Negotiate longer stays for internsAs part of the negotiation, explore a placement for an extended period of time. Children benefit from less fragmented experiences with adults; interns benefit as well. A longer stay lets interns see growth and development among individual children as a process that unfolds, and thus gain firsthand experience about development.
"The ideal teacher," says Eleanore Lewis, a student teacher supervisor at Massachusetts Bay Community College, "is the one who begins as a concerned supervisor herself. First, she sits down with the student teacher and provides an orientation to the philosophy of the class and the rhythm of the activities. Then she'll let the student take over first one activity in the class, then another. Little by little she gives the student more to do, without having to rush in and rescue. Eventually, the student may be in charge for half a day, with the teacher providing observation and guided learning during regular meetings to discuss the day's activities."
Move toward smaller classes
The final rule, 45 CFR Parts 1304 and 1306 (Federal Register, December 8, 1992) specifies the following requirements and recommendations for class size: for four- and five-year-olds, seventeen to twenty children, or fifteen to seventeen in double-session classes; for three-year-olds: fifteen to seventeen children, or thirteen to fifteen in double-session classes. Attempt to reduce all, or nearly all, the classes to average or minimum numbers.
"It is always difficult to cut back on enrollment," says the director of one of the ten largest Head Start programs in the country. "We always feel badly when we say no to a child-but today especially we need smaller classes, quieter classes, and we need more adults in the classroom. We need to serve seventeen children, and serve them well, not serve twenty-two poorly."
Finally, it is valuable to experiment with one or two classrooms that include children with high needs, and monitor and record the results. Keep good records to use later as documentation. What you learn may be used in the future to document the potential rewards of smaller classes for some children.
BRING OUTSIDE SPECIALISTS INTO THE CLASS
Background and Benefits
Bringing specialists into the class is one way to increase the number of adults in the classroom. It is also a more promising way to deliver special services. Instead of pulling the child out of the classroom, a therapist who assists with behavior management or language development can join the on-going activities. Working with a small group of children (including those who need special services), a speech and language therapist, for instance, may provide therapy through an enjoyable activity such as singing a song or playing a game. Initially this approach may seem less focused, since the therapist is involved with more than one child. Rather than diluting the impact, however, the specialist learns more about the child in the daily environment. The targeted child receives the needed support, but without being isolated. The small group offers a context within which a child with special needs can interact with peers as an equal member of the group. It also allows a wider number of children to take advantage of the specialist's services.
Encouraging specialists to provide their services in the classroom extends their expertise and services in another way. The specialist can serve as a model for both teachers and parents, providing information, support, and building skills. Specialists can demonstrate practical ways to extend the interventions into other activities in the daily classroom routine, as well as into developmental and teaching strategies that parents may continue at home.
Through more than 20 years' work with children with disabilities, Head Start has developed an in-depth understanding of what it takes to coordinate with specialists who can provide additional needed services to children. When Head Start began this work, the focus was on "mainstreaming." Today, the focus is on "inclusion,"-not just putting children with disabilities in close proximity to their typically-developing peers, but maximizing their full participation in the class. For this to be effective, specialists and teachers need to form new kinds of partnerships in the classroom and work shoulder to shoulder. How successful this arrangement is, for both children and staff, depends on the kind of partnership you help to build.
Strategies and Steps
Find suitable specialists
Look for specialists who respect the Head Start program and its philosophy, and value the experience and expertise of the staff. You need people who not only know their own field (such as speech and language pathology or physical therapy) but who are also able to communicate well with staff and parents. They should understand the Head Start population, align themselves with your program's philosophy, be sensitive to the demands on classroom teachers, and be flexible about scheduling changes. Most importantly, they must recognize that staff and parents are part of the team.
Orient your staff and specialists together
Orient staff and specialists together, through either one group training or individual supervisory sessions. Specialists need to understand the objectives and structure of a Head Start class, the working style of individual teachers, and the importance of routine and predictability for children who are disorganized and have difficult behavior problems. In particular, they need to be willing to modify their "expert" status and learn how to deliver their services through an educational context that is child-centered. Teachers need to understand the children's need for special services, why specialists' skills will be used, and when and in what ways specialists will come into their classrooms. Reinforce that teachers bring their own expertise to the partnership. Make clear how they can help-by orienting the specialist to class activities, routines, and rules, and by helping the specialist to feel accepted. It will help if teachers can come to share your commitment and enthusiasm for the undertaking.
Over time, monitor teachers' requests for referrals. A low level of requests may signal low need among the children, or it may be a sign that a teacher is not picking up on special needs or is unsure about how to follow through in securing or making referrals.
Build a collaborative partnership
For a successful team-teaching partnership, you need to provide planning time for teachers to meet with specialists. This planning time can help to avoid the dilemma described in the following case, "Whose Classroom Is This, Anyway?" Specialists and teachers together can develop an approach to their class room work, try it out, and continue to meet to debrief about what worked and what might work better. If specialists truly are to provide an extra pair of hands in the classroom, you need to allocate time for teachers and specialists to develop a team approach.
The alternative to using specialists in the classroom is to use them to train your staff to deliver the ser vices and act as consultants or mentors to staff as they improve their skills. This strategy can be a cost-effective way to use the specialist's expertise. It can also strengthen the capacity of your own staff-for example, to understand more about speech and language development. But it does not add an extra pair of hands to the classroom.
CASE 3: Whose Classroom Is This, Anyway?The following case highlights a situation that Head Start staff and managers have encountered in serving children who have been affected by family substance abuse. The case content is real, but the names have been changed. Questions for the management team are included to guide the reader's thinking and suggest links to situations in local programs.
A speech specialist arrives in the classroom to work with Lennie, who has a severe speech and language delay She generally works with him within the classroom setting. Today, however, she has decided to administer an evaluation, since she has some new concerns.
Lennie is listening to a story with a small group of children. The specialist goes over to Lennie, talks to him for a short while, then takes his hand and starts to leave the room. On the way out she gathers up some books and toys and takes them with her, too. The classroom teacher watches this and thinks, "Whose classroom is this, anyway?"
STUDY QUESTIONS FOR THE MANAGEMENT TEAM
- What are the turf issues? For whom?
- What could you, as a manager, have done to better prepare for the situation?
- What could the teacher and the specialist have done differently on their own?(Adapted from Making the Most of Consultants, EDC, Inc., 1993)
MINIMIZE DAILY TRANSITIONS AND DISTRACTIONS
Background and Benefits
Children who show disorganized behavior and have short attention spans need settings that are secure, stable, and predictable settings that have a defined structure, expectations, and boundaries. Predictability is the key to ensuring smooth transitions (from one adult to another, or one activity to another) during the child's day. Efforts to ensure safety and predictability, so critical for the disorganized child, also add to an improved classroom environment likely to benefit all Head Start children. While the strategies presented below are described in classroom term, many of them can be adapted and applied at home. In addition to encouraging managers and teachers to make these changes, it is valuable to convey similar ideas to parents.
Strategies and Steps
Scrutinize program space, patterns, and systems
Think about the use of the program space and modify it where you can (see Exhibit 1, "Checklist: Adapting a Physical World for Children"). Pay particular attention to providing some private spaces and "soft" spaces. Dividers that define space visually and the placement of objects influence children's behavior and ability to concentrate.
Consider not only the classrooms but the common spaces and layout of the building that houses Head Start. This is especially important when Head Start rents space from another agency Look at sounds and traffic patterns in the hallways would bells and movements of children-as well as congregating patterns as they wait for buses. Also examine the bus route and the ride itself. Enlist your staff in analyzing, step by step, the small work systems or routines in which children are involved. Ask a parent volunteer or intern to "walk side by side" with different staff members and record what happens, when, and why. You may see opportunities to change these work systems, even if they have been that way seemingly forever. Once you pinpoint changes you would like to make, consider who else in the Head Start program or in the agency needs to be involved in discussing possible changes. Involve those people in the discussion and work toward decisions that can be implemented.
When the management team looks openly at space and work systems in this way, they not only influence the program environment, they emphasize the importance of minimizing distractions. They also model sensitive behavior for other staff.
Encourage predictable classroom routines
Teachers can make the class function more smoothly by: establishing routines that children come to rely on; limiting the number of rules; monitoring the number of transitions; and making the transitions active learning experiences. Your role, as a manager, is to stress the importance of making the effort to establish predictable routines, add to the knowledge and skills of staff, and support and facilitate their efforts.
You may need to provide focused training on the subject of establishing predictable routines (see Chapter 3). After that, involve classroom staff in consciously looking at and documenting the events that currently take place, as you did at the program level. Provide a parent volunteer or intern to help record such routine events as coming into and leaving the classroom each day, specific classroom activities, food service and cleanup, and rest time. The record should also note adults who come into the classroom, including new teacher assistants, volunteers, interns, visiting adults and consultants, or therapists.
Monitor and orient classroom visitors
Work with the education coordinator and teaching staff to establish protocols and predictable routines for all adults. Establish, to the extent possible, a stable and familiar group of substitute teachers. Make a special effort to prepare children ahead of time for new faces (parents, other volunteers, specialists, or substitute teachers) and make a routine out of introductions.
CONDUCT EFFECTIVE ON-GOING CLASSROOM ASSESSMENT
Background and Benefits
On-going child assessment, a requirement of the Performance Standards, describes procedures developed to gather observational data across developmental domains. It is used to capture the growth and progress of the whole child and inform teachers' efforts to adapt activities as appropriate. Over the years, Head Start has learned a great deal about why on-going assessment is important and how it might be done better. Much more recently, the practice has begun to capture the attention of researchers and other practitioners. Now, public schools are starting to examine the limitations of standardized testing and its uses, especially for children whose development has been affected by multiple risks. Schools have renamed the practice "authentic assessment."
Local Head Start programs can serve the community well by promoting the effectiveness of "authentic assessment," in their own programs and by working with Local Education Agencies (LEAs) to extend the value and practice of on-going class assessment. "Many of these children have average intelligence, but often their behavior and language-processing problems get in the way. For them, standardized tests are an entry into special education," says the superintendent of the East Palo Alto School District.
Traditional forms of assessment are often culturally biased. On-going child assessment can prevent children from being referred for unnecessary diagnostic evaluation, and assist in distinguishing a disability from a mental health or behavioral need. This practice uses a holistic approach to information-gathering that focuses on children's interactions within the learning environment, rather than on their knowledge of specific content. By identifying strengths, weaknesses, and learning styles, this approach looks at children's attitudes, personal styles, how they play, how they work in groups, what materials they prefer, and how they relate to routines.
A portfolio is one non-traditional assessment that is gaining ground. Essentially a collection of the child's work, a Head Start portfolio can include: drawings; paintings; collages; photos of temporary works, such as stacked blocks or clay constructions; photos of children actively engaged in climbing or dancing; and notes dictated to the teacher about a field trip. It might also include a chart the teacher makes about a child's choices of activity over a span of time, or notes from a parent-teacher meeting. The portfolio lets teachers prepare qualitative, performance-based portraits of individual children that highlights both difficulties and strengths. It also enables teachers to share information about the children with specialists and with parents, providing understandable and accessible tools to use in talking about classroom activities and goals.
Strategies and Steps
Increase staff capacity
To conduct authentic assessments, teachers need a clear picture of what typical growth looks like; they must be able to recognize behaviors that represent stages of development. Teachers need to be skilled observers, who can accurately interpret what they see and record it in ways that will be meaningful to others.
Strengthen parent involvement
The support and understanding of both teachers and caregivers is important to realizing the benefits of on-going assessment. Use parent meetings to convey these benefits, not only by telling but by doing. Involve caregivers by inviting them to participate in art activities or engage in a creative "Make and Take" project, then use the principles of on-going assessment to reflect on their experience and what they learned. Parents and other caregivers will go away from these meetings with a new appreciation of on going assessment and of the purpose of classroom activities. Their awareness can help prevent misunderstandings and misplaced expectations about how Head Start contributes to child development.
Diversify assessment tools
A number of assessment techniques and tools that support the process are now available: checklists, play assessments, home-based assessments, observations, and interviews with caregivers. Work with your staff to develop policies and procedures about on-going assessment-the types of criteria, measures, and reporting procedures that will be used to create a portrait of a child's progress over time. As part of this, ask your teachers to record their plans, on a weekly basis, for children who need individualized plans or activities.
Encourage translation of observations into classroom practice
Teachers also need to know how to use on-going classroom assessment as a tool for adapting curriculum to meet individual needs. Routinely, teachers synthesize their observations twice a year. Encourage them, through training and supervision, to do this on a more regular basis-to review their records of observations for each child and draw on them to adapt and modify the classroom curricula.
SUPPORT PARENTS' INVOLVEMENT
IN THEIR CHILDREN'S DEVELOPMENTBackground and Benefits
More than ever, Head Start sees parents as the principal influence on their children's education and development, as well as being their primary nurturers and protectors. Yet parents and other caregivers can doubt their own capacity, question their skills, and be aware (at least privately) of the shortcomings in the care they provide. All caregivers can benefit from assistance. Parents of children at risk, especially if they are involved with alcohol or other drugs, can benefit from guidance that offers realistic ways for them to act in partnership with teachers and support their children's learning at home and in the class room. The challenge for Head Start staff is to find ways that are realistic, given the wide range of situations that families face.
Strategies and Steps
Build understanding about parents and empathy for them
You may notice that sometimes the compassion and concern that staff (including some managers) ex press for vulnerable children does not extend to the parents who abuse alcohol or other drugs. Staff may feel a host of emotions toward adults who abuse substances. As professionals, however, they have an obligation to come to terms with those feelings and re-examine them within the context of current knowledge about the patterns of addiction and recovery. You can support program goals, as well as the growth and development of individual staff members, by providing professional training opportunities and other mental health supports that will enable staff to look first at their own beliefs and behavior.
Build trust over time
Meeting and enrolling new families in Head Start is the first step toward building trust over time. After that, it is the effort made by all staff-not only social service and parent involvement staff-that solidifies the bonds between caregivers and the program. "Parents often have been through many bureaucracies and lost trust in the system," says a social service coordinator in Texas. Effective ways of building relationships include monthly meetings with games, or "Make and Take" activities where "we teach parents to play like kids, so they'll play with their kids."
Home visits are critical. It is important to send the same person consistently and not ask the parent to get used to too many faces. Also, a social service worker and teacher team can be an effective approach. The teacher who works with the child has the greatest chance of capturing and keeping the attention of parents. Phone calls from teachers and invitations sent home have a positive impact if teachers are persistent. Incentives for parent involvement can include T-shirts, bumper stickers, dinner at a local restaurant, or a book given for several hours of classroom service. Says one director, "Last year we gave away 500 books." Another director obtains donations from local businesses for hours "earned" by parents.
Involve parents in educational decisions
Make opportunities to educate parents and other caregivers about what you are doing in the classroom and why. For some, social events-such as pot luck suppers, new-family gatherings, and culturally sensitive celebrations held at the program-may offer informal opportunities for teachers to talk about classroom activities and invite parents' participation. For others who may be less able to come to the program and interact, notes or comments sent home may open the door to communication. Involve parents in setting realistic expectations for their children, understanding the limits of what three-year olds and four-year-olds can and cannot do, and having fewer-but consistent-household rules. Convey, through modeling as well as conversation, more positive ways to interact with children. Teach parents about on-going assessment; in time, they can become active partners in observing and recording their child's progress and development. Make particular efforts to draw on the parents' own expertise and knowledge of their children in designing specific activities that are likely to engage the child's interest and support development.
Extend classroom activities
Through parent meetings, home visits, home-based programs, and materials sent home, teachers can let parents know about classroom activities and promote their use at home. You can encourage teachers to promote classroom activities that address home issues, topics, and events, such as family get-together's, or "Make-and-Take" sessions where caregivers engage in a creative form of play with their children. These activities may yield a take-home item and will help caregivers to focus on the fun of playfulness and the opportunity for creativity and success, not only on the product.
Support vulnerable families
The value of supporting families in making changes is as true today as it was when Head Start began. What has changed is the urgency of the need and the difficulty of the challenge: more families live in poverty; and more parents and other caregivers struggle with substance abuse, violence in the home and in the street, health care issues, and homelessness. If programs do not succeed in guiding the family to change both individual behavior and interpersonal dynamics, there is less hope that improvements in the child's behavior will be maintained.
To work with families involved with substance abuse, family support staff need to develop new ways of working with families and reaching out to partners in the community. Helping substance-abusing families identify their problems, and supporting them in referral and follow-up, is a different process from other family issues. It requires new skills and knowledge. Grantees need to provide training and prepare staff for these responsibilities, as well as forge new relationships with substance abuse treatment re sources. Some programs may wish to have a full-time or part-time certified alcohol and drug counselor on staff, or to make arrangements for on-site consultation with families by persons with special training. For more information, review the companion manual "Supporting Substance-Abusing Families: A Technical Assistance Manual for the Head Start Management Team."