 Hi, I'm Michelle McKinnon. I'm the Early Learning Coordinator with Holy Spirit Catholic Schools, which serves Lethbridge and surrounding areas. We have approximately 4,500 students in our division and my primary role is developing a program for our pre-kindergarten children, so our three and four-year-olds. We have approximately 300 children who take part in our programs. The purpose of this video today is to take a look at the professional development opportunities that Holy Spirit provides to our staff so that they're best equipped to provide the best programming for children so that children can succeed. We call this video at risk or a promise and we really like to see all children as being not at risk but at promise because given the correct supports and environment all children can be all that they can be. I'd like to begin by talking about the team, our early learning team that we have in place at Holy Spirit Catholic Schools. We employ two full-time speech language pathologists who primarily look after the needs of the children with severe language delays. We also have a teacher who is a lead teacher who assists with programming on-sites but our most critical piece of our team is our frontline staff who work with the children on a day-to-day basis. We have our program leaders who are early childhood educators and not certificated staff and because they are early childhood educators another reason why we want to provide them with very specific professional development and very specific skills that will allow them to to provide and lead the the class in in a positive way. We also have each program has a speech language assistant who is directly supervised by our speech language pathologists. Their role is to provide language-based enrichment programming for all of the children so they have a center set up directly in the classroom that will and they they'll invite children to to attend and every child will cycle through that center at some point during the day. And while it may seem like it might be a boring thing she usually has people clamoring to come see her because she's got the coolest games and and the best the best equipment and and whatnot. We also have program unit funded educational assistants. Those those educational assistants have primarily are responsible for children who have extreme extreme support needs and it could be anything from speech language delays could be any could be a syndrome based but those children need need a lot of of direct facilitation in order for them to be successful within the program. We've moved we've moved from what used to be a historically a pullout where those children would go to a speech room and and work on whatever their goals are. We've moved that from that to an embedded program where all the goals are addressed at all times during the entire two and a half hours that the child is in the program. Research shows tells us that that most of the professional development that occurs for support staff and for teachers is typically a one-off session that that looks at a specific skill base and then you go back to your classroom and you're expected to implement that without the support of the experts that that we're delivering and we have had sessions similar to that where we have had sessions that are looked at incorporating music into into our our programs on a on a daily basis for instruction for for language development. Positive behavior intervention is really is really another one that is is an ongoing and ongoing professional development because everything's changing and each child has a different has a different need or a different way that we need to support them positively so that their behavior is is is what they what it needs to be. Early literacy strategies is is another ongoing professional development. Looking at looking at ways we can provide support for children in their in their pre-reading years. We're not expecting children and it's not a developmentally appropriate for children to be to necessarily have all their letters and have all their numbers when they're three and four. Some children do and some don't but it's definitely a developmental continuum that that each child will get to when they're ready to. Fontological awareness so so looking at at how words work and how words are are put together in in sentences on their own so we work a lot with rhyming with breaking words into into the different syllables and we do all of that through play and it's all through games and it's all through fun fun activities and that's and that's really the the purpose of our of our programs is is learning through fun and learning through play because that is the way the best way for children to learn. Speech language training is provided by our speech language pathologists on an annual basis where and so they they will give the highlights on what is speech what is language and that's a nice refresher for all of our staff at the beginning of the school year. Handwriting Without Tears is another program that that we use. It's looking at developing fine motor skills in young children and it again very developmentally appropriate. They're looking at at manipulating Play-Doh and using magnets and and whatnot to to sometimes form letters or and and a lot again the handwriting Without Tears has a lot of music incorporated into it as well and so so that's that's another program that that is that we use on a on a consistent basis in our in our programs. The Cornerstone program for our division is a program called Hannan's Learning Language and Loving It. This is a quite an extensive program which incorporates eight class sessions. The class sessions last two and a half to three hours and in within the sessions the the participants learn specific strategies on how to how to facilitate language development in young children and and it's a cumulative program so as they as they learn one skill next time they come back they'll add another skill to it but the really critical point with with the learning language and loving it is that the two weeks in between class time myself or two of our other trained trained trainers will go out to the program and will videotape the the participant employing the strategy that they learned that that week. They have to have a written plan so an idea of where they're going with that particular strategy and then we have some coaching time and the coaching time because it is adult learning the coaching time is really designed for us to to elicit responses from them on you know what were they really happy about what were they proud about what didn't go so well and then for next time what will they what will they change so that that strategy will be more effective with children. This program is is very it's it's designed to facilitate language development in all children typically developing children children with language delays children who are learning English for as they're as as as their second language as well as as children who may be who may have a possibility of developing a language to lay later later on and the really the really nice thing about learning language and loving it is that it's a very natural it's a very natural way to facilitate language and it happens on an ongoing basis during the entire time that the children are in program so in keeping with the with the learning language and loving it we've been we've been providing training for our staff for for the past four years and to date have trained about 140 staff feedback from staff has been has been quite quite I very very very positive it really empowers the staff to give them specific strategies that they can take back to the classroom and use immediately and also the video which is initially the most dreaded part ends up being at the end of the program what they reflect back on being the most useful part because then they can see themselves in action and because sometimes you do things or you you you may think you're doing things but when you actually look at yourself in a video you realize oh yeah yeah maybe i'm asking too many questions maybe i'm being a little too directive so so that empowerment of staff and also for the staff who have trained in the past when the new participants come in they it really it really rejuvenates learning language and loving it it looks at it looks at staff having a common language it looks at at the the new trainees looking towards the those that have been trained in the past and saying oh you know this strategy i'm it's not really quite working for me so it it just it's it's something that just keeps rolling along each year that we that we train new staff some of the main components of learning language and loving it is that it's very much child oriented strategies it's looking at following the child's lead and looking at it being developmentally appropriate we're not looking for children to do or to be more than what a three and four year old should and can be the interaction promoting strategies they begin with the interaction being between the adult and the child but very quickly we look at peer to peer interaction so the the program gives strategies not just for promoting language but it promotes social interaction and it also it also promotes promotes literacy development through through book reading and and whatnot and the language modeling strategies is another is another key component with learning language and loving it modeling the proper language for children and having their peers model it back to them is really a powerful powerful way for children to very naturally develop the language skills that they need to succeed so professional development is and will continue to be a very important component of of early childhood programming within Holy Spirit Catholic schools the success that we've seen within for our children with embedding program in into into the day to day just just feeds feeds that that need for for ongoing professional development in the next part of this series we'll be looking at the structure and program development of of the pre kindergarten programs within Holy Spirit Catholic schools