Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Kate! I’m glad to hear that your grad program offered you such wonderful opportunities. The variety is really impressive. I’m kind of partial because I graduated from JMU too but I think it’s a great program! You raise a great point about improving communication between universities and EI programs. In our work on the professional development team, we would love to see this relationship strengthened across the state. There are many reasons why placing students can be challenging but I would bet that most could be overcome with great communication.

As a recent graduate and newly practicing Infant Educator, I feel a strong connection to your second idea. My training program at James Madison University provided many enriching experiences in order to prepare me for the EI world.

Our way of “equaling the playing field” is to create a program called Inclusive Education. This program focuses on early intervention, special education preschool, and school settings to grade 3. We learned about EI and young child development first, and then expanded to school-age children. This created a consistent family-centered teaching philosophy. At the completion of the program, students qualify for two VA licenses: one for Birth-5 years Special Education, the other for Pre-K to 3rd Grade Education. All of our professors were supportive of EI – they allowed each student to choose topics for a project, including both early intervention and school settings.

Our practicum experiences, which occurred from junior year through senior year, provided a variety of settings. Personally, I worked in a Head Start Pre-K, 3rd Grade, 2’s Class at a daycare, 1st Grade. I was also able to connect with a local Early Intervention agency to volunteer one day each week. For student teaching, each of which was full-time for 8 weeks, I was in early intervention and kindergarten.
I am so grateful for the curriculum that JMU provided, and the experiences I had. All students interested in EI should be able to practice it hands-on.

I did find that a misconception existed between EI service providers and the coordinators of student teaching. My understanding is this: EI providers who want students are not reaching out to universities to ask for them. Universities are not reaching out to EI agencies because they presume other universities have students there. If a channel for communication existed between university coordinators and early interventionists, more students may have access to hands-on learning.

Excellent point that I don’t think anyone else has brought up, Lori. Do you have any suggestions for how we could better educate families about how EI is supposed to work? I always think that the first point of contact, when we describe what EI is, is a good time to start.

Sounds like a great experience, Bry. Thanks for sharing about it!

Excellent suggestions, Chandra! Relating typical child development to family systems and having a thorough understanding of how they interrelate and affect each other is the foundation of what we do. It’s so wonderful to read on here about the preparation folks like you have had. The insights are so helpful. I know we have some university faculty who follow the blog…I sure hope they find their way to this post to read everyone’s insights and suggestions!

Absolutely! We don’t want to “turn” parents into therapists so we do have to be careful about how we share our expertise, by doing things like avoiding prescribing “homework” and instead, as you said, helping them explore what they’re already doing or could do in their environment. As a parent whose child has had PT and OT, it really can be overwhelming to try to fit special therapeutic activities into the day. When the interventionist helps the family plan for HOW to do it, it makes it much easier!

It’s wonderful that your program showed such responsiveness to your interests. I agree that in many of our EI-related disciplines, including mine which is early childhood special ed, we need to offer more opportunities for students to spend time with little ones and their families. As you mentioned, finding placements can be a challenge too, even for those who are interested. I hope your program took your feedback to heart!