POSTER SESSIONS

Three Early Childhood Teacher Educators will tell a story of their own experiences dealing with a crisis that impacted their students and ways that they successfully used their stories as teaching tools in the college classroom. Children’s literature as springboard for deep conversations, journaling as coping mechanism, and ways teachers can help children develop resiliency will be highlighted.

Three Early Childhood Teacher Educators will share their experiences in using the Language Experience approach both as an instructional strategy and as a measure to reassure children during a crisis. These experiences span 20 years of teaching in the ECE classroom and are being shared with the next generation of teachers to help them to have a systematic approach and a ready tool for use to assist children during difficult situations.

This presentation focuses on overcoming obstacles, creating equity, and finding courage in teacher action research during the pandemic in a fully online Early Childhood Education (ECE) B.A. degree program. We will examine the challenges and outcomes of teacher action research in a virtual ECE environment. We will discuss how skills and insights gained while conducting action research benefit ECE teachers now more than ever. We will also consider important discoveries of strength and resilience.

The poster will outline the components of the Self-care Decision Matrix and the seven questions/steps teachers can use to engage in professional problem solving around self-care.

Overview of the issues that impact EC teachers’ ICT decisions: 1) personal experiences with ICT and beliefs about how young children learn; 2) how and when ICT can be one of many tools to enrich hands-on learning; 3) the quality, type, and effectiveness of their teacher preparation and professional development (PD) with ICT; 4) ongoing PD support for classroom ICT; 5) hardware and programs/apps access; and 6) recognized pervasive reliance on technology in society and ICT influences on young children’s future careers.

Many EC teachers were unprepared to appropriately use ICT with young children and families, when the 2020 COVID 19 pandemic required many schools and early education centers to shift to virtual education and communications. This presentation surfaces issues by bridging the existing literature on professional development (PD) best practices with additional survey and interview data from teachers and higher education faculty; concluding with recommendations for ICT teacher education and ongoing PD.