The Early Link Podcast

Dana Hepper, director of policy and advocacy at Children's Institute, and James Barta, strategic director at Children First for Oregon, provide a timely policy update on the current legislative session. Key takeaways: -The Senate vote on HB 3427, which has passed the House and allocates $2 billion to education, continues to be delayed. -Approximately $400 million in this package is dedicated to ea...

Bob Harding and Teri Seaton are two people who might not seem like they have much in common. Bob works as a bank executive and, with his wife Shannon, is raising three young kids on a 5-acre hobby farm in Stafford, Oregon just east of Tualatin. They have 30 chickens, 3 goats, a cat, and a dog. Teri Seaton lives in North Portland with her husband, Greg Stevens. Not a single chicken, goat, dog or ca...

Dana Hepper, director of policy and advocacy at Children's Institute, and James Barta, strategic director at Children First for Oregon, provide a timely policy update on the current legislative session. They discuss draft legislation that includes a $400 million investment in early childhood, the recent work of the Early Childhood Coalition, the power of voter voice, and more.  Take your voice to...

John Tapogna, president of the Portland-based economic consulting firm, ECONorthwest, recently completed a cost analysis of early childhood programs in Oregon. His work reviewed enrollment numbers, program eligibility, and cost per child spending for a suite of early childhood programs for children birth to age 5. These include publicly funded preschool, child care subsidy programs, home visiting,...

We visited John Wetten Elementary in Gladstone, Oregon recently to learn about how the district and the school are working to address ACEs, or Adverse Childhood Experiences. Superintendent Bob Stewart and Principal Wendy Wilson have worked to establish a “Culture of Care” in the school that relies on building relationships with students and establishing an environment of predictability and safety....

Dr. Pedro Noguera is an acclaimed sociologist whose research and scholarship focuses on how schools are influenced by social and economic conditions, as well as by demographic trends in local, regional, and global contexts. He is the distinguished professor of education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and faculty director for the Center for the Transformation of Schools...

Dr. Walter Gilliam joins us in Portland for a discussion on preschool suspension, expulsion and implicit bias. He is professor of child psychiatry and psychology at the Yale University Child Study Center, and the director of The Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy. He coauthored the book A Vision for Universal Preschool Education, and his groundbreaking study from 2005 call...

As we prepare for the 2019 legislative session, we spoke with Oregon Representative John Lively, a democrat representing Springfield, District 12. He has lived in Springfield for more than 50 years but was born in LaGrande and grew up in Wallowa. He has served on the Springfield City Council and as the city’s mayor and is headed into his seventh session for the Oregon legislature. Last year he beg...

In this segment, we speak with Kali Ladd and Ron Herndon. Kali is executive director and co-founder of KairosPDX, a nonprofit organization that houses a public charter school in North Portland. As an organization, Kairos is dedicated to closing opportunity and achievement gaps for historically marginalized children. Ron is the long-standing director of Portland’s Albina Head Start with a backgroun...

In this podcast, we spoke with Chris Otis, executive director at Start Making a Reader Today, also known as SMART, and Michelle Gilmore, SMART’s senior program manager. SMART is a nonprofit organization focused on helping kids learn to read and getting more books into the hands of young readers. We learned more about the organization, and their work as part of Earl Boyles Elementary's Summer Bookw...

In this podcast, we speak with Glen Cooper, founder of Circle of Security, a program that helps parents, caregivers, and early childhood educators develop tools to form secure attachments with children and understand how to meet the needs of children who have experienced trauma. Having learned that Circle of Security was being used as part of a pilot program for mothers at Coffee Creek Correctiona...

For our 23rd segment, we interviewed Dr. Marina Merrill from Children’s Institute (CI) and Dr. Beth Green from Portland State University (PSU). Dr. Merrill is the senior research and policy advisor for CI and leads the organization’s research on prenatal through third-grade issues, evaluation, data collection, and analysis. Dr. Green is a research professor and the director of early childhood and...

In this segment, I visited Ha Mi Da and her family at her apartment in Southeast Portland. Ha Mi Da came to the United States from a Burmese refugee camp several years ago and I wanted to learn more about her story, her involvement with home visiting services provided by IRCO, the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, and her hopes and dreams for the future. Many thanks to Mihaela Vladescu...

Don Grotting is the superintendent of the Beaverton School District. For more than 20 years, he has led school districts in rural and urban communities across Oregon. Grotting has received several awards and accolades for his work and leadership, including 2014 Oregon Superintendent of the Year from the American Association of School Administrators. He also sits on numerous boards and advisory com...

In our 20th podcast, we sat down with Ruby Takanishi, co-editor of the NASEM report Promising Futures: Promoting the Educational Success of Children and Youth Learning English; Maria Adams, language development specialist for the David Douglas School District; and Perla Rodriguez, principal of Echo Shaw Elementary School to discuss the needs of English learners and dual language learners in our sc...

Miriam Calderon is the early learning system director of the Early Learning Division in the Oregon Department of Education. Before returning to Oregon in 2017 to lead the division, she helped build a birth-to-three system and universal preschool for the District of Columbia. She was also a senior fellow with the BUILD Initiative leading work pertaining to dual language learners and universal presc...

We invite you to spend an hour listening to our interview with Ron Herndon, a long-time community leader and activist in Portland and nationally. He has been the director of the Portland-based Albina Head Start since 1975, and his background includes more than four decades of advocacy efforts on behalf of low-income families and young children, and Portland’s black community. Having served as chai...

The Ready, Set, Go! Play and Learn program at Earl Boyles Elementary School gives children from birth to age 3 and their caregivers opportunities to learn in a child-centered and culturally responsive environment. The program, in its second year at Earl Boyles, builds parenting and social and emotional skills, and strengthens relationships between families and schools. Judy Strand, the CEO of Metr...

A Parent's Experience with Albina Head Start by Children's Institute

Kelly Soter is the principal at Jackson Elementary School in Medford, Oregon. She was named 2017 Oregon Elementary Principal of the year by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators and the Oregon Elementary School Principals Association. In this Q&A, Kelly talks about her passion for working with children, how Jackson Elementary has shifted its approach to serving the community by buildin...

Ralph Smith is managing director of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (GLR), an initiative to mobilize communities to third-grade reading proficiency for children from low-income families. The GLR network now includes more than 300 Campaign communities in 42 states. Smith has served on the boards of the Council of Foundations, the Foundation Center, Venture Philanthropy Partners, and the Wells...

Learn about Vroom, a free tool designed to stimulate parent-child interactions with brain building activities. Created by the Bezos Family Foundation in partnership with the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, the app is for parents and educators and now offers a new texting service. This segment features Ari Wubbold, the Vroom coordinator for the Oregon Department of Education...

With school back in session, many young children are just getting to know their kindergarten classrooms. To help with the transition, school districts in Multnomah County have offered an Early Kindergarten Transition program to students who have not had preschool or have a primary language other than English. Known as the EKT program, a new five-year study found that students who participated in t...

This segment features Abdikadir Bashir Mohamud, executive director at the Center for African Immigrants and Refugees of Oregon and the program manager for the center's Preschool Promise Program. In this interview, we discuss the purpose of CAIRO as a social change organization, the Somali community in Oregon, collective efforts to change education outcomes, and much more.

In this episode, we talk to lead teacher Katy Allaback and assistant teacher Carlos Sanchez about Waverly Elementary School in Albany, where an innovative preschool was built from the ground up. This is part two in our podcast about Waverly's preschool. Listen to the first installment here.