- Camille Catlett Honored by the Division of Early Childhood
- FPG Employee Receives NC State Employees Award
- U.S. Department of Education Awards $15 Million Grant for NECTAC
- FirstSchool leaders develop specialized M.Ed. program focused on preparation of culturally responsive practitioners
- FPG Senior Scientist Provides Guidance to Officials in Ireland
- FPG experts will be presenting at meetings around the world. Visit the FPG website for a complete list of upcoming presentations.
- Visit the FPG websitefor the latest news on FPG projects.
The phrase evidenced-based practice is becoming standard vocabulary in the early childhood field, yet there is no consensus on its definition. The authors of a new book, Evidence-Based Practice in the Early Childhood Field, propose a definition of the concept and discuss how it can help early educators, special educators, child care professionals, and others to transform the services provided to children and families. A companion article in the fall 2006 issue of Young Exceptional Children also outlines the foundation of this new movement.
Download the FPG Snapshot.
With the accountability movement finally trickling down to the preschool setting, leaders in early childhood development must set aside territorial differences to provide a collaborative set of recommended child and family outcome standards, according to the authors of the report, “Issues in Designing State Accountability Systems,” published in the Journal of Early Intervention.
Download the FPG Snapshot.
In families with two working parents, fathers make important contributions to children’s early language skills.
Results from a new study by FPG Child Development Institute show that children whose fathers’ vocabulary was more varied when they were two, had greater language skills at age three. Mother’s vocabulary was not found to have a significant impact on children’s language skills. The findings are published in the November/December 2006 issue of the Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology.
Download the FPG Snapshot.
Camille Catlett, an investigator at FPG Child Development Institute (FPG) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, received the 2006 Mary McEvoy Service to the Field Award from the Division of Early Childhood (DEC). DEC is the largest international professional organization dedicated to improving educational outcomes for individuals with exceptionalities, students with disabilities, and the gifted.
The award recognizes Catlett’s significant contributions to improve the lives of young children with special needs around the globe, their families, and those who work on their behalf.
"Camille brings boundless energy and enthusiasm to her work, inspiring others to look beyond what is to see what is possible for young children with disabilities and their families,” said Eva K. Thorp, Ed.D., with the Early Childhood Education Program at George Mason University.
Starting out as a speech pathologist in the public school system, Catlett has dedicated her career to the early childhood field. She has provided direct service to young children, coordinated a federal funding program, and led several national training and technical assistance projects, including strategic planning efforts designed to promote systemic change in professional development in more than 30 states. Her current research focuses on the impact of preparing educators to work with culturally, linguistically, and ability diverse young children and their families.
“Camille’s work in the area of personnel preparation will be a lasting contribution to the field,” Thorp added. “It is hard to imagine an institution of higher education that has not been touched by her work.”
Catlett is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences on effective professional development, diversity, collaboration and family-centered practices. “Professionals love attending Camille’s presentations, as they know they are guaranteed access to innovative ideas, resources, and a plan to implement what they learn in a realistic and practical way. She is a true facilitator of change that matters to the profession and in the lives of young children and families we serve,” said Susan M. Moore, J.D., M.A., CCC-SLP, at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Moore nominated Catlett for the award.
In addition to serving on national commissions, state boards, and higher education advisory committees, Catlett authors “Natural Resources,” a weekly listserv that shares inexpensive resources with colleagues nationwide, and “Resources within Reason,” a regular column in Young Exceptional Children.
Ruth Miller, special services coordinator at FPG Child Development Institute (FPG) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will receive a 2006 North Carolina State Employees’ Award for Excellence, the highest honor a State employee may receive.
Miller has been a state employee for 14 years. She currently coordinates a high quality program of services for children with disabilities at the FPG Child Care and Family Program. The award acknowledges outstanding accomplishments that do not fall entirely within the scope of normal duties, but are in the nature of a major contribution reflecting credit on the person and State service.
“Ruth is an amazing individual. Over the years, Ruth has had a positive impact on the lives of thousands of children and their families,” said Maggie Connolly, Miller’s supervisor at FPG and director of the FPG Child Care and Family Program. “Whether it’s taking time to go to the home of a single mother and child who were both ill to be certain that they had food and medicine or scheduling time outside of her work week to accompany a family to an appointment with a neurologist, Ruth is always going above and beyond.”
Miller has dedicated her forty-year career to serving young children, as both a teacher and an administrator. At FPG, Miller provides services to children with disabilities and their families.
Miller knows a thing or two about the children with whom she works. Having been mostly deaf since she was a toddler, she heard her first sounds when she was 59 years old. Miller benefited from parents who fought to keep her in public schools with her peers. She tells how her mother refused to allow the school system to send her daughter to the state school for the deaf. “Would you put a child with glasses in a school for the blind?” she asked the administrator. Miller remained in a traditional school setting until she graduated high school and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree and later a master’s degree.
The U.S. Department of Education awarded FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill a five-year, $15 million grant to continue its National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (NECTAC). NECTAC serves as the U.S. Office of Special Education Program’s national resource for states on implementing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), particularly the early childhood provisions.
“NECTAC is emblematic of FPG’s 40-year history of helping the nation expand, strengthen, and improve services to children with disabilities and their families,” said Pat Trohanis, director of NECTAC. “This grant allows us to continue to work with states to tackle tough societal service problems for young children so that can participate fully in community life with dignity and respect.”
NECTAC has evolved since its original grant in 1971 from the then U.S. Office of Education. Today NECTAC reaches approximately one million children by working with states and other partners on quality assurance procedures which include families of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds; coordination of multiple funding sources to assure that all children receive services regardless of income; recruiting high quality personnel; improving coordination among multiple agencies; developing tools for early identification of eligible children; involving families; promoting inclusion; and developing effective practices that address each child’s unique needs.
NECTAC’s mission is to strengthen service systems to ensure that children with disabilities (birth through five) and their families receive and benefit from high quality, culturally appropriate, and family-centered supports and services. For more information, visit www.nectac.org.
The numbers of young children with disabilities from families with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds has been on the rise, drawing attention from policy makers, researchers, and educational professionals. Today, early childhood interventionists need to be prepared both culturally and linguistically to work with families from diverse backgrounds.
Through the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), Dr. Harriet Boone, faculty in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, recently received an $800,000 grant to develop and implement a specialized master's program of study to prepare master's level and advanced licensure students to meet the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse young children and their families in early childhood and elementary school settings. The grant begins January 1, 2007 and ends December 31, 2010. Dr. Boone, who co-chairs the FirstSchool Professional Development Committee, is the Principal Investigator, and Dr. Sharon Ritchie, Co-Director of FirstSchool and Senior Scientist at FPG Child Development Institute, is the Co-Principal Investigator for the project. The program will begin enrollment in the Spring, 2007 semester.
Click here to learn more about the program,
FPG Senior Scientist Frances Campbell traveled as a member of the Pritzker Consortium to Ireland on August 22-26, 2006 to consult with officials working in the early childhood education field. While there the group met with economists from the Geary Institute in Dublin and with officials from interventions now taking place in Belfast. The group will make recommendations to funders seeking to ensure good evaluations of the Irish Disadvantaged Children and Youth programs.
The National Professional Development Center on Inclusion (NPDCI) will work with states to create a system of high quality, cross-agency professional development for early childhood personnel to support inclusion. The new website provides an overview of the project and information about the state selection process. It will be updated with new resources as they are developed.
Visit www.fpg.unc.edu/~npdci.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities, in collaboration with the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, the National Association for the Education of Young Children and other key partners, recently launched a new Web site on "Recognition and Response", a research-based approach to helping teachers and parents respond to signs of learning difficulty in young children as early as ages 3 or 4, before they experience school failure.
For more information, visit www.RecognitionandResponse.org.
The National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (NECTAC), a program of the FPG Child Development Institute, supports the implementation of the early childhood provisions of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). NECTAC distributes a weekly electronic newsletter, eNotes, which shares news and research items related to early intervention and early childhood special education gathered from a variety of reliable sources.
eNotes currently has over 1200 subscribers and has received consistent praise from the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), as well as IHE personnel, state early intervention and childhood administrators, and others.
Click here to see sample issues of eNotes. If would like to receive eNotes, please send an e-mail to Cathy_Festa@unc.edu.