News

In general, the proposed rules:

·      Increase licensee and staff education and training standards. The pre-license education and training standards generally conform to the December 2010 Professional Development Consortium recommendations (available online at www.del.wa.gov/partnerships/development/consortium.aspx).

·      Enhance standards for playground safety, food service, cribs, emergency preparedness, nurture and guidance, and “screen-time.”

·      Reduces licensee paperwork to renew licenses.

·      Are less prescriptive regarding how the licensee meets standards.

·      Clarify confusing fire escape provisions in the current rules.

·      Require a higher level of licensee-parent communication regarding the child’s development and the licensee’s child care philosophy.

·      Provide more clarity for consistency in interpretation and application than the current family home child care rules.

 

The draft rules and information about opportunities for public comment are available online at www.del.wa.gov/laws/development/negotiated.aspx

Courtney Holland, Montessori and Special Needs Educator, has released her book and will have it on sale at the PNMA Sharing Fair April 30.

The book is promoted on this website: www.inclusionpractices.com
“Inclusion Practices for the Early Childhood Educator” is the vision of Margaret Holland and her daughter Courtney Holland, an early childhood special education teacher which has been implemented in their “Butterfly Room” classroom located within the Harbour Pointe Montessori Early Learning Center in Mukilteo, WA.  This program was created in 2007, and after success within both typically developing children and children with varying special needs, this guide was created.

MEMBERS, We need lots of Montessori School input to this survey !
Please enter "Montessori School" in the OTHER box as well as the list of identifiers for your program...this is just a little window for us to impact the survey!

Click here to complete the survey.

Our state is piloting a kindergarten readiness assessment process called the Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills, or WaKIDS. This statewide project is focused on learning more about Washington’s incoming kindergartners, including the transition from early learning to kindergarten.

WaKIDS is a collaboration between the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Department of Early Learning, Thrive by Five Washington, and the University of Washington.  The WaKIDS team works to better understand our youngest students through teacher surveys, assessments, parent interviews, and focus groups with early learning providers. We would like to include you in our project and hope that you will take time to answer a brief survey about your experience as an early learning provider. 

Because your input is vitally important, several incentives are being offered to complete the survey. The survey is open starting today for three weeks, until Wednesday, May 4. Each week, one $150 Amazon.com gift card will be awarded to a provider who completes the questionnaire! If you complete the survey the first week, you will have three chances to win, so the earlier you complete the survey, the better your chances of winning!

Click here to complete the survey.

For more information: www.del.wa.gov/wakids

Thank you in advance for your participation!

See full article...
The Montessori Mafia

The Wall Street Journal...April 5, 2011

Excerpt:"The Montessori Mafia showed up in an extensive, six-year study about the way creative business executives think."

"Ironically, the Montessori educational approach might be the surest route to joining the creative elite, which are so overrepresented by the school’s alumni that one might suspect a Montessori Mafia: Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, videogame pioneer Will Wright, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, not to mention Julia Child and rapper Sean “P.Diddy” Combs."

Time: Sat and Sun April 16th & 17th 2011

Place: Portland Waldorf School
2300 SE Harrison Street
Portland OR 97222

Two Day Class that offers new strategies and hands on activities for those working with exceptional children with behavioral and learning challenges. This workshop introduces an interactive approach for recognizing and addressing underlying causes of learning and social difficulties related to: Attentional Disorders (ADD/ADHD); Learning Difficulties; Sensory Processing Disorders; Autism; Brain Injury; Behavioral and Developmental challenges.

Please contact Judy Russell; HANDLE Practitioner/Therapist Affiliate of the HANDLE Institute

Affiliate of Rainier View Montessori Graham WA

judy@firstclassDLR.com or 360 573-5523 www.firstclassDLR.com

Flyer and registration also available at www.handle.org

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MARCH NEWS

Legislative session continues, with many bills moving forward that would affect DEL and the early learning community. We are keeping an eye on bills that would:

• Create a state Department of Education (SB5639)
• Create a portable background check for child care employees (HB1903 and SB5714)
• Create a non-expiring child care license (HB1756 and SB5625)
• Allow drop-in child care for employees in certain facilities (SB5172)
• Adopt the Core Competencies as the state framework for defining what those who care for and teach young children should know and be able to do (SB5715)
• Strengthen the penalties for offering unlicensed child care (SB5504)
• Create a statewide education council (HB1849)
• Change the membership of the Early Learning Advisory Council (HB1491 and SB5389)
• Allow DEL and the Department of Social and Health Services to share certain background check information (HB1419 and SB5426)
• Allow state entities to exempt certain information about children in early learning settings from public disclosure (HB1293 and SB5314)
• Require DEL to make recommendations on tying subsidy to quality care indicators (HB1364)
  
• Require DEL to make rules around child care in publicly owned or operated buildings (HB1776)
  
• Require teachers in state-funded full-day kindergarten classrooms to use the Washington Kindergarten Inventory of Developing Skills (WaKIDS) starting in the 2012-2013 school year (HB1510, SB5427)

PNMA sends our congratulations to Mrs. Madeleine Justus on recent recognition by Washington Federation of Independent Schools.  Colleagues in our Montessori community were honored to attend this event and hear Mrs. Justus recount her early years from her home in Europe to the beginnings of Spring Valley Montessori School.  We occupied 3 tables at dinner and showed our support for Montessori education in the Private School community!

http://wfis.org/pdfs/Winter-Dinner-Follow-Up-2011.pdf

House Bill 1756 (authorizing a non-expiring license for early learning providers).  [This notice is courtesy of our friends at WFIS!]

Substitute offered in the House on February 17, 2011, requires the DEL to establish timeframes for monitoring visits to non-expiring licensees.  The substitute bill defines an agency in good standing as one that does not have: valid complaints; history of noncompliance related to those valid complaints or pending from prior monitoring visits; or, other information that when evaluated would result in a finding of noncompliance. The substitute bill also requires the DEL to consider whether an agency is in good standing when determining the most appropriate approach and process for monitoring visits, and clarifies that the license renewal process does not apply to non-expiring licenses.