Exceptional Children | Early Childhood Weekly Updates
Professional Learning Opportunities
Upcoming ECEC Events
The ECEC Team is excited to offer ongoing professional learning and collaborative opportunities throughout the year.
Check out our current offerings on the OEC Calendar of Events! Session details and registration information is provided for each scheduled event. Events may be added throughout the year as details are finalized.
Upcoming ECEC Sessions:
October 3, 2025: TPBA2: Diving Deeper into the Domains: Session 4
October 10, 2025: TPBA2: Facilitated Practice
October 16, 2025: Orientation Pathways: Understanding Child Find & Evaluation
October 16, 2025: Impact Pathway: Strengthening Child Find & Evaluation
November 4 & 5 2025: NC First Response
North Carolina First Response: Guidelines to Promote a Safe Early Learning Environment
A Positive Behavioral Supports Professional Learning Series for Educators Serving Young Children with Disabilities.
Participants will gain an understanding of exclusionary discipline, the behavioral escalation cycle, and role of data collection/analysis. The session includes guidance on effectively responding to dangerous behavior serving as a non-physical intervention tool, complementing, not replacing, social-emotional evidence-based practices.
Dates:
74th Conference on Exceptional Children
The Office of Exceptional Children’s 74th Conference on Exceptional Children will be held at the Koury Convention Center in Greensboro on November 19-21, 2025. Find all details on the NCDPI OEC Technical Assistance and Professional Development page.
Early Childhood Session Highlights:
Early Steps, Lasting Impact: Strengthening Child Find and Preschool Practices: Explore evidence-based practices that guide preschool special education. (Institute)
Continuum Planning: Design and implement effective itinerant services and inclusive placement options.
It's All About the Base! Amping Up Your SEL Practices: Discover foundational SEL strategies to support emotional safety and skill development for all early learners
Deeping Practices with COS: Strengthen your COS process with age anchoring, decision trees, and meaningful conversations
Making It Count, Using Child Outcome Data to Improve Practices: Turn COS data into actionable insights to improve teaching, planning, and program outcome
Meeting Children Where They Are: Adapting instruction and environments to meet each child’s developmental needs
On Time Every Time: Effective Strategies for Timely Transitions: Learn best practices for smooth transitions from Part C to Part B, featuring LEAs successes and challenges
The Power of Play-Based Assessment, An Introduction to TPBA-2: Explore TPBA-2 as a holistic, authentic assessment tool for preschoolers.
From the Office of Early Learning: Pre-K Formative Assessment and NC ELI Training
The formative assessment training is a self-paced course in NCEES. It is REQUIRED for all new North Carolina preschool and kindergarten teachers (including EC teachers who serve kindergarten students in a separate setting). Building leaders and instructional support staff who work with these teachers and students are encouraged to take the course as well.
The training covers effective practices in conducting formative assessment with young learners and tutorials on navigating theTeaching Strategies (NC ELI) online platform.
Preschool EC Coordinators often need to reach out to each other with questions and ideas. This resource (linked above) includes a regional map, a list of current Preschool EC Coordinators, the ECEC team and more! The Coordinators list can be sorted and filtered by region, locale and LEA size so you can customize based on your outreach needs.
Interested in other listservs and mailing lists from DPI and state and national partners? Check out this list of suggested listservs relevant to preschool exceptional children programs. Have a listserv to suggest? Let us know!
Need to add or remove a recipient to the ECEC listserv? Click below to request an update.
