EDU/HSER 1128

Established at Johns Hopkins University in 1996, NNPS invites schools, districts, states, and organizations to join together and use research-based approaches to organize and sustain excellent programs of family and community involvement that will increase student success in school.

"Parent involvement is crucial to the health and well-being of a child. As a parent, you are the most important influence in your child's success in school and in life. In this role, you have a fresh opportunity every day to get involved with your child. Parent involvement in children's education allows kids to perform better in school, and navigate more easily some of the challenges of growing up, such as bullying. PTA is committed to being the leading resource for parent involvement. We offer comprehensive resources for helping parents get involved and stay involved in the lives of their children. Look through these parent involvement categories and learn about new ways you can make a difference in your child's life. This section also serves as a clearinghouse for parent involvement ideas and resources. "

This is a collection of FREE federal resources for educational excellence in teaching and learning from Federal Agencies.

We make it easy to find research-based practices. Our mission is to translate research-based practices into practical tools to improve classroom instruction.

This page contains resources designed by the U.S. Department of Education to assist parents with supporting their children's learning at all ages.

The early childhood branch of the Council for Exceptional Children ( CEC). It is a major professional organization focusing on children with special needs.

This organization provides good materials for helping children learn about humane treatment of animals. It helps teachers state limits about treatment of animals to children.

This organization's mission is to prevent violence through publishing information on discipline, resolving conflict, managing anger, and other related topics. Printable handouts and other resources useful to teachers and parents are available.

This document contains a joint position statement of the Division for Early Childhood (DEC) and the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) on the definition of early childhood inclusion and recommendations for using this position statement to improve early childhood services.

This site contains information on California's concerted effort to attain high-quality care for infants and toddlers.

Bankstreet College of Education has an old and respected children's program.

"The Best Websites for Teaching and Learning honors websites, tools, and resources of exceptional value to inquiry-based teaching and learning as embodied in the American Association of School Librarians' Standards for the 21st-Century Learner. New for 2011, the Top 25 Websites foster the qualities of innovation, creativity, active participation, and collaboration. They are free, web-based sites that are user friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover. The Landmark Websites are honored due to their exemplary histories of authoritative, dynamic content and curricular relevance. They are free, web-based sites that are user-friendly and encourage a community of learners to explore and discover and provide a foundation to support 21st-century teaching and learning."

The Future of Children is a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the Brookings Institution. The mission of The Future of Children is to translate the best social science research about children and youth into information that is useful to policymakers, practitioners, grant-makers, advocates, the media, and students of public policy. The project publishes two journals and policy briefs each year, and provides various short summaries of our work. Topics range widely - from income policy to family issues to education and health - with children's policy as the unifying element. The senior editorial team is diverse, representing two institutions and multiple disciplines. Since The Future of Children aims to reach a wide audience with the best objective research possible, the articles contained in the journals are literature reviews that provide a balanced view of the literature and evidence, review both basic and "policy-relevant" research to highlight what we know as well as what works, and avoid using overly technical language. The project also supports numerous outreach activities and conferences and an active website, including a blog and webcasts of many of our outreach presentations. In keeping with our commitment to reach a broad audience, we offer all electronic versions of our materials and attendance at our outreach forums free of charge. Print copies of the journal are often provided at no cost at our outreach events, and are available for sale on our website.

Established in 2001, the Oregon Resiliency Project (ORP) is a research, training, and outreach effort aimed at social and emotional learning, mental health promotion, and social-emotional assessment and intervention practices in schools. ORP is directed by Dr. Ken Merrell, professor of school psychology at the University of Oregon. The ORP team includes Dr. Merrell, graduate students from the University of Oregon's College of Education, and our partners in public schools and mental health agencies. Since the inception of ORP in 2001, more than 35 graduate students have participated on the ORP team, and are now "alums" of the project. Alumni of ORP are in positions of influence nationally: in school systems, universities, state departments of education, children's hospitals, community mental health centers, and research institutes, where they are continuing their work related to the aims of the project. ORP currently has two primary efforts. We are are continuing to research and refine our innovative Strong Kids social-emotional learning curricula, which include the Strong Start, Strong Kids, and Strong Teens programs. These evidence-based programs are designed to teach essential life skills that will result in greater emotional and social resiliency and coping, and better mental health. We are also currently working on research and development efforts related to an innovative new strength-based social-emotional assessment system, the Social-Emotional Assets and Resiliency Scales (SEARS). Click on the "Current Projects" link to learn more. Use the links on the left side of this web page to learn more about ORP. We welcome your interest in the Oregon Resiliency Project!

The National Military Family Association is an organization with strong grassroots support balanced with professionalism that makes us a leader in the field. Not only do we support military families - we are military families. Spouses, parents, and family members make up our staff and board positions. We speak up on behalf of military families and empower husbands, wives, and children to understand and access their benefits. Based on what we hear from our members, we meet the needs of service members and their families with insightful recommendations, innovative programs, and grassroots efforts to better the quality of life for military families.

John Dewey wrote extensively about philosophy, psychology, education, political science, and the arts. In his very full 92 years of life (1859-1952), he not only wrote about the breadth of life, he participated in it as a teacher, social critic, political activist and involved family man. This fully produced video introduces students to his philosophy and his critical studies of education, the arts and the implications of democracy for the lives of individuals and their communities. Dewey lived in a different era of history than we do, but many of his concerns are very relevant to life today. Maintaining a democracy in the face of diverse ethnic values, educating the young to participate fully in the life of their community, and expanding individual perceptions through participation in the arts were among the issues he examined. Contemporary examples of the influence of his work include film sequences of noted educator Deborah Meier's Mission Hill School in Roxbury, Massachusetts; commentary by literature authority Louise Rosenblatt on Dewey's theories of democratic behavior and philosopher Larry Hickman's comments on the ways technology changes our experiencing of the world. (Dr. Hickman is also the director of the Center for Dewey Studies in Illinois.) Terminology and the historical context necessary for understanding Dewey's work are provided by historical materials, newly shot visuals and clever graphics. With Larry Hickman, Ph.D. This is a short clip from the film. Further information is available at www.davidsonfilms.com.

Operation Respect is a non-profit organization working to assure each child and youth a respectful, safe and compassionate climate of learning where their academic, social and emotional development can take place free of bullying, ridicule and violence. Founded by Peter Yarrow of the folk group Peter, Paul & Mary, the organization disseminates educational resources that are designed to establish a climate that reduces the emotional and physical cruelty some children inflict upon each other by behaviors such as ridicule, bullying and-in extreme cases-violence. It is a unique organization that provides a gateway to broad scale adoption of school-based character education as well as social and emotional learning (SEL) programs.

EEC at AED is an outgrowth of Educational Equity Concepts, a national not-for-profit organization with a 22-year history of promoting educational excellence for all children. Together, co-directors Merle Froschl and Barbara Sprung, the founders of Educational Equity Concepts, bring nearly 70 years of solid experience in the education world to their work at AED. The staff are respected experts in the field of equity which enables EEC to develop meaningful and effective bias-free learning programs and hands-on materials in gender, inclusion, science, math, and teasing and bullying.

Almost every family has experienced a time when their child behaves in ways that seem very different from her usual behavior. There are many types of challenging behavior that may seem confusing, inappropriate or even frightening. Some children may act out in violent ways, like biting, kicking, or hitting themselves or others with objects. Understanding why this behavior occurs and addressing it in a positive way can help prevent future occurrences. This link will take you to information on challenging behavior.

Our scales are designed to assess process quality in an early childhood or school age care group. Process quality consists of the various interactions that go on in a classroom between staff and children, staff, parents, and other adults, among the children themselves, and the interactions children have with the many materials and activities in the environment, as well as those features, such as space, schedule and materials that support these interactions. Process quality is assessed primarily through observation and has been found to be more predictive of child outcomes than structural indicators such as staff to child ratio, group size, cost of care, and even type of care, for example child care center or family child care home (Whitebook, Howes & Phillips, 1995).