’Brate, CI’s Finance & Operations Manager.

Eli, along with Carole Shellhart, Chelsea Greenwood, and Ewan Stark, brought this collective vision to fruition through their financial / operational expertise and their efforts and enthusiasm throughout the challenging process. We are so grateful for their leadership and to every person who made this transition possible.

“It goes without saying that a tremendous amount of kudos, high fives, fist bumps and love is due for the Ops team. Their tremendous time and energy made this move a reality for us all!” – Kali Thorne Ladd, CEO at Children’s Institute.

We’ll settle into the space over the next few weeks, but once we’re fully moved in, we hope you’ll come say hello. Until then, catch us dreaming big for children behind a pile of moving boxes.

Catch the feature on our move in the Portland Business Journal.

Our new address can be found on the home page.

The 2024 ECC Legislative Agenda

by Suze Wehr | Jan 22, 2024 | News, Oregon Policy, Policy Trends

The 2024 legislative session is almost here! And it is with excitement and determination that we share our Early Childhood Coalition priorities for this year. After a chaotic regular session in 2023, the Oregon Legislature has unfinished business in prioritizing young children prenatal through age 5 in this year’s short session. The session runs five weeks, from February 5 to March 10. Providers, families, and early childhood advocates from across Oregon will be calling for urgent investments to support early learning, child care infrastructure, and early childhood health.

A crucial aspect of addressing Oregon’s deep-rooted issues of housing and addiction starts by creating equitable pathways for all children. We can do this by:

1. Making economic well-being possible for more families through Employee Related Daycare and expanding funding for child care facilities.
2. Providing inclusive education opportunities for our youngest learners through supporting the Birth to Five Literacy Plan and underfunded Early Intervention and Early Childhood Special Education programs across the state.
3. Stabilizing services that help families thrive including Relief Nurseries and programs through Nurse Family Partnership.

This is a turquoise graphic with white text that shares a quote from the ECC Legislative Agenda: "“Investing in proven services for children, prenatal through age 5<br />
and their families, improves equitable opportunities now and prevents future challenges. Oregon must continue its progress and keep promises from previous sessions to invest in a brighter future for every child.”

As a coalition of early childhood advocates, we urge Oregon to continue its progress and keep promises from previous sessions to invest in a brighter future for every child. We may have a short session ahead, but the policies and programs on this agenda have critical implications for the long-term.

Read the full agenda today and stay tuned for updates on the session via our social media channels. Thank you for your support and care for children!

2023 In Review: Our Top Ten Moments

by Suze Wehr | Dec 20, 2023 | News

As 2023 draws to a close, we are celebrating on a high note and want to express our deepest gratitude for everything we accomplished together this year!

As champions for children, our collective efforts made a critical impact on Oregon’s early childhood landscape, from individual families to important legislative wins, and internal growth. Our policy team worked with community partners to successfully advocate for major state funding in early childhood. We brought more people onto our staff team, which included the addition of a new Senior Health Policy Advisor role. Meanwhile, our School-Based Initiatives team helped school districts across Oregon increase preschool enrollment and supported over 73,000 children! And as we reached our 20th anniversary, we celebrated this milestone with our largest supporter gathering yet at the Champions for Children–20 Years of Impact luncheon.

These achievements directly impact the lives of Oregon’s children. Families will have greater access to child care facilities. Educators and administrators will have the additional support they need to help children learn. And thousands more of our youngest learners across the state will have access to the love, care, and education they need—and so deserve—to thrive. This includes opportunities to attend preschool, receive inclusive care, and develop literacy skills. This is the work that inspires us every day and we are excited for what the year ahead will bring, with our partners and supporters alongside us.

To recap the past year, we’ve compiled a list of our favorite moments from 2023. Take a look!

This is an image of an early childhood classroom

This is an image of a CI staff member in a session with a group of educators

This is an image of a group of educators gathered at tables in a well lit room

This is an image of the Governor signing bills into law at the Oregon Capitol surrounded by early childhood advocates

This is an image of early childhood advocates wearing matching scarves and getting ready to for lobby sessions at the Capitol.

This is a screenshot of Kali Thorne Ladd presenting for Promise Ventures Fellowship pitch competition

This is an image of Improvement Specialist Talisa and an educator mid-conversation

This is a group shot of CI staff members at a team lunch.

This is an image of CEO Kali Thorne Ladd, board member Maddie, and another guest at the 20th Anniversary event.

This image shows a group of happy CI staff members laughing together during the anniversary event.

This is an image of a large picnic taking place in a field in Yoncalla

Top 10 Moments of 2023

1. Celebrated 20 years of Children’s Institute’s impact at our Champions for Children luncheon with over 550 people!

2. Honored Ron Herndon’s legacy with the 2023 Alexander Award.

3. Brought new staff onto our team! We are so glad that Aditi, Andi, Elena, Destiny, Julio, and Suzanna joined us in 2023.

4. Worked in collaboration with partners to help secure $100 million for early literacy and $55 million for early childhood infrastructure in the 2023 legislative session.

5. Convened our first in-person advocacy event since the beginning of the pandemic with Early Childhood Coalition partners at the State Capitol!

6. Participated in the Promise Ventures Fellowship.

7. Celebrated 10 years of Yoncalla Early Works!

8. Hosted the first Early School Success leadership camp for educators.

9. Kali Thorne Ladd appeared on Hello! Rose City, Afternoon Live, and AM Northwest!

10. Secured a new office space at the Crown Plaza in downtown Portland.

We invite you to reflect on these with joy and inspiration, as these are all a result of our collective vision and impact. We are excited about all the possibilities in the coming year!

In community,

Children’s Institute Staff and Board

Indigenous Wisdom and Collaborative Care in Early Learning

by Suze Wehr | Nov 30, 2023 | Educators and Workforce, Health and Development, News, Parents and Families, Equity

Tutchone’s Story

Caught in a whirl of perpetual motion, a young boy named Tutchone lived in sensory overload.

His school environment collided with his often-overwhelming emotions, leading him to experience dysregulation, outbursts and classroom disruptions that left him curled up in a ball, exhausted and scared.

Despite the dedicated efforts of his school’s special education team and classroom teachers, Tutchone’s Individual Education Plan didn’t support his social-emotional and cognitive needs. In an educational system laced with historical and ongoing trauma for Native communities, the cultural dissonance between Western educational settings and Tutchone’s background created barriers to finding holistic support for him. Tutchone’s parents, crushed by uncertainty and disempowered by existing school structures, felt discouraged — but the story doesn’t end there.

Looking to support the parents however possible, the special education team asked if anyone else could join for the Individual Education Plan review. At his mother’s request, Tutchone’s auntie, grandmother, and community support team joined for the rescheduled review, expanding the context and care available to him and his parents. This expanded team expressed their goal of providing time and space to be inclusive of all voices, which provided a feeling of relief to both parents, his father in particular. Together, the group found ways to advocate for culturally aligned strategies to help with self-regulation, including the use of traditional drumming as an accessible self-calming strategy for Tutchone to use during school hours.

Within a month, Tutchone began to navigate his world with a greater sense of safety, control, and confidence. The incorporation of the drum as a self-regulation tool not only improved Tutchone’s well-being, but served as a powerful connection between his family, wider community, and the school. His story illustrates the power of strength-based, cultural, and multigenerational delivery in creating pathways for children to thrive.

Indigenous Innovation in Early Childhood

The incorporation of traditional practices into early childhood care does more than pay homage to history. For Indigenous communities across the country (and around the world), the knowledge and technology passed through countless generations often provide innovative approaches that have only recently been incorporated into Western early learning practices.

Cradleboards, a gift presented to infants in many Native American tribes, honor the child through artistry, prayers, and connection to Earth, and provide safety during the fragile early months of development. Through research from the First Nations Health Authority, the National Institute for Children’s Health Quality, and the National Institute of Child Health and Development, cradleboards have even been found to reduce or prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDs). Similarly, sleeping or resting in a traditional hammock strengthens vestibular development, connecting children with their sense of balance and place in space. These innovations and more like them provide key elements of early childhood development for Native children and inspiration across the early childhood spectrum.

Collaborative Circles of Care

As Tutchone’s story illustrates, healthy growth for children requires a variety of creative methods and more. Suzie Kuerschner suggests Collaborative Circles of Care as a system for the relational, intersectional, and culturally specific approach that nurtures children and promotes social-emotional development. Kuerschner is a revered child development specialist, early intervention and special education consultant, and early child education consultant with S.P.I.R.I.T.S., and a Children’s Institute community partner.

“The Collaborative Circle of Care’s primary principal rests on its strengths-based foundation informed by an inventory of the natural assets and resources of the individual within the context of their extended family, community, and culture,” explained Kuerschner.

Collaborative Circles of Care embrace a holistic approach to address societal challenges by recognizing the cyclical reinforcement of negative impacts stemming from systemic racial, health, disability, and socioeconomic injustices. Knowing that successful strategies depend on how closely behaviors can be observed and understood, these circles prioritize partnership with families and communities.

“It’s a system providing a model to integrate, complement and enhance an existing system that is framed by the culture and governance protocols, and procedures of the people,” she said.

By celebrating the vital role of these relationships in education and early childhood, Collaborative Circles of Care foster a collective commitment to holistic well-being and positive societal change.

“Love settles within the circle… embracing it and thereby lasting forever…

turning within itself.” -Luther Standing Bear

Quote graphic about love settling within the circle

As We Look to the Future

We are deeply thankful for the opportunity to collaborate this month with Suzie Kuerschner on this story and a mini guide to Indigenizing Early Childhood. But far more so, we are honored and excited to continue working with Suzie and our Indigenous community partners as the next year unfolds and beyond. We know that learning and embracing Traditional Ways of Knowing is vital to the early childhood ecosystem and will lead to not only a more equitable future, but a more innovative, caring and thriving world. Together, may we continuously transform systems towards compassion, wisdom, gratitude, and honor for our children and the generations to come.

*S.P.I.R.I.T.S. = Strength-based Prevention, Intervention & Resilience Informing Teaching Strategies.

A Promising Fellowship for CI & the Early Learning Academy

by Suze Wehr | Sep 14, 2023 | Community Engagement, Educators and Workforce, News, Professional Learning

In 2022-2023, Children’s Institute (CI) worked with Promise Venture Studio to explore how to scale the Early Learning Academy, CI’s training platform for strengthening early learning in school districts in Oregon. Through an 18-week Promising Ventures Fellowship, this opportunity supported growth-stage equity-driven ventures focused on making a difference in the lives of children prenatal to age 5 and their families and caregivers. A stellar team from CI, including Kali Thorne Ladd, Erin Lolich and Erica Mullen worked together to analyze strengths and weaknesses, gather user feedback, test possibilities, and form strategies for scaling the Early Learning Academy. The final stage of the project, a pitch competition on the national stage, brought participants from the fellowship together for a final celebration and exhibition of the past year’s efforts. Read more about the experience from Kali, Erin, and Erica AND watch the final pitch at the link below.

A slide from the Promise Studio Show + Tell presentation.

#1: What was the original goal for being part of the Promise Ventures Fellowship?

(Erica): We started this program with the goal of figuring out how to scale the Early Learning Academy. One year ago, after launching a larger cohort than we had previously, we realized we wanted to explore our potential to expand the program – but we needed a little help. So, we applied, hoping to find guidance and learn more about how ventures scale in the early childhood field, all while building relationships with the other organizations in our cohort. We were thrilled by the opportunity to work with fellow innovators from the early childhood field in Oregon and beyond.

#2: How did you structure the project with your team and what was the thought process as you worked on different pieces of the ELA?

(Erin): Thankfully, Promise Ventures structured much of the work for us by scheduling coaching calls and deliverable deadlines. From there, we took each deliverable and thought through the right combo of skills and experience needed to do the work. For example, each of us drafted value propositions. We worked together to streamline our individual propositions, solicited feedback from our partner school districts, then worked with our coaches to polish our final proposition. Erica Mullen, our development director, is a planning and organization wizard. She really helped with structure and enlisting the right partners along the way. Kali Thorne Ladd, our CEO, is visionary. We leaned on her to deliver our pitch; we knew she would help build our movement.

Presentation slide from our pitch with Promise Studios.

#3: What do you think are the biggest ways the fellowship changed or advanced what you’ve been doing?

(Kali): Working with Promise Studio truly expanded the capacity for entrepreneurial thinking across our organization. While some of us have had specific entrepreneurial experiences, it can prove challenging to bring that frame around our mission at Children’s Institute – but this program helped us do just that in a new way. Through brainstorming sessions, mapping our program’s pros and cons, and considering opportunities we hadn’t previously incorporated, we saw new strategies for taking our programs further. It’s a paradigm shift to see impact from a business perspective, and Promise Ventures gave us fresh tools to broaden our thinking and build something meaningful with a social enterprise lens.

#4: What did you personally learn through the process?

(Erica): When we started, our coach intentionally defined the difference between scaling and starting. I’ve expanded programs before, but the idea of program development is different than starting and building out a business model for something, and we needed a stronger foundation. We also hadn’t determined our unique value proposition yet, so diving deeper into what that meant for the ELA was super helpful. While it’s not completely different from talking about the importance of programs, it’s not the same. For instance, launching something requires TESTING and experimentation, not just fostering what already exists. The cool thing is, as we experimented with our foundational ideas and services offerings, our process reflected the way we work with teachers to test and apply change ideas. And speaking of teachers- we also learned a lot by asking for feedback from the educators and administrators we serve about what they get from our program.

Lastly, one of the biggest things we learned was just that – to think bigger! For instance, if we hope to increase teacher retention by supporting their well-being and professional development, we’ll need the backing of the school district at large. The amazing teams we work with may be the users of our program, but our clients are really the school districts who make the decisions to include our program as an option for educators. Rethinking what value we can offer to the entire school district now shapes how we see the ELA growing in the future.

Slide from our ELA pitch with Promise Studios.

#5: Who do you think the Promise Venture fellowship is right for?

(Erin): Promise Venture is right for early childhood educators looking to scale their impact with a focus on equity. The fellowship provides a network, coaching, top-notch resources, and an opportunity to share an organization’s impact and vision to a national audience of colleagues and funders. The fellowship is fast-paced and requires commitment, a strong desire to learn entrepreneurial skills, and the flexibility to rethink structures and systems. I recommended it to our partners at CAIRO PDX—they have a strong focus on culturally-specific early childhood education and have big dreams to expand and serve their community.

#6: How do you hope to bring what you learned from the fellowship into what you’re working on now?

(Kali): This fellowship helped us examine our school-based initiatives from a 30,000-foot view. We learned more about how to increase our impact through existing programs AND we realized which programs weren’t ready to expand. For instance, the way the Early Learning Academy is currently structured, it’s not quite ready to be scaled, and this process illuminated that fact. But it also taught us to see our school-based initiatives on a wider scale, including what it would look like to grow to a national level.

And lastly, tackling the pitch opportunity with Promise Ventures showed us how to talk about this work in a way that gets people excited. We learned to simplify our technical descriptions into digestible language that could resonate with anyone. While this led to several follow-up connections after the event, the exercise itself proved immensely valuable in learning to package what we do. Having had this experience, our team feels more equipped to think about our mission through a communication perspective across our school-based initiatives. You can’t grow this work without bringing people into the stories and ideas at its core, and I’m thankful for the chance to hone this skill with our team. I think we’re all looking forward to seeing the ways this fellowship positively impacted our organization for years to come.

A big thank you to Kali, Erin, and Erica, as well as the tremendous team at Promise Studios for making this impactful project possible. And now… it’s showtime! Watch our final pitch here, and if you’re interested in learning more about the ELA, you can reach out to our team at info@childinst.org.

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