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PROGRAMS - Life Learning Early Childhood Partnership
Goals | Partnership | K–12 Life Learning Partnerships
This ongoing partnership is a collaboration between the Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation, Head Start, and Early Head Start programs throughout the United States of America. Innovative and progressive in nature, this partnership focuses on the improvement of learning and teaching, academic success, long term impact, and the crafting of scientific educational models which in practice are already impacting the future of early childhood education.
Begun in the fall of 2001, current participating programs in this partnership represent the states of Arizona, California, Ohio, Oregon, and the commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Today’s Head Start programs represent a critical and visionary portion of our Country's educational strategy. These programs serve at-risk children between the ages birth to age 5. For more information on Head Start, please visit the National Head Start Association website.
The
Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation trains Head Start teachers and parents, creating
a team chemistry which impacts their effectiveness with children. Serving
both rural and inner city programs, this partnership addresses the needs
of diverse demographic and multi-cultural groups.
This collaborative team approach focuses on the integration of the Fostering Arts-Mind Education Foundation’s proven Life Learning Techniques. The National Endowment for the Arts has endorsed Life Learning techniques in Grant #418-02. The intent is to increase teacher and parent effectiveness, raise children’s academic performance, and elevate the expectations of children, families, and teachers.
One of the innovative features is that our documentation of outcomes is statistically validated. This is accomplished with our partnering Head Start programs using proven assessment tools. The vast majority of our participating programs use the assessment tool Galileo, the only tool of its kind to have been mandated by a state department of education. Another unique feature is that as a team we take a large step beyond simple documentation, and engage in the crafting and documenting of causal links which impact children, teachers, and parents in multiple areas of learning. Thus, a by-product of this partnership is the addition of significant research related to educational variables which are most critical in teacher effectiveness, children’s learning capacities, and the relation of the home learning environment.
Our long term vision for this partnership is the creation and on-going refinement of a holistic bridge that is educational in nature, research based, and permeated with developmentally sound approaches, including team building for long term impact with programs we serve.
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Integrate our proven Life Learning Techniques within any curriculum of participating Head Start programs in order to expand teachers’ repertoire, and enhance effectiveness of curriculum and teachers.
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Improve academic achievement in a measurable manner in the areas of:
a. Early Literacy
b. Early Math
c. Social and Emotional Development
d. Nature and Science
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Create life long learners with children and teachers in the classroom environment and with parents and children in the home environment.
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Craft and deliver scientific educational models that are sustainable and replicable.
a. Impact academic achievement in rural and inner city areas.
b. Document outcomes in rural and inner city areas.
c. Improve the link between assessment tools and Life Learning Techniques.
d. Customize the use of Life Learning Techniques within any curriculum.
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Improve and document the environmental health of inner city and rural Head Start programs.
a. Integrate artistic and holistic techniques to improve learning within any curriculum.
b. Enhance school readiness and link to public school system.
c. Use Literacy as an on going part of the learning environment.
d. Enhance home learning environment
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Improve and document the effectiveness of inner city and rural Head Start teachers.
a. Integrate Life Learning Techniques into their classroom.
b. Integrate Life Learning Techniques into their work setting.
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Create institutional capacity building with a model that integrates training of teachers.
a. Create a sustainable process of training teachers and trainers.
b. Use Mentor-Coach philosophy in training.
c. Create a self-evaluation process for teachers and parents.
d. Link curriculum with Life Learning Techniques.
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Improve and document the progress of inner city and rural Head Start children in the areas of Early Literacy, Early Math, Social Emotional Development, and Nature and Science as related to school readiness performance standards.
a. Document using statistically validated progress charts.
b. Document using statistically validated percentile rankings.
c. Train teachers to improvise within a theme to better engage children and take advantage of the many ‘learning opportunities’ which present themselves.
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Support inner city and rural Head Start parents’ role in their child’s learning.
a. Engage parents as learners.
b. Focus on fathers whenever possible.
c. Expand the self-concept of parents.
d. Teach parents scientifically proven methods to enhance how they engage children.
e. Use the Department of Education’s Parent Education Profile as a measuring system with established
variables.
f. Enhance parents’ ability to interact and communicate with their children via personality recognition.
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Scientifically document outcomes and causal links based on both teacher observations and an objective outside third party evaluative team of university education professors.
a. Further clarify the relationship of variables that impact learning and memory.
b. Further clarify the relationship of variables that impact teacher effectiveness.
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Impact Special Populations.
a. Address how Early Head Start can use Life Learning Techniques.
b. Assist Non-English speaking children and families with the acquisition of the English language.
c. Address how inner city children and families deal with “rhythmic” and “noise” pollution.
d. Investigate the possibility of training Early Childhood Education majors with Life Learning Techniques as a part of their University curriculum
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