Early Childhood Professionals Advance Skills, Services
Contact: Kay Hyatt at (207) 581-2761
ORONO, Maine — Fifteen early childhood professionals received master’s of education degrees from the University of Maine this month as part of a federally funded program designed to increase the number and quality of personnel serving children birth to age 5 with disabilities. The graduates also completed research and projects designed to build capacity and better serve their clients at agencies and organizations around the state.
The Training Options for Early Intervention Personnel (TOP) project is supported by a U.S. Department of Education grant and directed by Assistant Research Professor Sandy Doctoroff of the UMaine Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies. The College of Education and Human Development awards the degree.
The TOP project offers graduate study in early intervention/early childhood special education for practicing professionals in early intervention, early care, education and related fields. Participants can pursue programs leading to an endorsement as a Maine Teacher of Young Children with Disabilities — Birth to School-Age Five and/or to a graduate degree. The program is designed to help students gain competencies in leadership and administration, as well as skills to provide effective direct services to young children and their families. Courses are offered at locations throughout Maine.
During a recent recognition ceremony at UMaine, TOP graduates presented an overview of projects completed to expand the capacity of the service delivery system for young children with disabilities and their families or to meet needs and interests of their workplaces and clients. They include:
Heidi Finson of Charleston is a teacher for Penquis CAP Head Start. The focus of her project was to revise the Penquis Child Development Operations Manual. She sought to make the procedures used by the agency to implement mandates of the federal Head Start program more family focused, user friendly and efficient in using staff time.Theresa Giglio of South Portland is a teacher in a program for preschoolers who are deaf. She worked with the Kids’ Project of the Pine Tree Society of Maine whose mission is to provide high-quality, affordable adaptive equipment for children with special needs. She completed research on parents’ and professionals’ perceptions about a new line of toys produced by the Pine Tree Society and also provided information from her observations of young children playing with the toys.Karen Thomes of Bangor is the inclusive preschool program teacher at Indian Island School. She developed an informational booklet about the services, procedures and parental rights within the Child Development Services system for Indian Island parents.
Michelle Taylor of Dedham is a behavioral consultant for early intervention programs and public schools that serve children with autism and related disorders. She developed an early intervention to special education transition guide for the three main stakeholders in the process: families, early interventionists and public school educators.
Karen Hopkins of Scarborough is the coordinator of Early Childhood Family and Community Services at the Baxter School for the Deaf. The goals were to further develop and refine the role of her agency in serving infants and toddlers with hearing loss and to foster stronger collaboration with the other primary agencies and professionals serving these children and their families. This project grew out of recommendations of the Maine Newborn Hearing Program mandated by the State of Maine to assure families, caregivers and their children have information and access to newborn hearing screenings.
Kate Kline of Thomaston is a developmental therapist who serves children birth to age 5 with disabilities in homes and preschool settings in Knox County. Her project helped the Toy Library Center in Rockland weather a fiscal crisis and find funds to continue a program that provides social, play and learning opportunities for children and parents. Kline has written a grant proposal and assisted with finding other opportunities to secure funds for the program’s continuation.
Karen Kohlmeyer of Holden is a physical therapist who has worked for United Cerebral Palsy of Northeastern Maine and other programs serving children with disabilities. She is starting a community fitness center for children, which will provide an inclusive and developmentally appropriate motor development program to benefit children with special needs and their typically developing peers. The launch of this enterprise in Bangor was the focus of her graduate project.
Diane Nicholson of Cape Elizabeth is director and owner of Ledgemere Country Day School, an inclusive early childhood program in Cape Elizabeth. For her graduate project she arranged and coordinated a workshop on therapeutic yoga for parents and professionals who serve young children with disabilities. She also obtained corporate sponsorship to purchase and distribute to workshop participants a book and video on yoga for children with special needs.
Debra Crump of Vassalboro is a developmental therapist with Southern Kennebec Child Development Services, working with children birth to age five with disabilities in their homes and in community preschool and child care settings. She field-tested an expanded professional role that merged some service coordination and developmental therapy responsibilities. She also developed a job and procedures description to guide her agency and other CDS sites in implementing this model, which allowed her to better meet immediate the information and referral needs of families.
Janice LeBlanc of North Waterboro is a developmental therapist with Easter Seals of Maine who provides home-based services to children birth to five with disabilities in York County. LeBlanc developed and evaluated a pilot peer mentoring group within her agency for professionals who wanted to gain competence in implementing developmental approaches to intervention with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Donna Casavant of Hampden is a developmental therapist who provides home-based services to children birth to age five in Penobscot County. Casavant carried out case study research on the use of a model transition portfolio she developed to facilitate the transition of a deaf child from early intervention and preschool services to public kindergarten.
Tera Kennedy of Morrill provides consultation and supervision of developmental therapy services for Knox County Child Development Services. She developed a customized “Welcome to our School” book for incoming kindergarten children at Searsport Elementary. The book is intended to reduce children’s anxiety about the transition by supplying specific answers about what to expect in the new school.
Three graduates from Windham worked together to co-coordinate the second Annual Maine Division for Early Childhood One-Day Conference: Parents as Partners. These conferences have filled a gap in professional development opportunities for personnel who work with young children with disabilities and for families who seek additional information to support their children’s development. The graduates are Tina Cannon, a teacher at Children’s Odyssey, an inclusive early childhood program in Portland; Susan McCormick, co-director of Children’s Odyssey; and Sarah Hill, formerly a service coordinator with Cumberland County Child Development Services.