Posted on February 15, 2023 by childrenslearninginstitute

Brain development is incredibly important in the first three years of a child’s life. Early learning experiences shape who children become, and in this critical phase of development, the Children’s Learning Institute (CLI) at UTHealth Houston wants to make sure that each child has a healthy, rich, and stimulating environment. By the time a child is three, their brain is already developed 80% of the way, and every day is crucial for healthy child development. When children have well balanced environments, they build lifelong success in learning and emotional health. So, what does it take to create these types of environments? Glad you asked. Here at CLI we believe that empowering caregivers, teachers, and specialists with free evidenced-based resources to set them up for success will lead to positive learning experiences through these crucial stages of development.

The Texas ITSN Improving Infant-Toddler Care Across Texas 

Caregivers need support to give infants and toddlers a great environment. That’s why when the Texas Workforce Commission sought a partner to establish an Infant-Toddler Specialist Network (ITSN) for Texas we jumped at the chance to help our community. With the goal to “improve teacher practices and increase availability and quality of infant and toddler care by providing specialized technical assistance, professional development, and collaboration with other programs serving infants and toddlers,” we hit the ground running to bring specialists (coaches and mentors) and teachers/caregivers together to develop a peer networking support group. We’ve developed two programs, one for specialists and one for teachers.

The Teacher program offers:

• A teacher account on the CLI Engage platform, which includes access to resources such as the CIRCLE Activity Collection-Infant & Toddler, CIRCLE Infant and Toddler Teacher Competencies tools, Developmental Milestones Checklists, and much more!
• Professional development courses and webinars highly aligned to the Texas Rising Star Category 2 standards.
• Access to Professional Learning Communities with a group of individuals providing networking opportunities.
• Virtual individualized coaching
• Clock hours for continued education
• Priority registration to the CIRCLE Infant & Toddler Foundations Training, and the opportunity to receive a kit filled with books, toys, and materials for classrooms
• Opportunities to earn participation-based incentives, such as a tablet and $100 gift cards

Offering teachers, a plethora of resources and assistance sets them up for success in delivering quality learning experiences to the children they serve.

The Specialist program empowers local coaches and mentors to assist the teachers and centers in their respective areas. When someone joins the specialist program they get:

• Professional development courses through CLI Engage
• Clock hours for continued education
• Access to Professional Learning Communities with a group of individuals providing networking opportunities.
• Unlimited access to webinars
• Plus, the option to become certified which gets them advance-track trainings, recognized by the Texas ITSN and Texas Early Childhood Professional Development System (TECPDS) as a trainer, a free account on the Trainer Registry, trainings coaches and facilitate through CLI Engage and TECPDS, plus access to facilitator guides, PowerPoints, and tons of other resources!

With both programs offering a plethora of resources, training, and networking, we are ensuring that each teacher and specialist has everything they need and more to create healthy, rich, and stimulating environments across the state of Texas.

An Infant-Toddler Curriculum 

Another aspect of fostering positive child development is a consistent curriculum that teachers can use to implement each week. The National Research Council described a key challenge faced by our early childhood education system: infant and toddler teachers “have historically had the weakest, least explicit and coherent, and least resourced infrastructure for professional learning and workforce supports. Currently the experts at CLI are developing the CIRCLE Infant and Toddler Curriculum to provide programs with everything they need to create lesson plans that support meaningful interactions and playful learning experience for infant and toddler children, all fully aligned to the Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework and Texas Infant and Toddler Early Learning Guidelines. Implementing a comprehensive high-quality curriculum can be challenging for teachers with limited expertise in infant-toddler development, care, and instruction. With this in mind, we aim to design an innovative curriculum that doubles as a professional development tool, subtly guiding the teacher from foundational to advanced implementation. This curriculum, which will be distributed through the CLI Solutions Group, offers experiences for every setting, video lessons with a real teacher, and a user-friendly guide to assist with supporting the needs of all children. Launching later this year, this curriculum will be available online for free in English and Spanish to fit the diverse needs of Texas children.

Using a multi-faceted approach, CLI works to tackle infant and toddler care in a variety of ways, working tirelessly to empower the adults to create well-balanced environments for children, so that they can have lifelong success. If you want to learn more about anything mentioned in this article, go to our side bar where we have listed all our resources.