Wherever possible, without violating confidentiality and without identifying individuals we will share our stories of working with one another to create CREATE. One year into the process we can tell you that our collaboration has been greatly improved by scheduling regular meetings, assigning specific roles and responsibilities, and monitoring our communication for intended and unintended messages with one another and with our school and community partners. We can also tell you that as we university-based educators learn to work more productively with one another we are becoming more and more aware of how the structure of our work and the structure of our school and community partners’ work greatly impact the nature of our collaborative work. In future blogs we will talk about things such as the ways issues of space are being resolved and the ways in which issues of time continue to perplex us. We will reflect on the curriculum and the professional development activities that you can see in other areas of this website. We will share our assessment and research processes.

Every two weeks one of the CREATE team members will post a blog that describes the challenges we are encountering, solutions we are testing, or dilemmas that have no obvious resolution. Our initial blogs will be university-focused, but our district and community partners will soon join the blogosphere to share their experiences, joys and concerns.

We would like to invite you into our process—to dialogue with us and help shape our work and our interpretations of that work. Please write back to us. Ask us questions. Offer us your insights. Share your own work. Become our co-CREATEors.

One of the guiding principles of CREATE is that story is essential to children’s understandings of themselves and others. We see story as a way of thinking about and making sense of our lives and world. Every day we tell stories about our lives and listen to other’s stories in order to create meaning and to learn from our experiences. Stories are such a common everyday occurrence that we often do not realize the significant role they play as a thinking process. Story is, in fact, a primary act of mind as we dream, remember, hope, doubt, love, and hate through story. In order to really live, we make up stories about ourselves and others.

We are working to bring this broad understanding of story into our early childhood teacher education program through our coursework as well as into engagements with families and classrooms. The first semester our university students take a children’s literature course on books for young children and so that course has become a natural place to start our focus on story. The course begins, not with books, but with the concept of story as a way of thinking. We spend several weeks inviting preservice teachers to tell and reflect on stories from their lives as well as to read professional articles about the significance of story for young children.

After several weeks, we move into books but always connecting to the broad focus on story as the larger frame for the course. For example, the preservice teachers do a storytelling mini-inquiry, not just read-aloud mini-inquiries as in the past, and they do a family story interaction as part of a home visit where they use books to encourage oral family stories.

The questions we are pursuing are documenting the ways in which we need to change the children’s literature course and the types of course engagements that help preservice teachers develop a conceptual understanding of story. They come into the course expecting the focus to be on books and reading aloud to children, but we want them to think more conceptually about the role of story in children’s thinking and lives. We want to know what types of understandings they develop over time about stories and children. We also want to explore how this broader understanding of story gets woven across their other teacher education courses. This assumes, of course, that other instructors and classroom teachers also have a broad conceptual understanding of story and that’s not always the case.

So our challenges are to identity the engagements and readings that develop a conceptual understanding of story, to find ways to document changes in preservice teachers’ understandings about story, and to identify strategies for integrating story throughout all of the other courses and field work experiences.

One of the guiding principles of CREATE is that educators explore and learn about families’ funds of knowledge. Families are invited to share their family stories (funds of knowledge) and to participate in various literacy events in which ECE pre-service teachers, the CREATE team and families become engage in sharing optimal practices to support early literacy to children. Our goal is to change the nature of the relationships between faculty, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and families making them more collaborative and reciprocal.

Our work, along with previous research, shows that when family members are invited and become involved in their children's learning, two important things happen: children are more motivated and teachers and parents form positive relationships that foster their children's development. The model to support early literacy and biliteracy in our project are Literacy Tertulias (social gatherings with literary or artistic foci that are common throughout Ibero-America) that engage parents and family members in helping and supporting their young children’s literacy and biliteracy development.

Particularly, we have organized literacy evenings together with our partners in the local early childhood centers. The questions we are pursuing are documenting the ways in which both pre-service teachers and families can engage in mutual learning and knowledge exchange about literacy in order to identify optimal practices that can be applied in contexts working with linguistically and culturally diverse young children.

Although much effort has been expended in developing intervention programs to help improve the early literacy and school readiness skills of young children, our approach is to transform early literacy education by re-designing all experiences and projects that are part of our courses in the early childhood education undergraduate program. We want to know what kind of experiences ECE pre-service teachers consider the most valuable, and how this new knowledge learned from families is transformed and translated into teaching practices. This is not always easy to achieve, as families ‘background funds of knowledge are interpreted according to pre-service teachers’ own background experiences. We are beginning our work on early literacy to bridge between ECE program faculty, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and families. We invite you to share about your own experiences and ideas as an educator, service provider, or family member on how such relationships and collaborations could be improved in order to support young children’s early literacy and biliteracy development.

The session we presented at the Literacy Research Association annual meeting in Jacksonville, Florida, “Communities as Resources in Early Childhood Teacher Education Enacting a New Vision of Early Childhood Literacy Education” in November marks what I think of as our first public presentation and discussion of our work. Prior to this session, we have primarily discussed CREATE with participants—district administrators and teachers, early childhood center staffs, students in the Early Childhood Education Program, our advisory board, and the Helios Foundation, our grantor.

In our alternative format session at LRA, we asked the audience to join with us in our research process. We began by briefly explaining the CREATE principles and the data being collected on each. Then, we discussed issues that our initial work with the data have revealed. After a glimpse into each principle, the audience had three minutes to free write on two questions: What are the issues that need to be considered on research about an early childhood education program? What are the issues that need to be considered about the design of an early childhood teacher education program? These questions were adapted to fit each of the principles. We concluded the session by creating a circle with the audience members to discuss their suggestions for, questions about, and insights on our work. (PowerPoint for our session can be located on our site at: http://createarizona.org/slideshows/LRAKeynote/).

Before the session, I was concerned about whether we could clearly convey the very complex endeavor that is CREATE. CREATE has five co-principal investigators and a large number of participants and activities. We had a very limited time-ten minutes-to give each principle, our process for data collection and analysis, and issues from the data analysis. Could we effectively present CREATE and engage the audience in such a short time period? The answer was “yes”!

From the very first question from the audience, it was evident that they had grasped the complexity of the project. We were asked, “How are you managing the massive amount of data you are collecting?” We explained that we have been developing a system for data management that provides access for those in CREATE while maintaining the degree of confidentiality that we need. We continue to grapple with how we can collect data from the different activities of CREATE and complete our analysis in a way that allows the data to inform our research questions, data analysis, and further data collection while at the same time informing the program development.

Many questions and comments from the audience focused on our work with story and funds of knowledge. The audience saw the power that could develop from the collection of stories from the young children and families as well as teachers and teacher candidates. The families’, children’s, teacher candidates’ and teachers’ stories collected through CREATE offer opportunities to challenge the dominant stories being told about families, English language learners, and early childhood educators.

Several audience members also discussed the importance of having story encompass written and oral traditions as CREATE does. Research being done in the children’s literature course has started to help us think about the ideas and beliefs that teacher candidates have about “story” and the ways those ideas and beliefs change over the course of the program. Audience members recognized that the expansion of the idea of story and the move from literacy to literacies challenges some current thinking and will be an area for us to study.

In 1996, Bruner wrote, "It is only in the narrative mode that one can construct an identity and find a place in one's culture. Schools must cultivate it, nurture it, cease taking it for granted." From our LRA interactive session at LRA, I once again realized that our work is addressing both the children with whom the teacher candidates are working as well as the children with whom they will be working in the future. The transformation of an early childhood teacher preparation program is also a story of school change.

As part of the Design-based approach to our project, our research team is continuously engaged in theorizing and refining the activities that we implement each semester. As such, we are mindful that we have in our hands a unique opportunity to prepare early childhood teachers who are knowledgeable and experienced in community-based education. This preparation takes place through the various project activities that are guided by our four principles. Thus, thoughtful allocation of funds, or a conceptual budgeting, in close alignment with the overarching goals of the proposal, has taken a lot of consideration and discussion among members of our team.

To accomplish our goals so far, we have re-conceptualized the curriculum of our program in order to provide our students with continuity and coherence of content and field experiences across semesters and within each semester. In this way, potentially, as our students progress through the four semesters in the program, their knowledge will deepen and their field experiences will accrue to match their new understandings. Onto this newly re-conceptualized curriculum, we have mapped specific activities for each of the courses to provide opportunities for the introduction, development, application and extension of our guiding principles.

In tandem with course activities, we have been working closely with families and communities as well as with our teacher collaborators to create activities and opportunities for conversations to occur in order to forge common grounds among all constituents. Ultimately, all of these project activities are sampled and researched in terms of the project impact on the preparation of our pre-service teachers’ practices as well as the impact on the actual communities and families (including the children) we work with.

Through a process of deliberations about funding allocations to match the activities for concept development, the PI’s learned that keeping sight prospectively and reflectively of the ‘big picture’ is essential. We also learned that this process is challenging as we aim to keep funds proportional to each cycle of activities and research. In these ways, however laborious, layered, and detailed; this kind of conceptual budgeting serves to ensure that the activities of the project remain inextricably connected with our goals.

With the help of the Helios Foundation, the University of Arizona College of Education embarked on the ambitious redesign of its early childhood teacher education program. Based on the Funds of Knowledge, Communities as Resources in Early Childhood Teacher Education (CREATE) envisions a fundamentally new paradigm to prepare early childhood teachers that will impact children at the Pre-K to 3^rd grade level in unique and positive ways. The Helios Foundation saw that CREATE, its successes and struggles, would be a model for other programs around the country and endorsed developing a website to chronicle CREATE’s efforts.

Our project team prioritized what our website should include:

•The ability to play video cases for instructors to use at UA and elsewhere

•A platform to post research findings

•A calendar for the project stakeholders

•An organizational structure around the Funds of Knowledge four guiding principles

•Professional resources and links to other exemplary programs

•News about the project

•Curriculum strands and applicable resources

•Project accomplishments

•A section accessible only to the team where documents and information could be shared

•A blog by different participants about the project

•A book search and listing of books appropriate for Pre-K to 3^rd grade

We started with a demo site on Google to test out initial ideas, layouts, and navigation. We shared all of this with our Board of Advisors who made wonderful suggestions. Chief among them was the idea to have different portals to the site for different communities (preservice ECE students; community partners and families; and teachers, educators, researchers). We then needed to decide:

•Who would develop our site?

•What platform should we use

•Where should we host the site?

We realized the developer would be invaluable in helping us answer the final two questions so we made that decision first. We also wanted him/her to be local so that we could communicate ideas more easily. Once that decision was made, we knew that we would need to work in some capacity with UA technology services since they hosted the wowlit.org site where we could access our large database of children’s literature instead of creating a redundant one. The wowlit.org site uses WordPress, but it also has some limitations that would make doing everything we wanted more difficult. The university, at the time, was hosting and supporting Drupal. However, we were unsure of its support over time. Finally, we decided on Plone as a platform since it allows a public and a private site, uses a more familiar OS style folder system, and allows documents to be tagged so that they appear in different areas of the site (making the portal requirement easier to manage). We chose a commercial hosting site for CREATE since it more fully supported the Plone platform and had less restrictive on how we could use it.

Adding content has been more of a challenge than anticipated. CREATE began in a whirlwind of simultaneous redesign and execution. Courses had already been planned, needed to be taught, and were amenable to only minor modifications. Our project team for the first year was teaching, innovating, and planning a five-year redesign all at the same time. Consequently, a lot was being done, but little of it was ready for publication. Participants were otherwise engaged and had little time for content production.

As we embark on a new year, we want to be able to keep a regular blog schedule, add more critical content, share what we have learned, and eventually be a “go to” place for ideas in preservice teacher education. Every now and then check us out and let us know how we are doing.

1) Promoting early childhood educators' understanding of the cultural knowledge and skills – the funds of knowledge – within diverse cultural communities;

2) Using literature as a base for children’s understanding of themselves and others;

3) Involving families in literacy education for children and for teachers; and

4) Providing prospective and practicing teachers and teacher educators with opportunities to work and reflect together in community and school settings.

We began the process of curriculum re-visioning by thinking through the sequence of courses, the goals for each semester, and the relationship of courses to field experiences, especially the experience traditionally called “student teaching.” Then, each semester, the faculty work to introduce, develop, apply, extend and deepen these principles across courses in a semester and across semesters.

In addition, the faculty have been developing assignments that engage pre-service teachers in the CREATE principles and allow them to demonstrate their understanding of them. For example with the first principle, the pre-service teachers interview and interact with families in order to explore families’ funds of knowledge. Ideally, they are partnered with the same family for two years. As a result, the pre-service teachers can better plan lessons for the children they teach. In addition, in an introductory course as the pre-service teachers, study language acquisition theories, they plan language experiences for children that are intentional and meaningful. Exhibiting the knowledge they have acquired through coursework and can demonstrate in their work with children.

Another alignment of curriculum and the CREATE principles involved thinking of “fieldwork” as more than classroom experiences. For two years through a variety of curriculum activities in different courses, pre-service teachers explore the school community and visit children’s homes as well as work in birth through age 8 educational settings. As a result, each semester includes field experiences with parents and in classrooms, schools and the community as well as courses. Changing the field experiences has allowed more connections to be made between course connect and the reality of working with children and families, thus putting theory into practice.

Our next steps is a careful curriculum mapping in order to make sure we are addressing the CREATE principles and NAEYC and state standards. In addition, we are developing performance based benchmark assignments to assess the pre-service teachers throughout the program.

On Thursday, March 22^nd, Emily’s Place teachers hosted their second annual Sports Spectacular with the support of family volunteers and CREATE’s cohort 4 and 5 teacher candidates.

Kids from Emily’s Place and their families were invited to join in on the fun in classrooms and on the playground. Teachers from Emily’s Place along with student teachers from cohort 4 created activities that focused being active and eating healthy while literacy and math were woven in.  They featured dancing, yoga, tumbling, tennis, basketball, a smoothie station, and even bicycle obstacle course.

Kids were initially a little shy to jump in on the fun so the smoothie station quickly became the starting point for everyone.  The smoothie classroom team was made up of Emily’s Place teachers, teacher candidates from cohort 4 and 5 as well as a graduate student from CREATE.

Everyone conducted a taste test that featured a berry-based smoothie versus a tropical fruit one.  Families were then invited to create a recipe card so that they could recreate their treat at home.  The idea behind the smoothie station was not only to create a tasty experience but also to remind us that including kids in cooking is often a great way to expose them to math and literacy in our every day life.

Families also explored yoga, tennis, dancing, and basketball that were hosted in classrooms and in communal spaces around the school.  With the help of cohort 4 and 5 students, teachers from Emily’s Place were able to provide fun for all.

The bicycle safety obstacle course was the next hot spot in the evening. Cohort 4 and 5 students along with teachers from Emily’s Place helped kids put on helmets before venturing out on the course.  Along the route kids had to navigate hills, bridges, and of course a little traffic.  At several different points along the route kids also came across various street signs such as yield and stop.  Using signs helped kids understand their use for them and how they keep us safe while riding along with neighborhood traffic and although most kids on the course aren’t yet “readers” it encourages them to become aware and understand what might be on their own neighborhood streets.

To go along with the bicycle safety course BICAS, a local non-profit whose mission is to promote education, art, and a healthy environment through bikes was also on hand to provide free repair work on kid and adult bikes.  In addition to the repair station, the BICAS team also brought plenty of reading materials related to classes they provide, bike maps of Tucson, and info on how enroll in a bike safety class from the city that also provides a helmet, light, and bike lock upon completion.

As families said goodbye they were invited to browse the free books room.  Chapter, board, and pictures books were provided by Reading Seed who’s entire mission is to help kids in Pima County learn to read.  One of the ways they do this is by providing free books to teachers and community organizations that work directly with kids.

Reading Seed who is a part of Literacy Connects coalition in Tucson has been a great new resource for Emily’s Place.  Through their lending library and free book program Emily’s Place teachers and the CREATE team have able to new ways support the idea of stories and continue our support and commitment in the Flowing Wells district.   And what better way to do so than with free books!

Coming together to learn from one another has been something Emily’s Place and CREATE has been working towards for two years.  Emily’s Place has been a great partnering school to work with and for our students to call home for the last three semesters.  As we continue to grow and learn from each other our partnership has become a success that is reflected in the families that come to events such as the Sports Spectacular who welcome and know our students and us as part of their community.

If you would like to more information about Flowing Wells Unified School District, Reading Seed, or BICAS you can check them out here:

www.flowingwellsschools.org

www.BICAS.org

http://literacyconnects.org/readingseed/