A special feature of this year’s Summer Training Institute is its early childhood track.   While all the keynotes cover boys and girls across the spectrum and age groups, Michael Gurian, Dr. Glynetta Fletcher, and Marion Hill will present in ways that also set up the early childhood tracks in the afternoons.  Then Marion and directors, teachers, and coaches from the GI Pilots in Head Start programs and schools in Phoenix, AZ will drill down into research, analysis, strategies, and stories from those early childhood classrooms.

Special thanks to Marion Hill, Program Coordinator for Head Start, and Natalie Alvarez, Executive Director of the Greater Phoenix Urban League, who lead and shepherd the programs in the early childhood schools and classrooms in the Cartwright School district and at the Arizona State University Preparatory Academy.   To learn more about our Summer Institute and to register, click here:  https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2021/.   Here is more about the early childhood track.

For the track, we’ve picked topics that are universally of interest.  Here are the workshops you can find in the Summer Institute and here are their presenters.

Parent, Family, and Community Engagement in Early Childhood Environments, with Phyllis Aro-Trejo, Booker T. Washington, Caseworker Supervisor, and Marion Hill, Head Start Program Coordinator. A case worker supervisor at Booker T. Washington School, Phyllis has worked to bring parents on board with a child’s early education for more than two decades.   Marion Hill has worked in this same sphere during that time as well.  Both Phyllis and Marion are Gurian Certified Trainers.  In this workshop, Phyllis and Marion share practical strategies and anecdotes  – a how-to of what works and what does not work with busy and distracted parents, including parents whose native language is not English.   Many of the strategies that Phyllis and Marion will  share and model have been successfully used in the early childhood Pilots in the Greater Phoenix Urban League Head Start programs.

Best Practices for Literacy Learning in Preschool Classrooms with Ariana Lopez and Jennifer Kirksey, Gurian Certified Trainers.  As Education Director at the Greater Phoenix Urban League, Ariana leads educational innovations in early childhood literacy learning.  Jennifer joins her as a coach in the Head Start programs.  They have worked with diverse populations, including ESL learners, for more than three decades collectively.  In the Greater Phoenix Urban League – Gurian Institute Pilots in Phoenix, Arizona, Ariana and Jennifer have made sure that literacy is a major classroom focus.  In this workshop, Ariana and Jennifer will share and model programs and strategies that have worked to augment and improve early literacy at the Cartwright Child Care Center, a Gurian Model School.  They will also discuss the differences in how boys and girls come to literacy, and they will share strategies from coed and single gender classes.

The Power of Diversity:  Teaching and Mentoring Latino and Dual Language Learners, with Marlene Ordaz and Shandeen Gomez, Gurian Certified Trainers and Cartwright School Educators.  For over 40 years collectively, Marlene and Shandeen have worked in early childhood populations and built bridges into elementary and secondary education, focusing specifically on learning, literacy, and cultural climate strategies that work with Latino populations and dual language learners.  They work now at Cartwright Early Childhood School in Phoenix, Arizona, a Gurian Model School.  Their workshop explores barriers of language and culture on both the student and teacher and ways to address the needs of our Latino and dual language populations.  Participants will learn techniques and strategies for  engaging students in a culturally and linguistically diverse learning community.

Boys and Girls Learn Differently Strategies for Our Youngest Boys and Girls, with Ariana Lopez and Martina Andrews, Gurian Certified Trainers.   This workshop grows from the Gurian Institute Pilot programs in Head Start and the Greater Phoenix Urban League classrooms in the Cartwright School District, including at Cartwright Child Care Center, a Gurian Model School.   Ariana as director and Martina as teacher will feature more than a dozen strategies they have used successfully in early childhood environments for meeting the cognitive, social, and emotional needs of boys and girls.   The strategies successfully integrate into Teaching Strategies Goals and CLASS.

To learn more and to register for the Summer Institute, click here:  https://gurianinstitute.com/events/gurian-summer-institute-2021/.  If you can bring groups, we highly recommend it.  Groups help changes systems because more than one person in a system hears and engages with the social change.  For group discounts, please write Gail at gail@gurianinstitute.com.   Let her know the number of people you would like to have join the SI. To certify trainers in your own program or if you yourself would like to be a trainer, check out the Trainer page of www.gurianinstitute.com.  We will be certifying new trainers at this year’s Summer Institute.  Thank you.