With a $200,000 grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Northern Virginia Family Service (NVFS) is expanding opportunities for young children in the Early Head Start Child-Care Partnership program.
According to a release, “the project is designed to improve the services provided to infants and toddlers through NVFS’ community child-care partners by providing targeted professional development and mentor-coaching to all center staff.”
The goal is to not only help provide children in need with better services, but to train educators how to provide learning opportunities in the way that works best for these children, according to a release.
“By participating in the program, teachers will be better equipped to make objective observations of children’s development, learning and skills. They will effectively use research-based developmental screening and assessment tools to gather information about children’s physical, language and social-emotional needs. They will then be able to develop individualized learning plans for children in their care, and plan and implement the curriculum with activities and experiences that are developmentally appropriate that can lead to lifelong learners,” stated NVFS Senior VP of Programs Malinda Langford in a release.
More on the program, from a release:
The professional development component will operate in partnership with the Virginia Literacy Council’s Excellence in Children’s Early Language and Literacy (ExCELL), which includes classroom-based coaching sessions for teachers, assistants, directors, and other staff who interact with the children enrolled.
NVFS will also partner with Virginia Commonwealth University and the University of Virginia, respectively, to provide professional development and mentor coaching, and educate Early Head Start staff on classroom assessment tools to measure the quality of teacher-student interactions, classroom instructions and more. NVFS staff members will provide additional training regarding assessment tools for cognitive and social-emotional development.
