Defending the Early Years' three Working Groups grew out of the 2020 Summer Institute and based on feedback from you, our followers and fellow advocates. We have been getting these groups organized and ready to go since we first announced them back in September.

The goal of these Working Groups is to help drive the direction of DEY's work and advocacy efforts over the next few years and will include individuals who are excited to push these issues forward locally and at the federal level. So we are excited and thrilled to finally get the chance to introduce this group of distinguished early childhood advocates as the co-chairs for DEY's Working Groups.

Ready to roll-up your sleeves and help shift Early Childhood Education to one that is based on child development, inclusive, and grounded in research? Sign up here.

Each month, DEY puts out a blog on a specific topics related to early childhood and early childhood education. Most months, our blog is authored by Denisha Jones, Ph.D., J.D., Defending the Early Year's Co-Director, but sometimes we have guest authors.

We kick-off the new year with an insightful and inspiring blog by Denisha: "Betting on Early Childhood Education to Save the World."

And be sure to let us know what you think and share your comments within the blog itself.

On January 6, the world witnessed the shocking assault on the US Capitol. Despite the best efforts of adults to shield young children from this event, they may have learned about it anyway, whether from other children, siblings, television, or social media.

DEY offers guidelines for implementing an age-appropriate, meaningful, and caring approach to help young children deal with this and other disturbing news events.

COVID Clearinghouse!

For the past several weeks, teachers from across the country and even from other countries have been adding resources to DEY's Teachers' COVID Clearinghouse. We now have some resources in Spanish.

Our COVID resource allows teachers the opportunity to share ideas for activities, music, storytelling and read-alouds, puppets, classroom management, and other ideas.