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Brenda Torrez, ESIT Program Manager

Janet Krieger, Pediatric Therapy Services Manager

Cindy Carroll, Clinical Director

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Trissa Schiffner, Catholic Charities Serving Central WA

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Trissa Schiffner, Catholic Charities Serving Central WA

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Keeping the fire for learning burning in all our eyes.

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If you were to write a book about your life, what would the title be and why?

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If you were to write a book about your life, what would the title be and why?

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Why Early Learning is Important:

Research has shown that children who are able to participate in early learning programs perform better throughout their years of schooling. Early learning programs focus on six areas of kindergarten readiness:

Social-Emotional - Children do better in school when they can regulate their emotions, establish positive relationships with others, and constructively participate in group settings.

Physical - The early years are important for the development of fundamental gross-motor and fine-motor skills needed to be active learners.

Language - Children need to understand increasingly complex language and use language to express their thoughts, ideas, needs, and feelings.

Cognitive - Children are more successful in school when they have positive approaches to learning, and are able to attend, engage, and persist to solve problems.

Literacy - A child's progress in reading and writing is one of the best predictors of whether the child will function competently in school and in life.

Math - Research shows that math is the number one predictor of future success in reading and math.*

*Duncan, Greg. University of California, 2007. Early Childhood Longitudinal studies. "The strongest predictors of later achievement are school-entry math, reading, and attention skills. Early math skills have the greatest predictive power."

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Research has shown that children who are able to participate in early learning programs perform better throughout their years of schooling. Early learning programs focus on six areas of kindergarten readiness: Social-Emotional - Children do better in school when they can regulate their emotions, establish positive relationships with others, and constructively participate in group settings.

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The Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) was created by the Legislature in 2007.

ELAC representatives from around the state meet regularly to provide input and recommendations to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) so our strategies and actions are well informed and broadly supported by parents, child care providers, health and safety experts and interested members of the public.

Governor Jay Inslee holds final authority for policy decisions.

The council has adopted a Racial Equity Framework through which it conducts its business as an advisory board to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families.

Members

The Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) members are a diverse group of people whose role is to provide DCYF with input and recommendations to inform DCYF's work.

ELAC includes parents, child care providers, health and safety experts, legislators, representatives of Tribal Nations, independent schools, K-12 and higher education, and others who are interested in creating a statewide early learning system that helps all children realize their full potential.

Some ELAC members are appointed by the Governor. Others are appointed by various entities as required in the legislation that created ELAC.

Meetings

The Early Learning Advisory Council has six regular meetings each year, held on the first Tuesday of odd months. At each meeting, ELAC members get updates on DCYF's work and provide input and recommendations to DCYF.

Members of the public are welcome to attend ELAC meetings. Public comment periods are offered throughout each meeting. The locations and times vary for each meeting.

2022
December 6, 2022 August 2, 2022 October 4, 2022 June 7, 2022 April 12, 2022 February 1, 2022
At the time of the meeting, please join the Zoom meeting via the link below.

9:00am-3:00pm

Meeting number (access code): 824 9183 1069
Meeting password: 904723

Join by phone: 1 253 215 8782 US Toll
Passcode: 904723

2021
December 7, 2021 October 5, 2021 - Joint Early Learning Advisory Council, Provider Supports Subcommittee, and Parent Advisory Group Meeting August 3, 2021 June 1, 2021 - Joint Provider Supports Subcommittee Meeting March 30, 2021 - Joint PAG Meeting February 2, 2021

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Department of Children, Youth & Families

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The Early Learning Advisory Council (ELAC) was created by the Legislature in 2007. Read the statutory language ELAC representatives from around the state meet regularly to provide input and recommendations to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) so our strategies and actions are well informed and broadly supported by parents, child care providers, health and safety experts and interested members of the public.

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Blending cutting-edge research with engaging storytelling, The Breakthrough Years offers readers a paradigm-shifting comprehensive understanding of adolescen…

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West Valley Early Learning Workshop, Thurs, April 18, 2024 - English registration form

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West Valley Early Learning Workshop, Thurs, April 18, 2024 - English registration form

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If you could only eat one type of cuisine for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

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If you could only eat one type of cuisine for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?

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Log into Facebook to start sharing and connecting with your friends, family, and people you know.

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Please follow this link to sign in for today's meeting!

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Please follow this link to sign in for today's meeting!

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And, we have insights for this current disruption.

Families and Work Institute's research takes on emerging issues before they crest and includes some of the most comprehensive research on the U.S. workforce available. The Institute's work has changed the language of debates, moving from discussion to action by creating effective and data-driven solutions.

In today's pandemic, we have created a report on flexibility and a blog that shares stories from people who are thinking intentionally about the kind of memories they want to create for themselves and their children

Watch this video about how Families and Work Institute gave voice and research to a movement.

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We've been studying the changing workplace for several decades.

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West Valley Early Learning Workshop, Thurs, April 18, 2024 - Spanish registration form

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West Valley Early Learning Workshop, Thurs, April 18, 2024 - Spanish registration form

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@forthekidswa

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Ellen Galinsky Op-Ed in LA Times, Feb. 16, 2024

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Ellen Galinsky Op-Ed in LA Times, Feb. 16, 2024

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(Mark the Cobrasnake / For The Times)

Recent surveys underscoring the prevalence of mental health challenges among young people leave me very concerned - not just about the findings but also about counterproductive perceptions of younger generations.

A Common Sense Media poll found that 53% of the country's 12- to 17-year-olds see mental health challenges as a major problem in their schools. And a Gallup-Walton Family Foundation study reported a significant decline in the proportion of Gen Z youths who consider their mental health excellent since 2013. These findings echo a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey indicating 42% of high school students had experienced such persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year that they couldn't participate in regular activities, up from 28% in 2011.

I've already heard adults labeling today's young people the Hopeless Generation, the Anxious Generation, the Depressed Generation, the COVID Generation and the Troubled Generation. The latest surveys threaten to reinforce such stereotypes.

Don't get me wrong: Given my years of work on youth mental health, I understand that it's imperative to address this challenge. But while we're doing that, we can't forget that many young people aren't struggling.

While only 20% of those surveyed by Gallup-Walton reported that their mental health was "excellent," for example, 44% said it was "good," along with 26% reporting "only fair" and 10% "poor." We need to address these mental health challenges without labeling an entire generation as troubled.

I have spent the last nine years listening to what adolescents think and feel in focus groups, two nationally representative studies of 9- through 19-year-olds, in-depth interviews with young people from these studies and a school behavioral study. One of the questions I asked is what they want the adults of America to know about people their age.

Thirty-eight percent answered "don't stereotype us" or "don't label us," an overwhelming number for an open-ended question. They emphasized that not all young people share the same challenges.

In their words: "Not all of us fall under the umbrella of being problematic drug addicts"; "All kids aren't troublemakers or irresponsible"; and "We aren't social-media-obsessed, we aren't extremely self-involved, our phones don't define us, and the internet is not going to be the end of us."

These responses show that we adults have to try harder to hold two ideas in our minds as we parent, teach and raise the next generation. We need to address the real challenges that some young people face without subjecting all of them to unhelpful generalizations.

Yes, adults have long been too ready to attach negative labels to teenagers. This has been true since the dawn of the study of adolescent development in the early 20th century. It was regarded as a time of "storm and stress" then as it is today.

In one of my studies, we asked the parents of 9- through 19-year-olds to describe the typical adolescent brain in one word. Fifty-nine percent used negative words, while 27% used neutral words and only 14% used positive words. But when I asked parents to select from a list of positive and negative words to describe children their child's age as well as to describe their own child, they were much more likely to be negative about other people's children than their own.

We also found that parents who used negative words to describe the teen brain were more likely to have children who reported more negative feelings, including anger, sadness, loneliness and worry.

What comes first, young people's negative feelings or parents' negative views? We couldn't fully answer that question, but we could control for factors that might affect how adults see teenagers, such as demographics, the level of conflict between parents and children, and the negative words parents use to describe their children. Our finding of a correlation between views and feelings held up.

The relationship also persisted when we surveyed the same parents and adolescents again nine months later, during the pandemic. To put it another way, the parents who held more positive views of teenagers in general had kids who were doing better during a very rough period in our nation's history.

Parents in my studies told me again and again that kids live up or down to the views we have of them. Seeing this generation as a troubled or anxious generation could therefore lead adults to act in ways that exacerbate the mental health challenges that some but not all adolescents face.

So what can we do? We as a society certainly need a mental health system that provides access to affordable, high-quality, consistent care more reliably that it does now. We need the education provided by our schools to be more engaging, relevant and meaningful. And we need to mitigate the risks of social media to young people.

Beyond these monumental undertakings, however, all of us can help in smaller, everyday ways. We can work to improve young people's relationships with the people in their lives, especially the older people - a point that the surgeon general's 2021 report on youth mental health emphasizes. Our own study found that when adolescents reported that that they were treated with respect, made to feel as if they belong, and helped to grow and learn, they fared well during the pandemic. They got better grades, had a more hopeful view of their futures and were less stressed.

It's similarly important that we refrain from the age-old pastime of deriding and dismissing teenagers. Let's remember that while adolescence can be a time of great vulnerability, it can also be one of huge possibility.
Ellen Galinsky is the president of the Families and Work Institute and author of the forthcoming "The Breakthrough Years: A New Scientific Framework for Raising Thriving Teens."

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Opinion: Troubled youth? Contrary to stereotypes, much of Gen Z is doing just fine

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Perceptions of younger generations as broadly suffering from mental health problems are exaggerated and potentially harmful.

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Calm the Static Activity: "Bear Breaths"

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Calm the Static Activity: "Bear Breaths"

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Bear Breaths | Breathing Exercises for Kids Mindfulness (Children Anxiety Relief Meditation)

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borrowed from ESD 105

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Webinar opportunity: Celebrating Fatherhood-Empowering Dads for Positive Impact

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Webinar opportunity: Celebrating Fatherhood-Empowering Dads for Positive Impact

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Celebrating Fatherhood: Empowering Dads for Positive Impact Webinar - 1663771

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YVCF Fiscal Sponsorship: Victor, Marilyn, Dieter

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YVCF Fiscal Sponsorship: Victor, Marilyn, Dieter

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Preamble: Cecilia, Lowell, Andrea, Stacey D. 

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Preamble: Cecilia, Lowell, Andrea, Stacey D. 

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Commitments: Michele, Carina, Trissa, Rebecca

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Commitments: Michele, Carina, Trissa, Rebecca

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Update: Early Learning Facilities Inquiries

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Update: Early Learning Facilities Inquiries

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Updates: zoning for early learning facilities (Ellensburg)

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Updates: zoning for early learning facilities (Ellensburg)