The intent of Connecting Children is to enable adults to cooperatively construct a deep understanding of how to be with young children and demonstrably prove they can indeed employ that understanding to enhance children's lives.

Connecting to Children does not tell people what to do or how to think. It is cooperative, empowering, individually sensitive, and constructivist. As one goes through the experiences one can see how grounded it is in daily reality. It is concrete research-in-action.

Connecting to Children implements best practices in teacher education. It meets all 8 of the Guiding Principles of Teacher Education articulated by the Consoritum for Policy Research in Education (Rutgers,University of Wisconsin, Harvard, Stanford and the University of Michigan).

If we want to enable staff to move into emergent curriculum, project work, and be inspired by Reggio Emilia, then Connecting to Children provides the necessary foundation. Connecting to Children treats staff members as competent, intelligent people, so it fosters that same attitude towards children, too.

Connecting to Children gets results. Directors can see for themselves that their staff is visibly better with children. This is the evidence you will see.

• When staff talk to children; they are more gentle, more natural, and more pleasant.
• The children run to hug teachers on entry.
• The staff members spontaneously report that they have much more fun with the children.
• Everyone is laughing more often.
• Staff say they have changed: they now treat children as people, not little robots.
• They have fewer problems with behavior and, for many, behavior problems disappear entirely.
• The parents talk about how their children love coming.

The difference between this approach to early childhood professional development and anything else is that Connecting to Children actually changes teachers ways of being with children and it proves it. It is an investment in time, one long year, but it takes at least that long for any of us to make profound changes in our life.

People may be uncomfortable offering staff a program that does not tell people what to do or how to think. One may not see the potential of enabling people to work on something so amorphous as "being" with children. Leaders may not be confident enough to simply trust teachers to work on their unique classroom experiences, as researchers, and to validate their unique intuition and relationships with children. Rarely have any of us been treated that way ourselves, yet this is exactly the power and the transformation that Connecting to Children provides.

By completing the tasks in these Modules and receiving the support of others, teachers investigate their own actions, articulate their fundamental values, and perfect their ability to influence young children. The modules create the opportunity to make a group commitment to work on ourselves together, small step by small step towards a tangible, provable increase in effectiveness with children that is felt by other staff, the children, and their families.

The tasks enable each person to construct their own understanding, critically considering what is important to them personally while remaining fully grounded in their current experience with children.

The investigations and conversations enable each person be who they are, uniquely, as well as contribute to a shared community.

This is a cooperative endeavor, each person working for themselves and simultaneously for the enhancement of others, the setting, and the children.

Using their daily work with children, participants undertake a journey of discovery, finding out how to envelop children with support and how to enhance their active engagement.

It is a challenge for teachers to open personal relationships with unique learners in unique circumstances, to act in accord with clear values of what is good, and to develop in each individual a sense of mastery and confidence. This is the heart of becoming really good with children.

Connecting to Children challenges each person to let go of safe habits, to connect with each child, and to enter the profession of learner-sensitive early childhood education. No education experience can be more effective in enabling adults to teach young children. This is the best pathway there can be.