The Work We Do - Training and Technical Assistance
Early Childhood Associates, Inc. prides itself on delivering exceptional training and technical assistance services to a wide range of audiences. We provide professional development for educators, paraeducators, administrators, human service providers, and other members of the early education and care workforce in the areas of communication, relationship building, observation and feedback, curriculum, instruction and assessment and reflective practice.
We are best known for providing practical approaches to increase coordination among schools, agencies, and multi-service organizations. As a facilitator of educational workgroups and professional coalitions, we develop a shared vision, differentiate roles, and build collaboration among participants.
Early Childhood Associates, Inc. helps individuals reach their full potential. We offer over twenty-five different workshops (LINK TO WORKSHOP LIST?) to fulfill our clients’ professional development needs. We use state-of-the-art distributed learning systems, including audio and video conferencing, online learning, and web-based technologies to engage all size groups of professionals, from individual preschool programs to national audiences. Training is accompanied by in-house resources, including journals, guides, and workbooks developed specifically for your workforce. Finally, we follow through by evaluating the impact of our work.
Early Childhood Associates, Inc. staff have managed and provided technical leadership to multi-million dollar, multi-year contracts including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Evaluation Data and Technical Assistance Center (NEDTAC), Community Partnerships for Children, the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment, the Learning Disabilities Technical Assistance Project, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Workshop List
Mentor-Coaching
Keys to Successful Mentor-Coaching Series: Highlights relationship building and communication strategies to support mentor and protégé practices. Develops plans and procedures to maximize team-building and differentiates roles of mentor-coaches and managers.
Improving Accountability and Evaluation Research through Mentor-Coaching: This two-day workshop builds the capacity of educational practitioners to design and conduct high-quality evaluation research studies and to be informed consumers of evaluation research findings. Learn essential terminology, how evaluation feeds into the continuous improvement feedback loop, how to select the right methods for your evaluation study, how to analyze and interpret data, and how to use data to make compelling arguments.
Staff and Program Evaluation
Methods For Evaluating Programs such as Workforce Development, Family Literacy, Community Partnerships, Social Service agencies, and Employment. Covers survey design, data collection management, data analysis, and the development of evidence-based evaluation products directly applicable to your program or business.
Evaluation Tool Box: Engage teams in planning and conducting ongoing evaluation including creating logic models; developing evaluation questions; selecting appropriate data gathering strategies; developing and administering evaluation instruments; conducting focus groups, interviews and observations; analyzing quantitative and qualitative data; and summarizing findings.
Administration
Observation, Reflection and Feedback Series: Uses the five-step professional conferencing cycle to engage managers and online staff in meaningful conversations about workplace quality.
Supporting Professionals in the Change Process Series: Helps managers and leaders support staff as they move through a process of organizational change and reflect on roles and responsibilities.
Team-Based Decision Making: This two part series focuses on helping people work together effectively, learn new reflective problem solving strategies, and create plans to strengthen team functioning and effectiveness.
Building Capacity: A two-part series to help organizations create a long and short term plan for leveraging external and internal resources.
NAEYC Accreditation Series: This series presents a step-by-step process to successfully prepare for NAEYC accreditation. Early Childhood Associates, Inc.’s facilitators will help you assess strengths and challenges, make changes to enhance developmentally appropriate practice, and respect diversity. Observation and feedback are essential components on the series.
Assessment
Helping Teachers Use Assessment Data Series: Teaching is complex. The series helps teachers become better observers, documenters, recorders and interpreters of skills in children and adults.
Functional Assessment Workshop: Presents specific procedures for the functional assessment of challenging behaviors in young children. Participants examine strategies for collecting information, discuss ways the environment impacts behavior, identify effective teaching strategies and create effective and efficient behavior support plans.
Using Assessment to Inform Curriculum: Assessment of children’s performance and skills is a critical component of a quality early childhood program and essential for planning classroom curriculum. Early Childhood Associates, Inc. offers training on all aspects of child assessment and hand tailors training to the needs of the program.
Curriculum and Instruction
Working with Dual Language Learners: Participants learn about new findings in dual language acquisition, and how to build workplace environments and classrooms to meet different needs, learning styles and cultural norms.
Differentiated Instruction: A four-part series offered online or in face-to-face format. Sessions focus on principles of differentiation, culturally relevant teaching, concept attainment and mapping, individualizing ways adults and children approach and demonstrate learning.Interactive Literacy and Writing Series: Helps practitioners structure literacy activities that enable parents and children to share a positive interaction and to learn together. In these sessions, staff designs culturally responsive opportunities for parents to practice explicit skills to support children’s development of literacy skills.
Bridging the Gap between Regular and Special Education: Become better at assessing, creating and sustaining effective learning environments for all students. Learn to use curriculum mapping to identify relationships among curriculum content, standards and ways students with disabilities can access the curriculum. Create a system of support for children and teachers in regular education settings.
Linking State Curriculum Frameworks to Individual Goals and Objectives: Enhances practitioners’ understanding of standards-based, outcome driven instruction and professional development. We help participants choose appropriate assessments for individualized planning and link assessment results to Curriculum Frameworks.
Alignment with the Standards: Early Childhood Associates, Inc. has crosswalked NAEYC accreditation standards and the MA Early Childhood Program Standards to provide a guidance for centers that want to develop a policy manual for their programs that is aligned with both sets of standards. EEC offers training and technical assistance to local programs to create an individualized set of policy statements.
Quality Environments: This workshop provides an overview of critical elements of high quality early education and care environments that promote learning. The workshop can also be hand tailored to a center’s needs by including onsite observation and assessment of individual classrooms.
Language and Literacy Development: Supporting the language and literacy development of young children, particularly those considered academically at risk, is an ongoing challenge for early educators who are responsible for preschoolers’ school readiness. This workshop provides a brief review of the research on which skills correlate with school success and how to provide environments, experiences and instruction that strengthen children’s oral language and literacy.
Promoting Children’s Social-Emotional Development
Children’s Support Services (CSS) Model: Early Childhood Associates, Inc. has published the CSS manual and offers training on how communities can implement a coordinated system of care for young children who exhibit significant behavioral difficulties. The CSS model has an eight year track record of documenting positive child outcomes and has been easily replicated in an urban setting.
DECA Assessment: Early Childhood Associates, Inc. offers a 2 hour training that introduces the purpose and components of the Devereux Early Childhood Assessment (DECA) of young children’s social and emotional development. The assessment is easily completed by parents and caregivers and offers insight into a preschooler’s emotional strengths and needs.
DECA Training: Early Childhood Associates, Inc. offers a five session (10 hour) series of training on the DECA assessment system and accompanying curriculum. The program assesses young children’s emotional resiliency and provides a complementary curriculum that includes classroom strategies to enhance preschooler’s emotional and behavioral well being.
