Episode 18: The Importance of High Quality Preschool Settings

On today's episode, we welcome our guests Corinne Catalano, Eva Kovacs and Roseanne Yezzo. Corinne, Eva, Rosanne and I discussed the perspective of the early childhood educator as it relates to inclusive education.

Episode Transcript

Arthur: This is the Inclusion Think Tank podcast brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE, where we talk about inclusive education, why it works, and how to make it happen. On today's episode, we welcome our guests Corinne Catalano, Eva Kovacs and Roseanne Yezzo.

Corinne is assistant director for consultation services at the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health at Montclair State University. Eva and Rosanne are lead infant and early childhood consultation specialists at the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health at Montclair State University.

Corinne, Eva, Rosanne and I discussed the perspective of the early childhood educator as it relates to inclusive education.

I would like to welcome everyone back to another episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education.

My name is Arthur Aston and I am your host for the podcast. And today I have three guests with me for this episode, and we are going to talk about the importance of starting inclusion at the preschool level.

Arthur: So I would like to welcome my guests to the podcast, Corinne Catalano, Eva Kovacs and Roseanne Yezzo. So thank you all for joining me today.

Corinne: Thanks for having us.

Eva: Thank you for having us.

Arthur: Yes. So I would like to start off with allowing you all to introduce yourselves.

I will start with Corinne, go to Eva, and then Rosanne. So if you could introduce yourselves and tell us something. Some things that are fun and interesting about yourselves.

Corinne: Sure hi, I'm Corinne Catalano. I am the Assistant Director for consultation services at Montclair State University's Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health.

I am the project lead for a partnership that we have with the New Jersey Department of Education and the New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education. We call that project the New Jersey Inclusive Education Technical Assistance Project, or NJIETA.

And our mission really is to expand inclusive education for children with disabilities across New Jersey in pre-K through 12th grade. So I'm thrilled to be part of this podcast and have some of my colleagues here from this project today.

Eva: Hi, everyone. I'm Eva Kovacs. I'm an inclusion facilitator with the New Jersey Inclusion Education Technical Assistance Project, and also lead infant and early childhood consultation specialist at the Center for Autism and Early Childhood Mental Health at Montclair State University.

I've been in the early childhood field for about 30 years now. I was an elementary school teacher previously in Hungary, and then I became a preschool teacher here, working in the state funded preschool classroom in New Jersey for 11 years before I moved to New York and worked as an early childhood coach, and later with the universal preschool programs there.

I was working as a master teacher before I became a coach for Montclair State University.

Roseanne: Hello everyone. My name is Rosanne Yezzo, and I fill a similar role to Eva. Lead and infant and early childhood consultation specialist.

Prior to joining Montclair and this project, I spent 36 years in public education, started as a special education teacher, and then I moved on to being a learning disabilities teacher consultant with a child study team, and I completed evaluations for children, turning three all the way up through exiting eighth grade.

But I case managed that age three through fourth grade population during my time as a L.D. And then I moved into administration and became an administrator in our preschool program. I became the director when we took part in the expansion that was offered through the state and we expanded our pre-K.

Roseanne: So, it ended up being a perfect place, as is this position where I get to merge preschool and special ed. So it really brings to areas that are near and dear to my heart into one place, so it's been an exciting ride.

Arthur: Great. Thank you all so much. I am very happy to have you all on the podcast today. I've met you all in person for the first time at the conference in June and we shared some other virtual interactions throughout the last year with some of the other conferences that we've had.

So, I would like to get started into this conversation. And the first question I have is:

Arthur: Can you explain what is preschool, and why you feel it is important to start inclusion at the preschool level?

Eva: So in the United States, typically we mean by preschool, an early childhood setting for three, four and five year olds

before they enter kindergarten. High quality preschool settings support inclusion in many ways. They use a flexible, play based curriculum which supports the development of the whole child in all developmental areas. In preschool, we are equally focused on children's social, emotional, physical, language, and cognitive development.

So when you go to a preschool classroom and see many interesting areas with quality materials that the children can touch and feel and manipulate, you will know that in this classroom, the children are encouraged to move around, to explore a wide variety of material use and learn through their senses through their many senses, which is really how all young children learn at this age.

Eva: In addition to that, we carefully select the materials, different types of materials to organize the wide range of developmental levels in the classroom. Example; we have different types of puzzles. Puzzles, those chunky puzzles with the knob.

So children who have not developed fine motor skills and leap as much yet as the older ones, they can still manipulate the puzzle pieces. And we have interlocking puzzles, floor puzzles, puzzles with less and more pieces to address the different abilities of the children in the classroom.

The teachers and the staff work with the administrator to create a bad balance schedule so the children participate in teacher directive and child initiated activities in large groups. small groups, they have opportunities for quiet and active time throughout the entire day.

This schedule allows the preschool staff to individualize their interactions with the children so they can be responsive to their needs.

For example, during choice time teachers circulate around the classroom and spend time in the different interest areas to scaffold children's learning individually or in small groups.

There are many opportunities throughout the day for one on one interactions and learning for a small group, which is also essential for inclusive classrooms. So all these qualities that I'm trying to explain are really important for inclusive classrooms, but it is also typical in high quality early childhood settings.

Eva: In many pre-schools, we are also moving towards using an authentic assessment which looks at children on a developmental continuum, meaning that even two children who are the same age can be defined as the developmental stage, which of course changes over the year.

We use a strength based approach in schools to identify and support children's needs and how to meet them. The assessment is embedded into the daily schedule so children can demonstrate in their natural environment what they understand and what they can do.

We are not really focused on fixing the children, rather identify, where they are mentally and how to take them to the next level. This approach to preschool education recognizes this children and comes to us with a wide variety of abilities, and our job is to meet them where they are, developmentally.

So in a preschool classroom, we must differentiate our interactions, the activities that are available to meet every child that they are. So we naturally do this with every child already. The earlier we start to include children with disabilities, the earlier they will be surrounded by peers who can model communication, language skills, social interactions, how to make friends, and these are very important skills for the future for every child.

Eva: Inclusion is also beneficial for their typically developing peers. Since this is the time in young children to develop empathy, how to share, take turns and other social skills as well.

We talk a lot about feelings in preschool classrooms. Have children identify their own feelings and their friends. What makes them happy or sad? Young children pick up these social cues from their environment during this age very easily and love to help each other.

When I was a preschool teacher, I had a little boy in my classroom who had ASD, and he always wanted to sit on the same chair. And in a high quality program, you don't have assigned chairs for the children because you want them to mingle with everybody. You want to sit wherever they want to sit and make friends during snack time, lunchtime during group activities so that the children are sitting wherever they want to sit.

Except for this little boy, he wanted to sit always on the same chair. And he became so upset and sometimes even aggressive that somebody would sit on that chair. So we gathered the children together, and I asked them, what can we do about it?

Eva: And they offered a solution; we can make a label for him. We're going to put his name on the chair so everybody knows this is his chair. So it is just amazing that at this age, when we start inclusion early, how children accept each other as they are with different abilities.

And I think that's why we have to start this as early as we can.

Arthur: Yeah, I. I love what you said about meeting them where they are and figuring out how to get them to the next level. Like that's what it's really about.

And yeah, it's amazing how kids really learn and kids understand so much at, like you said, such an early age, and I've shared with you all the experiences that I have had with some of my friends, their children, and at a very young ages, it's just like, Oh, okay, so those are your crutches or that's your wheelchair. All right, no problem. Can we go to the park now or can we go do this now? Okay, cool. So it's really true that children pick up on things and really understand things at such an early age.

So it is important to introduce inclusion at the preschool level and so that way when they get older, it will be something just regular for them, something normal for them to see in their everyday classrooms.

Arthur: So the next question I have is about the Abbott decision. Can you explain what the Abbott decision is and what have we learned from it? How has it informed preschool, the preschool expansion aid funding and how does preschool expansion support that inclusion?

It's a very detailed question, but I know you all can handle that.

Corinne: Sure. So, just sort of playing off what Eva said. It's so important we know and we've learned through with the data that's been collected that children being in high quality educational environments is really, really critical to their future academic and social successes later on in their life, and so but we also know that not everyone has equal access to high quality environments, and so that's really where the Abbott decision came in.

And there's a long, very complex history to the Abbott rulings. But basically, if we think about that through the Abbott rulings, New Jersey was the first state to mandate early education starting at age three for children, what we consider at risk of entering kindergarten or primary school, cognitively or socially behind their more advantaged peers. And so, prior to Abbott ruling, the state school funding was found to be unconstitutional as it applied to equity and children in poor urban districts.

So really what went on with this ruling was that stakeholders came together and really redid funding models for the state. But, part of that and it wasn't all about preschool, but the piece that we're going to focus on was about how it helped to create high quality preschool programing for children from historically underfunded communities.

So several community stakeholders needed to be involved, right. To ensure that this the what we consider the essential elements of high quality, well-planned preschool programs would be put in place and would be put in place well.

Corinne: So those elements include things like qualified teachers, smaller class sizes and standards based developmentally appropriate curriculums for preschoolers. So these elements that were put in place through the Abbott decision really became a national model for high quality early childhood education in the U.S..

And the different stakeholders that came together included things like, different educational organizations, families and parents were involved in that. Head Start programs and different community preschool programs, school districts, of course, and higher ed institutions getting involved in helping to provide, you know, education and training to expand the cadre of high quality teachers.

Of course, the New Jersey Department of Education and the Division of Early Childhood Education played a big role in facilitating this collaboration among all those stakeholders that were involved. And their objectives really were, when this all started, was for universal access.

And we talk a lot about that, that everyone needs to be able to have access to these high quality classrooms, but they need to be high quality right, and also improving the quality of preschool, setting sort of these standards for what does it mean for it to be a high quality program, but also then collecting data to be able to tell this story of why this is important and how it did create different learning opportunities that sustained children throughout the course of their education.

Corinne: So there's been many, many studies. Most of them, I think that I've seen have really been done by N.E.A.R., the National Institute of Early Ed Research out of Rutgers.

But one I'll just say, you know, different studies show the benefits of pre-K for three and four year olds and found things for those students who attended those two years of preschool programing, their standardized test scores improved, and the achievement gap between those children and their more advantaged peers really closed and in some cases narrowed by 20 to 40% through fifth grade and beyond in other studies.

So it's really that data and that evidence of the importance of this early childhood, high quality again, I'll stress early childhood education that led to us having what now I think we all celebrate is the continuation of the preschool expansion, where more and more districts in New Jersey who have families who need access to high quality early childhood education for their young children, that funding is being put in place. And I think, again, as Eva explained, if we want to have children who have developmental delays and disabilities succeed in these classrooms, we need to make sure that those are high quality classrooms.

Corinne: One of the things that those of us who worked in early childhood special education for years and years, I think were always frustrated by was except for those Abbott districts in so many other places and because of of IDEA, special education, law; children, three, four and five had access to special education if they qualified, but there really wasn't a place for them to be included with their peers without IEPs or children who were developing language typically or developing typically. So they were historically placed in what we call self-contained classrooms because that's all there was in the district.

And now we have more and more opportunities both through the preschool expansion and then some other for the non funded district, for some tuition based programs, for more and more children to have opportunities to be in high quality general education classrooms and with their peers so that inclusion can start early.

Arthur: This conversation is bringing up a lot of memories for me because I remember being in preschool at a school specifically for children with disabilities. Around ages three and four, just being there with the other students that have disabilities.

And so it’s good and always great to hear how things have evolved since then. I grew up in the eighties, in the early eighties. So to see how far things have come and how inclusion has become more of a topic of conversation and a big thing that people are looking into changing and having more inclusion is always a great thing to hear and to see how it has evolved over time.

Arthur: The last question that I have for you all is can you share how preschool assists with leveling the playing field when it comes to the differences in vocabulary and play, and also the importance of communication and the social aspects of preschool?

Roseanne: Sure. So, going off of what both Eva and Corinne said, the preschool expansion just did, that whole part of the expansion really created a system that provided a lot of support. So in a district that's receiving the funding, you get extra folks like a master teacher and a CPIS, a switch as a Community Parent Involvement Specialist. And they have particular roles in that program and they bring certain expertise.

And I think in just starting from that place of having those extra folks who are trained to really look at development helps us to know or at least have a deeper conversation about maybe who should move towards evaluation and classification and who would benefit from all the extra things that the master teacher, the CPIS, the curriculum, all these pieces that help us to really sort out.

So preschool is a great place to provide support if it's needed, but it's also a place we have to be careful that we don't over classify. So when I was a learning consultant on a child study team, the most children I ever declassified came out of preschool.

So they make these great gains and we get in there early and we can help with the things that they need to go forward. So it really is, but because of the way that it's set up, we have the preschool guidelines, we have the curriculum as Eva said, classrooms are small. We don't go over 15 students. You have a teacher and an assistant.

Roseanne: The environment is key. What does that environment look like? And you have that master teacher to really help you work on that environment and make changes so you can go into a preschool class and each environment will be similar, but not exactly the same. If you have a child that really needs some space where they need quiet and they need to be separated, we can do that. We can try to really help to do that.

So following best practices as they're laid out with this, with the funding and with the preschool guidelines following the curriculum, using the environment and having the right kinds of supplies in that class really help children to thrive.

So things like open ended art, so we have an easel, we have art open every day. We have paint and children can easily access that. And just over my time in the preschool, I could see children who were budding artists, you know, they just gravitate towards that art easel.

But at the same time, developing a love for school and the program, learning to share that. Because if you're coming to school and you know you want to be in the block area every day, that's a possibility, and we definitely want to broaden the horizons of all the children when everyone can visit the art area, but we don't force them.

Roseanne: They're little and they're so we make the learning about them and their choice and the teacher direction part is sometimes hard to see when you go into a classroom because really the classroom is all about them.

And then we have the Community Parent Involvement Specialist that will get trained in Pyramid, which is our model that supports positive behavior. We stay away from time out seats and naughty stools and things like that that we've all heard in our days as educators and really look at building interactions between teachers and children from the second they step off the school bus or come to the classroom door. Teachers are there to greet them, you know, and during COVID. We had to change a little bit of that. There weren't always the high fives, but we went to elbow bumps, just something that says, you're welcome here, you're loved here, and children naturally thrive in that environment.

So those children that are struggling, developmentally, communication, we're really going to target where they need some help with the curriculum and the data collection tools that we use. So it really serves everyone.

You have the supports, It's a welcome place for all children, and you have the expertise from some of those other folks like the master teacher. But the classroom itself and the environment has to be high quality as Corinne was saying, and when it is really almost any child will thrive in there, and the ones that are struggling, we have those folks to help us to really tailor what they need to be successful there. So I think just the whole idea of it promotes communication and social skills. And for children that are maybe struggling with some developmental things and letters and numbers, that comes later.

Roseanne: If you can build those social skills, then that communication and that love of school, then we can get children through the other tougher aspects as they move forward. But so that's our basics. And I think if that's what our classrooms look like, any child can be part of that.

It's not that you must be able to do this. To do that. You can be an artist, you can be a builder, you can be a bike rider, you can be whatever it is that you love, we'll find something in that classroom to make you want to keep trying and keep plugging along.

So I think just the way that everything was set up over the years as a result of the Abbott district and now with this push for high quality preschool programs, just really lends itself to success for any child and a great place to start with.

Inclusion on a play based curriculum is, is, is just what children need to kind of thrive in and not get a really super good start in school.

Arthur: Yeah. When you were talking, I was thinking of how you said, like, the interactions and communication. I think you can ask just about anybody, and they can tell you about a teacher that made an impact in their life because, when you have a tough subject if a teacher can really connect with you in such a way where you can understand it.

And they really tried to work with you. I think that, like I said, you can ask anybody about a specific teacher and they can tell you why that teacher made a difference, and most of the time it will be because they got to know the person themselves individually, and really developed the relationship and communicated with that person.

Roseanne: The academics are good, but you're right, the interactions, if those are there, you'll get to the other stuff. Children feel welcomed and loved and like school, I think that's a really great start and we can give them that.

And Eva or Corinne said it, they're so accepting at that young age. So we start that and we just. Everybody's here, you know?

Arthur: So thank you all for joining me today. I really appreciate you taking the time and taking the time with the process of developing these questions with me.

Thank you so much. It was great to work with you all and to learn about preschool and the current state of preschool and high quality, which is something that I'll definitely take with me from this conversation. The importance of high quality preschool is so important.

So, I appreciate you all and I will hopefully be in touch and seeing you and working with you again soon.

Corinne: Thanks.

Roseanne: Thank you, Arthur. It was great.

Eva: Thank you Arthur.

Arthur: We thank you for listening to this episode of the Inclusion Think Tank Podcast.

This podcast is brought to you by New Jersey Coalition for Inclusive Education, NJCIE. Be sure to subscribe on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And don't forget to follow us on social media @NJCIE. Until next time.