Illinois Early Learning Project

This podcast contains an interview with Dr. Michaelene (Micki) Ostrosky about supporting young children's friendships. Dr. Ostrosky is the head of the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

On this podcast, we are joined by Michelle Patt. Michelle Patt is an early childhood educator, consultant, and writer. Her work emphasizes learning through exploration and experimentation. She writes about the integration of art and science into preschool classroom activities to encourage children's problem solving and innovation. Michelle is preschool supervisor at Howard Area Community Center, a...

In this podcast, we interview Dr. Sarai Coba-Rodriguez from the University of Illinois at Chicago. In her research, she uses a family resilience perspective to learn about school readiness and family involvement among low-income Latino and African American families, including their beliefs and practices that promote young children’s successful transition to kindergarten. She joins us to share stor...

In this interview, we speak with Elise Proser, a speech language pathologist from the Urbana Early Childhood School in Urbana, IL. Ms. Proser received her bachelor’s degree in speech and hearing science and master’s degree in speech language pathology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has been working in the schools as a speech language pathologist for five years. She joins u...

In this podcast, we are joined by Ms. Crystal Vowels. Ms. Vowels is an experience leader in special education and principal of the Urbana Early Childhood School (UECS) in Urbana, IL. UECS recently received an award of excellence for their inclusion practices from Excelerate Illinois, the Quality Rating and Improvement Program for Early Care and Education for the state of Illinois. Ms. Vowels share...

This podcast is an interview with Dr. Kathleen Gallagher. This interview was recorded during her visit to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Campus for the Child Development Laboratory's 75th anniversary lecture in November 2017. In this interview, she discusses her own story of becoming an early childhood educator and shares her perspectives on how high-quality early childhood educati...

This podcast contains an interview with Dr. Michaelene (Micki) Ostrosky about supporting young children's friendships. Dr. Ostrosky is the head of the Department of Special Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.