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PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOPS AND PRESENTERS

As part of the FOCUS 2009 Conference, we offer a day of deeper learning prior to the start of the conference. This gives you the opportunity to spend extended time with presenters in specific areas of child development, weekday preschool, and current research. Registration is $90 for each participant. All workshops will take place at the Marriott Indianapolis East Hotel.

FOCUS 2009 Pre-Conference Downloadable Flyer

Workshops & Workshop Leaders / Schedule / Registration

WORKSHOPS

Tips for Taming the Tube

Christy Prulhiere, PBS Ready to Learn

Children learn from what they see on screen, no matter what program they are watching. Learning with and about television works best when children and adults view together, with grown-ups serving as facilitators, and choosing developmentally appropriate television that promotes interaction and creativity. Learn how to get the most from on screen by choosing age appropriate, educational programs and linking them to off-air activities. Leanne Hadley, ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, and president and founder of First Steps Spirituality Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, will lead a follow up session engaging participants in thinking through the theological implications of media and children.

Hardwired for Success: A look at the brain’s circuitry and the adult role in connecting and creating those circuits

Christy Prulhiere, PBS Ready to Learn

A child’s brain is the only organ that is incomplete at birth and it is up to the adults in their world to help complete that development. Discover the biology of the brain, what stress does to our brain and how our interactions affect a child’s brain development. A hands-on look at brain cells and brain development. Leanne Hadley, ordained elder in the United Methodist Church, and president and founder of First Steps Spirituality Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, will lead a follow up session engaging participants in conversation of how the church can meet children where they are developmentally.

Christy Prulhiere manages the Ready To Lead in Literacy initiative at WFYI, providing training and resources to parents and early care and education professionals throughout Central Indiana. She has a long history of providing care and education for young children working with Marine Corps Child Development Services as the Training and Curriculum Director at Camp LeJeune and Family Child Care Director at Marine Corps Air Station New River. She actively advocates for children and families through various organizations, including the Indiana Association for the Education of Young children, the United Way of Central Indiana’s Success By Six Public Awareness Committee, and the Indianapolis Public Schools Even Start Family Literacy Advisory Committee. Christy has a degree in Child Development and Family Studies from Indiana State University. Christy resides in Camby, Indiana with her husband and two children.

Development of Religious Identity in Children

David Elkind, Tufts University

Children’s sense of their religious identity grows in tandem with their intellectual, social and emotional development. Young children have only an undifferentiated, global sense of their religious identity and confuse it with other general designations such as nationality and ethnicity. School age children have a concrete sense of their religious identity and define it in terms actions, such as going to a Church or Synagogue, or celebrations such as Christmas and Hanukah. It only when they reach adolescence that young people understand religious identity as a commitment to a unique belief system. Children’s understanding of prayer follows a similar course and is paralleled by maturity in emotional and social ability. The workshop will cover these developments in detail along with some of the implications these findings have for religious education.

Children in Crisis

David Elkind, Tufts University

In many respects, the concept of children as growing beings, in need of adult guidance and protection, has been replaced by the concept of children as consumers. Growth and development, once regarded as guides to age appropriate parenting and education, are now employed to devise the most effective advertising campaign for a particular age group. For those who produce and market products to children the aim is to educate young people to be consumers. New developmental categories have even been created simply for the purposes of marketing. Advertisers even train children to get their parents to buy particular products, the so-called nag factor. Many of the products sold to children have little value and may even be harmful. This workshop will address the commercialization of childhood and suggest ways to help children and parents resist the pressures to consume.

Children and Play

David Elkind, Tufts University

In our hurried and hurrying society, play is often regarded as a waste of time, a luxury that we simply cannot afford in the contemporary world. Yet self initiated play is essential to healthy development. In the broadest sense play is the transformation of reality in the service of the self. An infant, to illustrate, transforms every object he or she grasps into an object to be sucked. In so doing the infant creates new learning experiences and discovers that something’s are hard, others soft, and others mushy. We need therefore, to rethink our conception Learning. The traditional concept of learning is “the modification of behavior as the result of experience.” But play is the modification of experience as a result of behavior. Through play children learn things they could not learn in any other way. The workshop will cover the kinds of learning that come from play at each age level from infancy through adolescence. It will also suggest ways in which we can bring, free, spontaneous and self initiated play back into children’s lives.

David Elkind is currently Professor emeritus of Child Development at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He was formerly Professor of Psychology, Psychiatry and Education at the University of Rochester. Professor Elkind obtained his doctorate at U.C.L.A. and then spent a year as David Rapaport's research assistant at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In 1964 65 he was a National Science Foundation Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at Piaget's Institut d' Epistemologie Genetique in Geneva. His research has been in the areas of perceptual, cognitive and social development where he has attempted to build upon the research and theory of Jean Piaget. Professor Elkind's bibliography now numbers over five hundred items and includes research, theoretical articles, book chapters and eighteen books. Professor Elkind is best known for his popular books, The Hurried Child, All Grown Up and No Place to Go, Miseducation, Ties That Stress and most recently, The Power of Play: Learning what comes Naturally.

Weekday Preschool Ministry: From Headaches to Hallelujahs for New Preschool Directors

Gretchen Combs and Quenetta Cox, The Developmental Learning Center of First United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas

New directors of preschools face pressures unseen by others. They must balance creating a healthy atmosphere where children learn, teachers engage, and parents feel secure. To ensure quality education in a caring Christian environment, structure, role definition, budget, hiring and firing, policies and procedures, equipment, curriculum, licensing and accreditation, and space must be addressed. This workshop will address these issues using the Director’s Manual for Weekday Ministries, by Barbara Snell McLain through hands-on experiences, skill-building exercises, and thought provoking questions.

Gretchen Combs and Quenetta Cox are in leadership at The Developmental Learning Center of First United Methodist Church in Dallas, Texas. This center is one of the oldest in Dallas, and continues to provide individual development during early years in a nurturing and enriching environment within a Christian setting. This ministry offers a place for building a firm foundation by providing low student-teacher ratios, developmentally appropriate classrooms, individual developmental assessments, partnerships with parents, and a professionally trained staff. The center holds accreditation from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) in addition to state licensing.

Gretchen is the Director of Children’s Ministries with thirteen years of experience with preschool and elementary education. She is a graduate of Winona State University, Winona, MN, and has furthered her studies at the University of Minnesota. She served as a United Methodist missionary focused on children and families living in poverty in rural communities of East Texas. Gretchen was an active participant with the Council of Bishop's Initiative on Children & Poverty in the North Texas Conference and with Perkins School of Children’s Ministry. Currently, she serves the North Texas Conference on the Shalom Site Review Team, Safe Sanctuaries Task Force and the Christian Educators Federation and North Texas Children's Ministry Network. Her family includes husband, Clay and two children Nick and Kya.

Quenetta serves as director of the Developmental Learning Center with more than fifteen years of experience working with infants, toddlers and preschoolers.

Weekday Preschool Ministry for Seasoned Preschool Directors

Lynne Paredes, United Methodist Association of Preschools - Tennessee

Seasoned directors of preschools begin to see another level of the needs of the preschool ministry.  They have already an ongoing healthy atmosphere where children learn, teachers engage, and parents feel secure.  After years in the position, what else do they need?  To ensure continued quality education in a caring Christian environment, issues around restructuring, budget, policies, curriculum, licensing and accreditation, research, training and space continue to evolve.  This workshop will address these issues through skill-building exercises, and thought provoking question and answer sessions. 

Lynne B. Paredes is a retired Early Childhood Educator and Weekday Ministries Director who currently serves as the President of the United Methodist Association of Preschools – Tennessee and the Outreach Coordinator of the United Methodist Association of Preschools – Florida. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Memphis furthering her education through Nova Southeastern University, and holding a Director’s credential from the state of Florida. Lynne has accrued nineteen years of experience as an early childhood educator and administrator including serving over nine years as the director of the weekday ministry program at New Horizon United Methodist Church in Southwest Ranches, Florida. She continues to present workshops on the national level in the area of childcare and childcare ministries. Her articles can be found in the UMAP Newsletters.

PRE-CONFERENCE SCHEDULE

You will sign in on-site for one of the 5 groups.  Space is not limited.