Sarah E. Dennis, Ph.D.

Teacher & Family Educator, Coach, Tutor & Author

Services:

I can provide a unique range of educational consulting services for your school, early childhood center, or project, always tailoring the work to the needs of your organization/it's members, including:

1) Group professional development training (as short as one hour or as long as multiple full-days) on a range of topics, tailored uniquely to your audiences' skills and needs, including:
      - supporting literacy development (e.g., oral language, alphabet knowledge,
        print concepts, phonological awareness, early writing),
      - anti-bias instruction/reflection on anti-racist pedagogy and our own racial identity development
- social-emotional development,
      - curriculum development, and
      - how to use classroom assessment results to improve instruction (including use of the
        CLASS, ELLCO, ECERS, and others)

2) Classroom observation/assessment with follow-up coaching (using the ECERS-R, ELLCO, CLASS PreK or K-3rd, SELA, or SSEGA). Observations can range from 1-3 hours, and individual coaching sessions can be as short as 1 hour.

3) Development of training resources or curriculum adaptations. I have created dozens of useful training resources to help early-childhood teachers and coaches learn and practice new techniques related to early literacy, anti-bias, and social-emotional support for young children. I have also developed an early childhood curriculum (Discovering Paths to Reading, Dennis & Smith) that was successfully implemented in NYU's 2005 ERF project with significant outcomes for children's literacy development. I am available to help develop training resources customized to your project or intervention. I am also able to adapt components of commercial early childhood curricula into more user-friendly formats. (Click here to see a sample of a Read Aloud Guide we created.)

4) Consultation for early childhood grant proposals. I served as an Expert Peer Reviewer for various U.S. Department of Education grant competitions (Early Reading First, 2004; Professional Development Grants, 2005; Improving Literacy Through School Libraries Competition, 2009). I also served as a consultant for the Chicago Public Schools' 2009 Early Reading First grant, an Even Start Family Literacy Grant (2009) for Hull House, Chicago, and an Early Learning Mentor Coaching Grant (7/10-5/12) funded by the Office of Head Start with Heartland Head Start in Bloomington, IL.

5) Coaching for coaches. The success of many quality improvement efforts largely lies with the effectiveness of the coaching. Many coaches have little experience as early literacy coaches of adults and could benefit from coaching themselves. I am available for a train-the-trainer model (via phone/e-mail) or am available to travel to your state to provide customized professional development for your coaches.

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