We believe that education is an important pathway out of poverty and that high-quality early childhood education, family engagement and early social-emotional learning provide the foundation for school success.

About Us

For over 30 years, the principals in Early Learning Focus have worked to bring developmentally appropriate training and materials to children’s “first teachers,” –families, caregivers, and early childhood educators– in order to give low income/under-served children the social-emotional and cognitive tools, necessary to succeed in school and beyond.

Since focusing our work in the Greater New Orleans area, successful kindergarten transition has been our primary goal. Issues we identified and addressed have been: children entering kindergarten from centers unready for success; conversely, kindergarten classrooms unready for children coming from high quality, developmentally appropriate pre-K experiences; families unaware of how to help their children prepare for success and uncomfortable with “big school; the lack of collaboration between “little school” and “big school.”

 

Highlights

  • We have worked with United Way SELA’s Success By 6 Initiative (SB6) since 2003, both early childhood educational consulting with centers and development of educational content for a child development center monthly newsletter from SB6.
  • We developed First Teacher Louisiana, a comprehensive training program for family childcare providers under a contract from the Louisiana Department of Social Services.
  • For many years, we directed the Seamless Transitions Program, promoting Diverse Delivery and collaboration between schools and child development centers. We initiated and then provided technical assistance to the first Diverse Delivery partnership between Langston Hughes Academy and Wilcox Academy of Early Learning. In 2012-13 the Seamless Transitions Diverse Delivery Project, funded by the Institute for Mental Hygiene (IMH) facilitated the formal partnership between Andrew Wilson Charter School (Wilson) and McMillian’s First Steps. We have worked closely with the Recovery School District to encourage and implement Diverse Delivery partnerships.
  • In 2013, we opened the ELF Resource and Training Center at Wilson.
  • We worked with the Broadmoor community in New Orleans to implement community-based early childhood education programs and collaborations.
  • We  developed a prototype for a Garden of Learning project in Broadmoor in collaboration with the Broadmoor Improvement Association and the New Orleans Public Library.
  • In 2016, we opened an ELF Resource and Training Center at the Homer Plessy Community School in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. This center  served teachers, families, and community childcare centers.
  • We moved the Center to Plessy’s new site on St. Philip Street in 2018.
  • We developed the LETS Read Family-Based literacy program in partnership with Plessy in 2017.
  • We began the SELF social-emotional learning program for pre-K through grade one at Plessy.
  • Both the SELF and LETS Read programs expanded to Cypress Academy and Singleton Charter.
  • ELF implemented after school programming at Plessy and the Bienville Basin housing development in 2018.
  • ELF is working with the New Orleans Women and Children’s Shelter on family literacy programming, using the LETS Read curriculum.
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