As a society, we understand how important it is to teach children how to walk, talk, count and read, and how much deliberate thought goes into that teaching.
But as important as the ABCs and 123s are, social and emotional development is just as important to foster. Children must be nurtured and taught how to modulate and express their feelings and how to interact with others.
The first five years are critical and present the greatest opportunity for learning—more than any other time in a person’s life. Just as learning how to walk and talk are pivotal milestones in children’s development, so is the first time they show awareness of their own feelings and the feelings of others. This truth has long been known by many early childhood educators and parents but has not always been followed in practice.
Learning In Prekindergarten
The key is establishing solid self-regulation abilities in prekindergarten that support learning how to appropriately interact with peers and adults. These abilities allow for a solid transition into kindergarten and can be the foundation for cultivating a positive attitude about school. That foundation leads to higher grades and achievements in later school years and later life.
Children need to be socially and emotionally healthy to reach their full potential. However, approximately 9 to 14 percent of children between birth and age five experience social-emotional challenges that negatively impact their functioning, development, and school readiness, according to Columbia University’s National Center for Children in Poverty. Approximately 9 percent of children receiving specialty mental health services in the United States are under the age of six, with boys demonstrating a higher prevalence of behavioral problems than girls do. The vulnerabilities of children are further magnified by exposure to stressors and traumatic experiences at home and in the community. The incidence and consequences of social-emotional challenges are elevated for children of color and those affected by poverty.
The Health Foundation for Western and Central New York has a vision area on improving school readiness for preschool-age children. So, at the foundation, we were deeply concerned when in 2011 we opened one of our local newspapers in Buffalo, New York, and read about the staggering number of suspensions and expulsions taking place in the early childhood classroom—we knew that the behaviors leading to these school actions were an indication of broader systemic issues. The trend was alarming—the growth rate of suspensions and discipline referrals at the prekindergarten through third-grade levels was surpassing that of junior high and high school students in the Buffalo Public Schools.
Our local Early Childhood Direction Center staff echoed these statistics, by reporting that 85 percent of its Helpline calls were for behavioral concerns of teachers and directors considering removing young children from their programs.
The PEDALS Program
In 2012, in response to this issue, the Health Foundation for Western and Central New York partnered with the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation to develop the Positive Emotional Development and Learning Skills (PEDALS) program. The PEDALS program is designed to support effective training, implementation, and sustainability of evidence-based curricula using best practices in preschool classrooms. These steps result in measurable improvement in the social and emotional well-being of children being served.
The PEDALS program works with early childhood providers to
- Build children’s social-emotional skills, increasing kindergarten readiness
- Identify those children with social-emotional needs, make accommodations for those children in the classroom, and ensure that they and their families are connected to appropriate supports
- Through two years of in-classroom coaching, increase teachers’ skills in supporting social-emotional development and addressing problem behaviors
The program includes
- Implementation of an evidence-based, social-emotional curriculum in the classroom
- Implementation of a validated screening tool for social-emotional development
- Training for curriculum and the screening tool
- In-classroom coaching for teachers and staff by early childhood experts
- Improvement and sustainability coaching for administrators
- Ongoing evaluation
In its first year, PEDALS reached forty-eight classrooms and 700 children across Erie and Niagara Counties, New York. In an independent evaluation conducted by Harder + Company, there was a remarkable 57 percent decrease in the number of children in the PEDALS program who had social-emotional needs, and a 31 percent drop in the number of children in the PEDALS program with self-regulatory problems.
In the classroom, 90 percent of PEDALS teachers reported that they found the curriculum very or fairly helpful in improving the behavior of students. One of the partnering sites reported a 50 percent decrease in mental health referrals for young children.
The two foundations together have invested approximately $1,500,000 in the development and execution of this program, which is now into its fifth year. And the two foundations have funded training by early childhood experts for more than 570 early childhood teachers, teachers’ aides, and administrators in the Western and Central regions of New York State. The program has reached more than 6,000 children in more than 190 classrooms and day-care settings in communities impacted by poverty that are mostly diverse.
Challenges
Fully addressing this deficit of social-emotional skills requires a deeper overhaul of our early educational system and deeper acceptance of the “whole child” approach. National application of standards or guidelines has not been established, partially because of varying state-by-state funding and regulatory influence on early childhood services.
Additionally, there are policy and workforce challenges that influence early childhood providers’ ability to appropriately nurture the early social-emotional building blocks that children need. The lack of adequate professional and skills development within the workforce and substandard wages are just two of those barriers that must also be addressed.
Looking Forward
The good news is that over the past several years there continues to be a shift—a refocusing on social-emotional development in children at national, state, and local levels. As a foundation, we continue to expand the program and are working in partnership with our local early childhood providers to establish additional efforts like Help Me Grow Western New York, a program, based on a national model, that fosters young children’s physical and social-emotional health through early detection of problems or potential problems, intervention, and linkage to services through collaborative efforts with partners across systems of care. We will continue to push for this work to be integrated into the early childhood environment—until children’s demonstration of appropriate emotions and empathy is as recognized as their ability to say their numbers and alphabet.
If you are interested in learning more about the PEDALS program, please visit http://www.hfwcny.org for more information.
Editor’s Note
Related reading:
“Toxic Stress In Children And The Importance Of Listening Between The Lines To What Kids Say,” by Lee-Lee Prina, Health Affairs Blog, April 29, 2014.
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