Available courses

Welcoming Others (Staging)

Thanks for joining us for Welcoming Others, a short course to help you support families affected by crisis and conflict.

Every day, children and families around the world—and in your own community—are affected by conflict, crisis, and traumatic experiences. In big and small ways, support from providers, peers, and members of their wider community can help welcome them into new spaces and begin a process of healing.

What does crisis mean? A moment of crisis can include any time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger. Crises can include a natural disaster or weather event, sudden separation from loved ones, or displacement due to conflict or other hardship, among other circumstances.

It’s natural for a crisis to catch us off guard. But crises can happen to anyone, even to those in your community. The good news is, the caring presence of a trusted adult and empathetic, nurturing interactions with children and families affected by crisis really can make a positive difference.

You can help.

The reality is, no matter your specific role, or how much you interact with children and families each day, it’s likely that at some point you will encounter someone who’s been affected by conflict or crisis. You might know someone right now, and there are simple, manageable things you can start with to help that person feel safer, more understood, welcomed, and resilient.

You don’t need to be an expert in child development to benefit from this course. It is designed to help any caring grown-up—like you—embrace the role you can play in helping children and grown-ups reconnect and build on their inherent dignity, strength, and resilience.

We’re so grateful and inspired that you have decided to invest your time and energy in learning how to better serve children and families in some of the most challenging moments of their lives. We’re confident this short course will help you feel more comfortable in taking the first steps on this journey. We encourage you to leverage the ideas and resources in this course to complement the role you play in your community to help families feel welcomed and begin to heal and thrive.

By the end of this brief course, you will walk away with new insights, strategies, and a toolkit of resources and activities that you can share and practice with families.

NOTE: While developing this course, we included themes and resources that would be particularly helpful to children and families who’ve been uprooted from their homes or country of origin, whether due to natural disaster, conflict, or some other reason. Because of that, you’ll see and hear references to “newcomers” or families “joining your community.”

More often than not, the strategies mentioned for this group of children and families are broadly applicable to families who have experienced other types of traumas or crises as well. As always, keep an open mind, engage your curiosity, and ask yourself, “How can I apply what I’m learning here to my own relationships, workplace, or community?”

Throughout this course, you’ll hear from a few key experts. These individuals have varied and extensive experience helping young children and families cope with conflict, crisis, and traumatic experiences. We are so grateful for their contributions to this course.

Ann Thomas, LCSW, RPT/S
President/CEO of The Children's Place

Stephen Cozza, MD, COL, U.S. Army Retired
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics
Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Department of Psychiatry, USUHS

Rebecca Ford-Paz, PhD
Clinical Child Psychologist
Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health & the Center for Childhood Resilience
Co-Director of the Forensic Assessment for Immigration Relief (FAIR) Clinic
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Stephanie A. Gonzalez-Martinez
Las Cruces Children's Coordinator
Save The Children | Border Servant Corps

Rhythms of Resilience

Introduction

Welcome to Rhythms of Resilience, a course designed to help providers and other caring community members introduce resilience-building practices to young children and families, especially those who have been affected by crisis.

This course will help you gain more understanding of what resilience is, and how it can be nurtured (in both children and adults) through consistent positive behaviors, activities, and interactions that support both emotional and cognitive well-being and development.

In this course, we’ll...

  • talk about children’s social, emotional, and cognitive development at different ages and stages;
  • explore (a tiny bit!) of how the brain works to learn, relearn, and strengthen skills;
  • and we’ll break down how you as a caring helper, can introduce and scaffold the development of resilience-boosting skills in families affected by crisis.

Resilience can be a difficult concept to grasp. Sometimes used to describe a person’s character, resilience is a combination of intrinsic and learned skills, as well as external factors that help a person to bounce back from or overcome serious hardship.

At Sesame, we often think of those intrinsic and learned skills as a combination of emotional and social skills, problem solving, and an “I can do it!” attitude. This dynamic mix of skills can be strengthened through positive experiences and lots of practice. And for young children, especially those affected by crisis, consistent support from a caring adult is the most important factor to growing in resilience.

Needless to say, this course is not inclusive of all the skills or factors that help to make a person resilient but will focus on a handful of important skills that, if practiced, can make a meaningful difference, especially for children (and grown-ups) affected by crisis.

Please note: This course is part of Welcome Sesame, an initiative designed to support children and families affected by crisis, such as displacement due to violence, conflict, natural disaster, or some other reason. Because of this, you may read or hear references to “newcomers” or families “joining your community” throughout the course.

We’ll pay special attention to the challenges that newcomer children and families might face to establishing consistent rhythms of resilience—because of instability, lack of resources, or persistent stress—and we’ll offer some ideas to help.

Often, the strategies mentioned for this group of children and families are broadly applicable to families who have experienced other difficult circumstances as well. As always, keep an open mind, engage your curiosity, and ask yourself, “How can I apply what I’m learning to my own relationships, workplace, or community?”

A note of thanks:

Throughout this course, you’ll hear from a few key experts. These individuals have varied and extensive experience helping young children and families through challenging and traumatic situations. We are so grateful for their contributions to this course.

Rebecca Ford-Paz, PhD
Clinical Child Psychologist
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago
Associate Professor, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Disclaimer: Opinions, consultation, and guidance are my own. I am not speaking or acting on behalf of Lurie or Northwestern.

Chandra Ghosh-Ippen, Ph.D
Clinical Psychologist
Associate Director of the Child Trauma Research Program
University of California, San Francisco

Creator & Author at Piplo Productions

Teaching Smarter

Welcome!

Welcome to Many Right Ways: Exploring Quality in Family Child Care. We’re so excited and grateful that you have decided to invest in yourself and your program. We’re confident that this course will help you maximize the level of quality in your work with children.

This course is a special collaboration between Sesame Street in Communities (SSIC) and our friends at the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC). Our two organizations have a long history of working together to support children, families, and providers. Most recently we’ve come together to celebrate the incredibly important work of family child care providers, and to support providers on their journey toward quality improvement and accreditation.

Meet NAFCC

NAFCC is the only national association dedicated to promoting high-quality early childhood experiences in the unique environment of family child care programs. They work on behalf of, and in concert with, the one million family child care providers operating nationwide.

NAFCC has led the family child care accreditation program for over 25 years. The quality standards are research-based and demonstrate principles of child growth and development, as well as current best practices in the early childhood field.

This course is rooted in the quality standards and is divided into units that reflect the content areas of NAFCC’s standards (relationships, the environment, developmental learning activities, safety and health, professional and business practices). Each unit includes multi-media resources and hands-on activities designed to inspire you, and to help you put in the necessary work in order to meet the standards.

            Interested in learning more about NAFCC membership or accreditation? Click here.

PLEASE NOTE:  This course can be beneficial to anyone who cares for children. You don’t have to be seeking accreditation to complete this course. In fact, you don’t even need to be a member of NAFCC or run a family child care program. These lessons are helpful for learning what quality looks like in different child-centered settings and offers strategies that can enhance your own work.

Many Right Ways

“Many right ways” could be the unofficial slogan of NAFCC. You’ll hear this phrase again and again from members of NAFCC’s accreditation council. What this means is that there are several acceptable ways to meet a standard. Each family child care program is unique with different strengths, resources, settings, children, and families. NAFCC understands that providers are tasked with meeting their program’s needs in a way that works for them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Meeting the standards requires creativity and confidence. The strategies and resources in this course will help you find a workable path for your program.

Tell me more! What now?

There are “many right ways” to take this course, too! Go at your own pace and have fun. Some units may take more time and that’s okay. Be sure to celebrate small wins along the way.

Set yourself up for success. Start by downloading (and printing, if you can) your own copy of NAFCC’s Quality Standards for Accreditation. This course also includes various printable resources. We recommend getting a three-ring binder to keep all of your course materials together, as well as a dedicated notebook. Think of it as your place to jot down reflections, plans, and dreams for your program. At the end of the course, this binder will serve as your program portfolio—an invaluable tool for showing growth and a powerful testament to all the hard work you’ve put in! We’ll circle back to this in the final unit of the course.

Staying organized can be fun, too! Download this coloring sheet to use as the cover of your binder.

Building a Connected Community: Ready for School, Ready for Life.

Welcome!

As early-childhood educators, we have huge goals for ourselves and the children in our care. Our aim is to teach kids about themselves, their peers, and the world around them. Our biggest dreams are to help children thrive into becoming kind, healthy, smart, and successful adults who make the world better. By maximizing children’s potential, we maximize the potential for the world we all live in. 

Over the course of five units, you’ll get a chance to explore strategies and resources to use with children and families that promote learning through curiosity and community! Watch videos, study strategies, and reflect in forums on how to make these lessons live in your own learning spaces.

  • Unit 1: A Welcoming Community: Foster a sense of belonging in your learning community using physical space and preparation.
  • Unit 2: Knowing My Community: Provide opportunities for children to know themselves and each other.
  • Unit 3: Better Together: Extend children’s prosocial skills with tactics that promote positive interaction. 
  • Unit 4: Creative Problem-Solving: Promote collaborative problem-solving  for challenges that arise.
  • Unit 5: A Wider World: Use skills and strategies to keep growing beyond your program. 

Children grow and learn from their experiences and in relation to one another. Together with Sesame Street in Communities, explore the ways that everyone in a learning community can teach and learn together in order to be stronger, smarter, and kinder!

WATCH: Meet the Providers: Joseph and Callie

Welcoming Others

Thanks for joining us for Welcoming Others, a short course to help you support families affected by crisis and conflict.

Every day, children and families around the world—and in your own community—are affected by conflict, crisis, and traumatic experiences. In big and small ways, support from providers, peers, and members of their wider community can help welcome them into new spaces and begin a process of healing.

What does crisis mean? A moment of crisis can include any time of intense difficulty, trouble, or danger. Crises can include a natural disaster or weather event, sudden separation from loved ones, or displacement due to conflict or other hardship, among other circumstances.

It’s natural for a crisis to catch us off guard. But crises can happen to anyone, even to those in your community. The good news is, the caring presence of a trusted adult and empathetic, nurturing interactions with children and families affected by crisis really can make a positive difference.

You can help.

The reality is, no matter your specific role, or how much you interact with children and families each day, it’s likely that at some point you will encounter someone who’s been affected by conflict or crisis. You might know someone right now, and there are simple, manageable things you can start with to help that person feel safer, more understood, welcomed, and resilient.

You don’t need to be an expert in child development to benefit from this course. It is designed to help any caring grown-up—like you—embrace the role you can play in helping children and grown-ups reconnect and build on their inherent dignity, strength, and resilience.

We’re so grateful and inspired that you have decided to invest your time and energy in learning how to better serve children and families in some of the most challenging moments of their lives. We’re confident this short course will help you feel more comfortable in taking the first steps on this journey. We encourage you to leverage the ideas and resources in this course to complement the role you play in your community to help families feel welcomed and begin to heal and thrive.

By the end of this brief course, you will walk away with new insights, strategies, and a toolkit of resources and activities that you can share and practice with families.

NOTE: While developing this course, we included themes and resources that would be particularly helpful to children and families who’ve been uprooted from their homes or country of origin, whether due to natural disaster, conflict, or some other reason. Because of that, you’ll see and hear references to “newcomers” or families “joining your community.”

More often than not, the strategies mentioned for this group of children and families are broadly applicable to families who have experienced other types of traumas or crises as well. As always, keep an open mind, engage your curiosity, and ask yourself, “How can I apply what I’m learning here to my own relationships, workplace, or community?”

Throughout this course, you’ll hear from a few key experts. These individuals have varied and extensive experience helping young children and families cope with conflict, crisis, and traumatic experiences. We are so grateful for their contributions to this course.

Ann Thomas, LCSW, RPT/S
President/CEO of The Children's Place

Stephen Cozza, MD, COL, U.S. Army Retired
Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics
Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress, Department of Psychiatry, USUHS

Rebecca Ford-Paz, PhD
Clinical Child Psychologist
Pritzker Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health & the Center for Childhood Resilience
Co-Director of the Forensic Assessment for Immigration Relief (FAIR) Clinic
Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago
Associate Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

Stephanie A. Gonzalez-Martinez
Las Cruces Children's Coordinator
Save The Children | Border Servant Corps

Roads to Resilience

Welcome to Sesame’s United Health Care professional development course, Roads to Resilience! We know how important your work is to young children’s health, safety, and growth. You have the opportunity and power to support the most vulnerable children and their families mentally, physically, and academically. The foundation you help to build can positively affect them for the rest of their lives.

This is a scope and sequence designed to support healthy habits in children from birth to age 5. Our goal is to provide resources to help providers like you in Early Childcare, Health, Housing, and Social Services. The customized tracks were shaped from conversations, research, and information requests from stakeholders just like you.

Course Structure

Throughout this three-hour, self-paced, interactive course you’ll have the chance to learn more about how to build smarter, stronger, kids with resources you can choose based on the vital roles you play in your community!

  • Units 1–4 are structured to support all providers working with children across a wide variety of contexts:
    • Unit 1: Exploring Emotions
    • Unit 2: Managing Milestones
    • Unit 3: Stronger, Smarter, Kinder
    • Unit 4: Understanding Traumatic Experiences
  • Units 5 is more specialized so you can choose the path that’s most relevant, meeting the specific needs of children and families in your care.
    • For providers working in Early Childcare and Education settings: Safe in Our Space
    • For providers working in Healthcare settings: Clean Eating, Hearts Beating
    • For providers working in Housing settings: Home Is Where the Heart Is
    • For providers working in Social Service settings: Financial Education: Saving, Spending, Sharing
  • Each unit features five general lessons to support all providers working with children.
    • Lesson 1—Gather and Share: introductory videos on child-related topics 
    • Lesson 2—Explore Together: videos featuring ways to work with children 
    • Lesson 3—Caring for Caregivers: articles to share with caregivers 
    • Lesson 4—Read Together: digital storybooks to read with children 
    • Lesson 5—Play + Work Together: Customized resources that providers in your line of work can use with the caregivers and providers in a child’s circle of care.

At the end of every unit, you’ll have a chance to Show What You Know! You'll test the knowledge you’ve gained with a quick quiz, then dive even deeper into a supplemental lesson just for you!

  • Upon course completion, you’ll receive a certificate celebrating the learning track you explored! 
  • Interested in the unique resources other providers are learning about? After completing your own self-paced course, you can always take it again, selecting a new provider path.

Course Goals

By the end of this 3-hour, self-paced course, providers will be able to:

  • Share SSIC resources connected to child development, physical and mental health, and wellness related to everyone in the family  
  • Offer customized pathways to meet the specific needs of providers in the fields of early childcare, health, housing, and social services

Let's get started!

Circles of Care

Welcome!

As the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child. For a child, that village might be made up of family, friend, and neighbor caregivers (FFNCs). These caring adults are essential to the wellbeing of children, but as a group they’re too often overlooked. This course highlights strategies and resources to help you connect with and support FFNCs.

This course includes resources, activity ideas, and guidance for applying what you’ve learned in your work with FFNCs. You might incorporate these materials into your organization’s programming calendar as stand-alone activities or as a series of full-fledged workshop sessions. By the end of this course, you’ll feel empowered to use these materials in any ways that work for you. Also, by completing the Unit Assessments, you’ll be able to receive a Certificate of Completion.

Course Structure

Across 7 units, you’ll explore simple ways to support and elevate the quality of connections and care that FFN caregivers give to children. Plus, you’ll walk away with a plan of action to apply what you’ve learned in your setting.

  • Unit 1: Caring for Kids
  • Unit 2: Brain Builders
  • Unit 3: R is for Routines
  • Unit 4: R is for Relationships – Managing Feelings
  • Unit 5: R is for Relationships – Learning Through Play
  • Unit 6: R is for Respectful Communication
  • Unit 7: My Facilitator Action Plan

Course Goals

Upon completion of this course, trainers will be able to:

  • Learn how to effectively train FFNCs in utilizing resources.
  • Explore ways to help FFNCs to understand the important role they play in children’s lives.
  • Communicate strategies to FFNCs that support children’s development and learning.
  • Suggest strategies for FFNCs to communicate effectively with the parents of children in their care.
  • Create a customized action plan to embed these resources in their work.

Many Right Ways

Welcome!

Welcome to Many Right Ways: Exploring Quality in Family Child Care. We’re so excited and grateful that you have decided to invest in yourself and your program. We’re confident that this course will help you maximize the level of quality in your work with children.

This course is a special collaboration between Sesame Street in Communities (SSIC) and our friends at the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC). Our two organizations have a long history of working together to support children, families, and providers. Most recently we’ve come together to celebrate the incredibly important work of family child care providers, and to support providers on their journey toward quality improvement and accreditation.

Meet NAFCC

NAFCC is the only national association dedicated to promoting high-quality early childhood experiences in the unique environment of family child care programs. They work on behalf of, and in concert with, the one million family child care providers operating nationwide.

NAFCC has led the family child care accreditation program for over 25 years. The quality standards are research-based and demonstrate principles of child growth and development, as well as current best practices in the early childhood field.

This course is rooted in the quality standards and is divided into units that reflect the content areas of NAFCC’s standards (relationships, the environment, developmental learning activities, safety and health, professional and business practices). Each unit includes multi-media resources and hands-on activities designed to inspire you, and to help you put in the necessary work in order to meet the standards.

            Interested in learning more about NAFCC membership or accreditation? Click here.

PLEASE NOTE:  This course can be beneficial to anyone who cares for children. You don’t have to be seeking accreditation to complete this course. In fact, you don’t even need to be a member of NAFCC or run a family child care program. These lessons are helpful for learning what quality looks like in different child-centered settings and offers strategies that can enhance your own work.

Many Right Ways

“Many right ways” could be the unofficial slogan of NAFCC. You’ll hear this phrase again and again from members of NAFCC’s accreditation council. What this means is that there are several acceptable ways to meet a standard. Each family child care program is unique with different strengths, resources, settings, children, and families. NAFCC understands that providers are tasked with meeting their program’s needs in a way that works for them. There is no one-size-fits-all solution. Meeting the standards requires creativity and confidence. The strategies and resources in this course will help you find a workable path for your program.

Tell me more! What now?

There are “many right ways” to take this course, too! Go at your own pace and have fun. Some units may take more time and that’s okay. Be sure to celebrate small wins along the way.

Set yourself up for success. Start by downloading (and printing, if you can) your own copy of NAFCC’s Quality Standards for Accreditation. This course also includes various printable resources. We recommend getting a three-ring binder to keep all of your course materials together, as well as a dedicated notebook. Think of it as your place to jot down reflections, plans, and dreams for your program. At the end of the course, this binder will serve as your program portfolio—an invaluable tool for showing growth and a powerful testament to all the hard work you’ve put in! We’ll circle back to this in the final unit of the course.

Staying organized can be fun, too! Download this coloring sheet to use as the cover of your binder.

Caring Community

Welcome!

We grow into adults who shape the world, we are children who learn from it. In this course you will explore tools to help your students learn strategies to overcome challenges, bounce back, and communicate their feelings. This course will offer you ideas about starting conversations shaped by curiosity; strategies to help children tackle problems; and activities that promote engagement and persistence—tools to help your students develop the social emotional skills that form a strong foundation for their academic learning and success beyond the classroom. Caring Communities was created not only to provide educators with resources to promote resilience, but to provide tools to help children communicate their needs and wants, enabling you to build stronger relationships with your students.

This interactive course includes four units:

  • Unit 1: Special, Strong, and Growing
  • Unit 2: The Power of Persistence
  • Unit 3: Feelings Big and Small
  • Unit 4: My Safe Place

Within each unit, we’ve included specific resources to guide your own professional development, as well as materials to share with your students in Pre-K to 2nd Grade, and with their families at home!

  • Lesson 1, Resources at the Ready, will include a brief overview of each unit’s topic and questions to guide your work!
  • Lesson 2, Provider Planning, has resources to level up your own knowledge and skills.
  • In Lesson 3 (Student Support) and Lesson 4 (Community Caregiving), you will explore assets and activities to share with your students, and resources to be used by families at home!
  • A quick quiz in Lesson 5, Close Out, reinforces the knowledge you’ve gained in the unit.

While each unit includes resources to be used across any number of days, we’ve tried to include enough materials for two weeks’ worth of educational programming.

Upon course completion, you’ll have access to an interactive guide of the resources from each unit that you can use with children and families.

We hope you find much to value in our course. Together, we can build confident children who can be a part of helping us create smarter, stronger, kinder communities!

Growing Together: Family Partners For School Readiness

As a provider, you have the unique opportunity to shape children’s worlds and boost their potential. Since a health emergency like Covid brings many changes and uncertainty for young children and families, you—as a provider working to meet students in all the places they continue to learn—can be a source of stability and encouragement. And if children are encouraged and supported outside of the classroom too, the possibilities for their success are endless.

Sesame Street in Communities, together with PNC Grow Up Great, created this course to support providers as they work with families to help children prepare for school. Across five units, you’ll explore these educational areas with children and their families:

  • Approaches to Learning (Unit 1: The Way We Learn)
  • Social and Emotional Development (Unit 2: Feeling Safe, Taking Risks)
  • Language and Literacy (Unit 3: Care and Communication)
  • Motor Development (Unit 4: Growing Bodies, Growing Minds)
  • Cognition (Unit 5: Experimenting with Experiences)

As children build trusting relationships with adults, they grow stronger, smarter, and kinder. As we adjust to this ‘for now normal’ of teaching in a changing variety of circumstances, providers like you are key to providing emotional support, establishing routines, and maintain a sense of optimism. When we’re tuned in to children’s lives, we can develop new ways to make learning relevant and exciting. The information in these lessons, along with the activities and videos, suggest best practices for partnering with families to prepare children for school success!

Additional Resources: Head Start Early Learnings Outcomes Framework