8085 DISC3
Candyy31
MD4Assgn1BrownleeJ.pptxEarly Literacy and closing the GAP
Jazmine Brownlee
Walden University
EDDD 8085/EDSD 7085: Inspired Leadership, Informed Advocacy, and Improved Policy
Dr. Beryl Watnick
August 1, 2022
1
Outline
As you go through the presentation, you all will understand my purpose for conducting this professional development. I will provide a general overview of why following each step is imperative to closing the literacy gap. I will discuss how teaching resilience, building relationships, building culturally responsive classrooms, and RTI supports closing the literacy gap among young children. Finally, resources will be provided in order to support educators in closing the gap.
2
Purpose
General Overview
Teaching Resilience
Closing the Literacy Gap
Building Relationships
Resources
Building Culturally Responsive Classrooms
My Purpose
Advocating for young children should be a leader’s main priority to ensure that they become lifelong learners beyond the classroom. There are a plethora of ways to ensure success amongst young learners. Many leaders advocate for change in ways that they see as best or are passionate about. When someone is passionate about a particular change, they will do what is needed to promote change. I have always been passionate about closing the literacy gap amongst young readers. I have noticed that there is a major gap in literacy, especially in low economically challenged communities. I have taught second-grade EIP self-contained classrooms for years. Every year, I have heard from the administration that I should expect little to no growth from these students because they are too far behind or not capable of making real growth. I couldn’t believe what I heard because all children are capable of learning if given the necessary tools to succeed. Therefore, I am providing this professional development to give teachers tools for advocating for young children and supporting closing the literacy gap. This will hopefully change the mindset of all educators as well as administrators who believe children are just too far behind to catch up or able to learn.
3
Advocating for Young Children
Closing the Literacy Gap
All Children are Capable of Learning
Changing the Mindset of Educators
Overview of Closing the literacy gap!
Building Relationships
Advocating for closing the literacy gaps amongst all children is important for children, families, professionals, and the field of early childhood education. By aiding in closing the literacy gap, it can support more children in becoming lifelong learners beyond the classroom and minimize the number of high school dropouts. It also teaches the students how to be resilient and bounce back from adversity. Furthermore, it can also provide families with peace of mind that their child is getting the best possible education and support needed to help their child at home. Having a home-school relationship can also help bridge the literacy gap in primary-aged children. Creating those relationships supports families in trusting the school system and they would want to do more to be involved. Aiding in closing the literacy gap benefits the field of education because more funding for resources is provided when children are growing and developing healthily. Therefore, I believe implementing Response to Intervention (RTI) is a great start to closing the literacy Gap as well as building a culturally responsive classroom.
4
ability to stand firm and strong
ability to bounce back from adversity (Music, 2017)
promote resilience in our children
developing protective factors that can shield negative effects
Overcoming adversity with courage, skills, and faith
Being Resilience
Resilience is a topic that many find hard to define and discuss. This term is used widely throughout the early childhood education field. The question that remains is what resilience is and how does resilience play a role in children’s lives? Many researchers believed it means either the ability to stand firm and strong in the face of stressors and/or the ability to bounce back from adversity (Music, 2017). Our children are facing many stressors and traumas in their lives in which they are exposed to crises such as natural disasters, community violence, abuse, neglect, separation from or death of loved ones, and now the pandemic (Pizzolongo & Hunter, 2011). As adults, we try to keep our children from facing adversity but that is impossible sometimes. However, it is our job as parents and/or caregivers to promote resilience in our children. This can be done by developing protective factors that can shield against the negative effects of stress and trauma. Resilience helps children to overcome adversity with courage, skills, and faith (Pizzolongo & Hunter, 2011). We like to think children already have it in them but being resilient is something that needs to be taught to children.
5
Being Resilience
Have supportive relationships
Living in poverty had many challenges
Traumatic experiences can change a child’s outlook on life
Parents, community and teachers reinsured purpose in life
Overcome experiences through Posttraumatic Growth (Weber, et al., 2020)
Resilience matters! To build resilience, children must have supportive relationships with parents, coaches, teachers, caregivers, and other adults in the community (Center on the Developing Child, 2015). This has a major impact on a child’s life. For example, growing up living in poverty had many challenges that children face each day. The many joys of just being a child have been stripped away from them. Traumatic experiences such as being caught in a crossfire at a playground and being shot four times can change a child’s outlook on life. However, having adults foster protective factors and having the courage to not question faith is what gets you through those traumatic experiences. I can personally speak on this because I was that child who was at the playground and caught in the crossfire. Adults in my life helped me to stand strong in facing this trauma and bouncing back from it to continue living life. My parents, community, and teachers assure me that I had a purpose in life and I needed to start walking in it. Therefore, it is important to teach children how to be resilient and overcome traumatic experiences. Research has shown that these experiences can be overcome through Posttraumatic Growth (PTG). The five main aspects of (PTG) are Spiritual Change, Relating to Others, Appreciation of Life, New Possibilities, and Personal Strength (Weber, et al., 2020).
6
Building relationships
When children perceive their environment as a dangerous place, they can become hypervigilant, experiencing everyone and everything as a potential threat to their safety (Terrasi & de Galarce, 2017). Psychologically, they have a fragmented sense of self and are vulnerable to anxiety and depression (Terrasi & de Galarce, 2017). Behaviorally, they are prone to the extremes of withdrawal or serious acting-out behaviors. For example, one student lost her mother to cancer a week before second grade started. She didn’t know how to process her feeling and misbehaved every day. It got to a point where nothing was helping her. Every day she came to class, she was greeted with an overly excessive hug and good morning. Also, she was greeted with, “I’m glad you are here today because I couldn’t teach without you.” Finally, her behavior started to improve because she was provided with a loving and caring environment. She felt better about opening up and saying how a lot of things were reminding her of her mom. All she wanted was that love again she felt from her mom.
7
Advocating for Young Children
Closing the Literacy Gap
All Children are Capable of Learning
Changing the Mindset of Educators
Building Relationships by feeling valued and respected
Building positive relationships with your students, and their families can have different impacts on the workplace. It is imperative that your workplace feels safe, warm, and welcoming to all. Relationships are the determining factor of how your day-to-day interactions will be with your students. It will impact your students by deciding if they will love coming to school or hate it which will affect how you teach them. Building positive relationships with your students is very important. Students know when teachers care and are there for them because they are not afraid to voice their opinion about anything. “African American students reported uncaring treatment and low academic expectations from teachers with whom they behaved more defiantly and less cooperatively,” (Jones and Jones, 2016 p.53). I hold this to be true because you have to earn the respect of your students and they will forever treat you as such.
8
Imperative to have a Loving and inviting Classroom
Safe and Risk-free
Defiant behaviors in less inviting classroom
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENT
Challenges for teachers
Parents’ Expectations
Differences in beliefs
Discipline is essential to learning, but in culturally diverse groups it could become a challenge for teachers (Prins, et al., 2019). Positive discipline, respect for human rights, and the creation of a sense of belonging promote culturally responsive and disciplined learners (Prins, et al., 2019). Diversity is a challenge due to external factors such as parent expectations, as well as internal factors such as the management of differences between the teachers' beliefs and those of the learners (Prins, et al., 2019). This is held to be true because some parents send their children to school without any previous education and expect them to be reading at a second-grade level in the first grade. Their expectations don’t always match what they are contributing to their child’s success.
9
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE ENVIRONMENT
Promoting Culturally Responsive Classrooms
Parents being held Accountable
Teachers’ Biases
Therefore, to promote a culturally responsive classroom, hold the parents more accountable. I give my parents strategies and activities that they can do at home with their children. Lastly, to create a more culturally responsive classroom, teachers must put aside their biases to teach all students. Sometimes, educators let their cultural beliefs affect how they teach. For example, as educators, we can’t assume that the same rules apply to our students as they did to us growing up. Their background could be completely different. Sometimes we assume that all students are required to do homework as soon as they get home from school before doing anything else. That was how we were raised but not our students. Some are home alone with no one to assist with homework. Some have parents who don’t know how to assist with homework. Then, you have some parents that don’t care and feel homework is a waste of time. Furthermore, students’ cultural backgrounds should be incorporated into teachers’ daily lessons. This will support as well with closing the literacy gap among young children.
10
Three-tiered process
It provides effective interventions for struggling learners (Nilvius, et al., 2021)
Tier one is evidence-based teaching foe all students
Tier two is more intensive and individualized support
Tier three is where interventions is provided in even smaller groups
Closing the Literacy Gap Through Response to Intervention (RTI)
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY
Response to Intervention (RTI) is a three-tiered process to observe children and understand how they develop. RTI also is an educational approach designed to provide effective interventions for struggling students in reading and mathematics (Nilvius, et al., 2021). It is characterized by a systematic recurring assessment and monitoring data that determines students' response to interventions in tiers (Nilvius, et al., 2021). Tier one is evidence-based teaching for all pupils in classroom-based activities and is when the students receive the core curriculum and differentiated instruction (Nilvius, et al., 2021). The students who do not develop adequate skills receive more intensive and individualized support through teaching in smaller groups which is the next tier, tier 2 in the model- (Nilvius, et al., 2021). The intention of tier 2 is to close the gap between current and age-expected performance (Nilvius, et al., 2021). The third tier consists of even more individualized and intensive efforts where intervention is provided in even smaller groups or through one-to-one tutoring, and intervention time is increased (Nilvius, et al., 2021).
11
Alex Quigley’s six steps to Closing the Reading gap is a great resource to reference when trying to support educators in understanding how to close the gap. Step one is to train teachers to be experts in how pupils learn to read and go on to read to learn. Step two is to develop and teach a coherent and cumulative reading-rich curriculum. Step three is to teach with a focus on reading access, practice, and enhancing reading ability. Step four is to teach, model, and scaffold pupils’ reading so that they become strategic and knowledgeable readers. Step five is to nurture pupils’ motivation to read with purpose and for pleasure. Lastly, step six is to foster a reading culture within, and beyond the school gates. These six steps can support educators in being intentional with their teaching targeting the students’ area of deficit.
12
The resource “Every Child Deserves a Head Start in Life” from Save the Children Network explains that children start learning the moment they’re born and nearly 90% of brain development occurs by age five (Save the Children Action Network, 2016b). The resource also states that without access to high-quality early learning programs, children can’t climb the ladder out of poverty and into the bright futures they deserve (Save the Children Action Network, 2016b). The last point that I believe will support my advocacy topic is “For over 50 years, Head Start has proved that education is the key to disrupting poverty.” The three main points support my advocacy goals because they can support closing the literacy gap among all children but most importantly, children from low economically challenged neighborhoods.
13
The resource “Early Literacy” from the Zero to Three websites provides information on how adults, parents, grandparents, and teachers play a very important role in prepping children for future success and helping them become self-confident and motivated learners (Zero to Three, 2022). Children need to have self-confidence and become motivated learners because it builds their confidence to learn. They put in more effort when they believe that they are capable and can complete the assignments. The second main point of this resource is developing language and literacy skills that begin at birth through everyday interactions that include sharing books, telling stories, singing songs, and talking to one another (Zero to Three, 2022). This is imperative because it supports children developing language skills. The last main point is how reading to your baby starting at birth can help foster strong reading skills and a growing vocabulary (Zero to Three, 2022). Therefore, the information presented will be helpful to my advocacy topic because it promotes closing the literacy gaps by fostering strong reading skills starting at birth.
14
how leadership capacity will be cultivated within training activities
Practice discipline.
Take on more projects or more responsibility.
Learn to follow.
Develop situational awareness.
Inspire others.
Keep learning.
Resolve conflicts.
Be a discerning listener.
Reference
16
Reference
17
