“Your great strength is knowing who you are.”
-Oscar de la Renta, (22 July 1932 – 20 October 2014), Dominican fashion designer
Turning Pages: My Life Story by Sonia Sotomayor, illustrated by Lulu Delacre
As the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor has inspired young people around the world to reach for their dreams. But what inspired her? For young Sonia, the answer was books! They were her mirrors, her maps, her friends, and her teachers. They helped her to connect with her family in New York and in Puerto Rico, to deal with her diabetes diagnosis, to cope with her father’s death, to uncover the secrets of the world, and to dream of a future for herself in which anything was possible.
For middle grade readers eager to learn more, pick up a copy of The Beloved World of Sonia Sotomayor.
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“Don’t teach all our children exactly the same thing, If you teach them everything all the same, they won’t need one another, and the world will split apart.”
-Bruce Miller, Skokomish Elder
Photo of Two Brown Trees, by Johannes Plenio, May 2018.
Each week, DCYF ESIT Tribal Program Consultant, Brian Frisina, provides a key topic to help us get to know our Tribal Nation Partners better.
This week’s term is:
Teaching of the Tree People
Teachings of the Tree People is a tribute to the life and work of Skokomish elder Gerald Bruce Miller (subiyay), a nationally prominent cultural leader and teacher who brought his talents home to lead a cultural renaissance in the Pacific Northwest.
His story offers a powerful model of cultural and environmental stewardship. IslandWood is honored to have worked with Bruce as a cultural advisor and teacher.
“The trees were our first teachers.”
Learn more about Bruce Miller and his work (watch time 28:34):
Sources
- Image: Two Brown Trees - Free Stock Photos, by Johannes Plenio, May 2018, pexels.com, © 2024 Pexels.
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Bruce Miller: a tribute to Skokomish cultural caretaker, By Florangela Davila, The Seattle Times, originally published November 2, 2006.
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Teaching of the Tree People: The Work of Bruce Miller |TULALIP TV, posted 2013, Copyright Tulalip Tribes - 2019.
Please join the ESIT State Leadership Team in recognizing and celebrating Dr. DeEtte Snyder as the recipient of the 2024 Outstanding Alumni Award by Portland State University College of Education. The Outstanding Alumni Award is given to a College of Education alumni who has shown extraordinary service, community engagement, scholarly contribution, and/or leadership in their field. Dr. Snyder was nominated by Dr. Hollie Hix-Small as a recognition of her excellence in the field of early childhood and remarkable support for families with elevated service needs.
Dr. DeEtte Snyder is an early childhood teacher at heart through her work as a Teacher of Children with Visual Impairments (TVI) and an Orientation and Mobility (O&M) specialist. She earned her bachelor’s degree (Psychology, 1992), master’s degree (Special Education with focus on Early Childhood and Visual Impairment, 2003), and O&M degree (2022) from Portland State University (PSU). She received her PhD in Special Education from the University of Northern Colorado (UNC) in May 2018 and completed her dissertation with an analysis of the national database called Babies Count. She received three distinguished awards as a part of her doctoral work: The UNC Dean's Citation of Excellence for both Outstanding Student and Outstanding Dissertation, as well as the 2019 Council of Exceptional Children (CEC)/Division of Visual Impairment and Deaf Blind (DVIDB) Outstanding Dissertation Award.
For over 30 years, DeEtte’s practice has focused on children aged birth to 5 with visual impairments. Her early work experience was at the Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix, AZ where she was a preschool classroom teacher, early interventionist (EI) service coordinator, and later the Director of Infant and Family Services. From AZ, she moved to Washington state to work for the Washington State School for Blind where she built a program for Early Support for Infants and Toddlers (ESIT), who are blind/low vision and their families, where one did not exist prior. In her current position as the ESIT Workforce Development Manager here at the Department for Children, Youth and Families, DeEtte is responsible for coordinating the statewide Comprehensive System of Professional Development for all early intervention service providers. Dr. Snyder is also being recognized and celebrated for these ten years of Washington State service with a 10-year lapel pin and embossed 10-Year State Service Certificate signed by Secretary Ross Hunter at an upcoming in-person ESIT State Leadership Team convening on October 1.
Additionally, she has served as an adjunct faculty member for PSU, UNC, and the University of Arizona teaching pre-service courses and supervising teacher candidates. She loves to teach, train, mentor, and guide all teachers in the field of early childhood and blind/low vision because her passion is children and families!
Dr. Snyder is receiving the 2024 Outstanding Alumni Award at the State of the School event onsite at Portland State University on Monday September 23. Congratulations and accolades abound for DeEtte from all of us, across the early support landscape in Washington State!
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The DCYF ESIT Workforce Development team recently held two focus group sessions for educators and paraeducators who provide Special Instruction (SI) on Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSPs). During these sessions, attendees were able to share their experiences through discussion and polls. We would like to extend an invitation for all educators who were unable to attend, to add your voice via an Insight Survey. The survey has the same questions as the live focus group. The gathering of this important information about our ESIT educator workforce will inform the creation of their ESIT Credentials. So please stay tuned for more discussions. If you provide special instruction on IFSPs, please take a few minutes and share your insights.
The survey will remain open through Friday, September 27:
Please feel free to pass this survey along to anyone you know who fits the criteria.
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The Early Support for Infants and Toddlers (ESIT) program is recruiting for the Parent Institute for Engagement (PIE) program. PIE is a 12-month leadership program for parents and caregivers of children who have received services through ESIT. We will help you build and strengthen your skills, and support you to become strong leaders, advocates, public speakers and active members in your state.
If you are interested in this opportunity, please submit an application by Fri., Sept. 20. We will notify selected individuals the week of Sept. 23.
Check out, download and share the flyer:
For more information on how to apply, contact Vanessa Allen, ESIT Family Engagement Coordinator at Vanessa.allen@dcyf.wa.gov.
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You are invited to ESIT's upcoming October State Interagency Coordinating Council (SICC) Meeting, which will be held via zoom!
Wed., October 16
9 a.m. – 3 p.m.
Draft agenda & Meeting link TBA.
For Review
The draft July meeting minutes and updated meeting materials packet have been posted to ESIT's SICC Meetings page for review. If edits are needed to the draft July meeting minutes or materials, please email Will Moncrease Jr.
SICC Direct List
If you would like your email added to the SICC direct email list to receive the agenda and meeting materials in advance of upcoming SICC meetings, email Will Moncrease Jr., with the subject: Add me to SICC DL.
Questions?
Please contact DCYF ESIT Partnership & Collaboration Manager, Will Moncrease, Jr., at will.moncrease@dcyf.wa.gov.
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The Family Outcomes Surveys will be distributed to families beginning Wed., August 28.
We have contracted with WSU for another year and their team will be sending the surveys and facilitating data collection and analysis. The team at WSU will follow the process outlined below:
WSU Data Collection Process
Data collection
- First questionnaire with incentive | August 28
- Email reminder 1 | Sept. 3
- Postcard reminder | Sept. 9
- Email reminder 2 | Sept. 12
- Replacement questionnaire | Sept. 24
- Email reminder 3 | Sept. 27
- Telephone contacts | Oct. 7 – Nov. 8
Data collection will close on November 8 and we will present preliminary information during the January SICC Annual Performance Report Meeting. If you have questions about the ESIT Family Survey, please contact ESIT Data Systems and Analysis Manager, Kim Hopkins, at kim.hopkins@dcyf.wa.gov.
DCYF ESIT and the Public Consulting Group (PCG) are continuing their collaborative work on the ACORN (Access to Child Online Records Network) migration project. The project is happening in multiple phases, beginning with the release of the case management module. This first release focuses on the replication of current functionality in Silverlight and data migration from Silverlight to ACORN. The goal is the customization and adoption of the PCG product “EI Hub”, a comprehensive data system that features several modules, to include service logging, billing and claiming, and workforce management. This system is an off-the-shelf solution for serving Early Intervention Programs under IDEA Part C consistent with federal regulations and has been successfully implemented in several other states, to meet the data entry and reporting needs of Washington State’s Early Intervention Providers.
Read Full Update
Learn more about Customizations, Data Migration, Data Exchanges, Training Plans and Timeline, Mandatory Training Completion and Preparation for Go-Live:
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At the Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF), we believe parents are their children’s first and most important teachers. The DCYF Parent Advisory Group (PAG) is a sounding board for decisions, ideas and questions that shape the future of DCYF. Parental involvement in decision-making is the key to having policies and programs that support families’ strengths and needs. The PAG is made up of parents and family caregivers of children, from prenatal through 17 years old. The PAG will meet by phone and in person.
PAG members will represent the unique experiences and perspectives of their families, including but not limited to:
- Rural, remote, urban and military communities
- Access a variety of early learning services for their children or not currently connected to services
- Have diverse family structures (for example, headed by both or single parents, grandparents, kinship care, foster parents, or are blended families)
- Experience with immigration and being new to a community
- Impacted by incarceration
- Cultural, linguistic and ethnic diversity
- Have children with varying developmental and special needs
Upcoming Meetings
September 18 | 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. | JOIN HERE | Agenda
Meeting number (access code): 830 6221 6554
Meeting password: PAG2024
Join by phone: 1 253 215 8782 US Toll
Passcode: 2223505
November 13 | 7 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. | JOIN HERE
Meeting number (access code): 830 6221 6554
Meeting password: PAG2024
Join by phone: 1 253 215 8782 US Toll
Passcode: 2223505
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Speech learning starts in the womb and a critical amount of learning already happens before infants turn age 1. My lab conducts research that helps us understand whether and how speech learning during the first year of life can be predictive of later language acquisition and if there are strategies that we can use to help improve speech learning during this period. In a most recent study (Zhao, Boorom, Kuhl & Gordon, 2021), we have demonstrated that how infant brains process speech at 11 months of age is highly predictive of their individual grammar skills at 6 years of age, measured with SPELT-3. More importantly, we were able to identify children who exhibited atypical language development at 6 years of age based on their infant brain data. We are currently conducting a large-scale study to further understand early signs of atypical language development in infant brains, with the hope to improve early diagnosis and early intervention. On the other hand, infant speech learning before the age of 1 is highly malleable by environmental factors, such as the quantity and quality of speech input. In a series of studies (Zhao & Kuhl, 2016, Zhao, Llanos, Chandrasekaran, & Kuhl, 2022), we have shown that even a lab-based music intervention affects infant speech learning. The goal of the course is to give an overview of the state-of-the-art neuroscience research in infant speech learning, and to discuss potential ways to incorporate research findings into SLP clinical practice.
What Can Infants’ Brain Activities Tell Us About Speech Learning?
Wed., September 25 | 7 - 8:30 p.m.
Cost
- WSLHA Members - $35
- WSLHA Non-Members - $50
- ASHA CEU Members - $5
- ASHA CEU Non-Members - $7
For additional information and to register, visit the WSLHA website at: https://wslha.org/.
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Emergency Broadband Benefit Funds Available
The WA Office of Broadband has funds available to assist families with internet costs. More details on this benefit and how to apply are located here.
Discounted Internet Service Available to Low-Income Households
The federal Affordable Connectivity Program offers eligible households a high-speed internet plan for no more than $30 per month. More details on this program and how to apply are located here.
Digital Navigation Toolkit Available
Digital Health Navigators are individuals who address the whole digital inclusion process - connectivity, devices, and digital skills - to support community members and provide access to healthcare. The National Consortium of Telehealth Resource Centers (NCTRC) has released a new toolkit that provides helpful resource links relating to digital navigation.
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