This blog highlights the ten-year successful partnership between Collaborative Classroom’s SEEDS of Learning™ Professional Learning Framework (SEEDS) and Kidango, a large network of public childcare nonprofits serving thousands of children and their families across the San Francisco Bay Area.
Kidango serves the same populations many early-childhood providers work with across our nation. The challenges Kidango faces are familiar ones: educators with varying levels of training, turnover that disrupts consistency, and the difficulty of ensuring consistent high-quality literacy and social-emotional interactions across all sites.
Background
Since 2016, Kidango has provided their early-childhood educators with training and coaching in the SEEDS of Learning Professional Learning Framework, with the goal of equipping them to help children learn the essential skills proven to be the most successful at promoting reading proficiency.
In 2017, the highly regarded research organization NORC at the University of Chicago began a rigorous three-year randomized controlled study of the impact that SEEDS of Learning for Kidango’s early-childhood educators has on the children in their care.
The study found that “teachers with one year of SEEDS training helped their students achieve significantly higher end-of-year student emergent literacy outcomes than they did before SEEDS training the year prior. … [E]ffect sizes represent impacts of a magnitude similar to between two and eight months of learning.”
Teachers with one year of SEEDS training helped their students achieve significantly higher end-of-year student emergent literacy outcomes than they did before SEEDS training the year prior.
Kidango and SEEDS of Learning
Kidango began implementing SEEDS in 2016. Over the years, the relationship has grown from classroom-level pilots into a comprehensive approach across the organization.
The core tenets of SEEDS are:
- Sensitive interactions that respond to each child’s needs
- Encouraging children and educators to grow with confidence
- Educating through intentional, research-based practices
- Development through doing—learning by actively engaging in meaningful experiences
- Fostering a self-image that is respected and capable, so every child feels competent and valued
SEEDS of Learning
Professional Development Framework
“We believe that through loving, caring, nurturing relationships we’re able to empower children’s potential,” says Scott Moore, Kidango CEO. “Relationships are really the key for learning. When children have a relationship where they feel cared for and safe, that’s the foundation from which they can then feel comfortable exploring and learning and being curious and asking questions.”
Why This Model Succeeds: Everyone Is a Learner
Professional learning is built into the culture of Kidango.
Individuals in every role participate. Classroom teachers, instructional aides, center directors, coaches, and regional supervisors receive SEEDS training and professional learning opportunities. By building knowledge and capacity across the board, organizations like Kidango can ensure that high-quality, relationship-based practices are understood, valued, and consistently implemented at every level.
Training and coaching in SEEDS helps children explore and learn language and literacy skills. These skills include letter names, letter sounds, vocabulary, alliteration, and rhyming.
A professional-learning department schedules ongoing training for every staff member, including new and returning educators. Kidango’s investment in training:
- Builds confidence and expertise in every staff member
- Reduces turnover by offering a living wage and honoring the professional growth of all team members
- Ensures that consistent, high-quality practices, rooted in SEEDS principles, are embedded throughout the organization
What SEEDS Looks Like in Action
Walk into a Kidango classroom today and you’ll see SEEDS routines alive with joy and purpose. The days begin with staff warmly welcoming the children, each of whom receives one-on-one attention at a whiteboard for “sign-in,” focusing on literacy and writing practice.
You will hear educators and children singing transition songs that allow for smooth and pleasant changes from one place or routine to another, while embedding critical early language and literacy skills.
You’ll hear intentional Strive for 5 conversations that expand vocabulary and deepen connection, while reinforcing children’s self-image as capable communicators.
You’ll see educators conducting repeated read-alouds using theme-related books. Educators are reading these books multiple times over several days or weeks. This repetition deepens comprehension, strengthens oral language, and allows children to connect ideas across experiences.
Quality Relationships and Proven Strategies
Kidango’s story is not just about one organization—it’s a vision for the future of early-childhood education. Educators, especially those serving our earliest learners, can continue to thrive in the profession when their importance is recognized by leadership. By focusing on quality relationships and using proven early literacy and language routines and strategies, Kidango prepares every child in an early-care environment for kindergarten and a lifetime of learning.
With more than 50 centers, Kidango demonstrates how implementing a consistent structure across an entire organization ensures that every child and family experience the same high-quality care, instruction, and support, and every staff member receives equal support and understands their role in achieving this high level of care and instruction.
“The whole world tells us we’re babysitters.
Scott Moore, Kidango CEO
‘Oh, you’re with little kids,
Isn’t that sweet?’
And it is sweet, right?
And it is fun.
But what they don’t tell you is just how much what you do, matters.”
References:
David L. Kirp, “A 4-Year-Old Child Is Not a Problem. And Expulsion Is Not a Solution,” The New York Times, April 25, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/25/opinion/preschool-children-mental-health.html
Related Reading:
Aligning Literacy Efforts from Pre-K to Kindergarten: Engaging Early Educators in the Conversation
How Walsh Elementary Uses SEEDS to Build Confidence in Little Learners