My HIPPY HIPPY World

Avima Lombard Award Nominations

2011-11-29T17:00:00.000-06:00

Avima Lombard, 1926-2008

The Avima D. Lombard Award honors a HIPPY staff person at a local, state, or national program office in the United States whose professional services have made a significant contribution to HIPPY and to improving the lives of young children and their families. The awardees embody Avima's proactive, risk taking and determined approach to work. They have been involved with the HIPPY program in the United States, and continue to support the mission of HIPPY USA.

What is Avima's legacy? Well, after graduating from Cornell University she got her master's degree at Columbia Teacher's College, and then on to UCLA for her PhD. This same dedication to education is found in all of our HIPPY home visitors who balance home, work and college and are taking classes at local universities and community colleges. Once Avima finished her PhD, she served as a professor of Early Childhood Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and as the Director of Early Childhood Research and Projects for the National Council of Jewish Women Research Institute for Innovation in Education - quite the mouthful! This same dedication to research and practice is found in the countless evaluators and researchers who work hard to assess the efficacy of the HIPPY program model, and the hundreds of HIPPY Coordinators and Administrators who work tirelessly to implement the program model in communities across the US and the world.

The Avmina D. Lombard Award will be presented at the HIPPY USA National Conference. The deadline for submissions is January 13, 2012 - consider nominating someone who is carrying on Avima's legacy. For more information, check the HIPPY USA website.

HIPPY Model "approved"

2011-11-22T17:43:00.000-06:00

HIPPY was one of only seven home visiting models that meet the research based criteria for inclusion in Federal funding through the Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home Visiting program, MIECHV. In Texas, this means that 7 communities will be implementing HIPPY as well as other approved Home Visiting programs. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services submitted a state plan to provide home visiting services to 7 counties in Texas. Community meetings were held to roll out the opportunity, in the following communities: Dallas, Longview, Jacksonville, Odessa, Amarillo, McAllen and Corpus Christi. HIPPY was a match for each of these communities based on their demonstrated need for home visiting and school readiness. The request for proposals is due to come out soon, and each community has been asked to consider submitting a coordinated response. Home visiting programs HIPPY, Parents as Teachers and Nurse Family Partnership will be co-hosting weekly phone calls to provide communities with information about the program models and how a community can coordinate services through this funding. Very exciting and busy times are ahead as HIPPY and other home visiting programs move forward with adding program sites!

If you are from one of these communities and would like more information, please check out our Texas Home Visiting Blog: http://txhv.blogspot.com/, or contact me, carla.weir@unt.edu.

When is it time to take away the pacifier?

2011-11-01T18:30:00.000-05:00

(photo credit)

Dentists say that the pacifier can damage a child's bite. Pediatricians tell us that most children stop using a pacifier on their own between ages 2 and 4. Some research has even shown that pacifiers may reduce the incidence of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome or SIDS - which is dramatically reduced by 6 months regardless of pacifier use. That may be the best time to remove the pacifier for good (any benefit from it has already been gained and detriment to dental health can be avoided). For many parents though, myself included, the pacifier is a self soothing tool that becomes their child's habit into the toddler and early preschool years.

I remember struggling with this question myself. My younger daughter (now a college freshman!!!) was a pacifier baby. I was really worried about weaning her from it so I came up with a plan to make it happen before she entered Pre-K. That summer, we spent a lot of time planning for school, including planning to give up the pacifier. I asked her if she had noticed any of the children in her sister's Kindergarten class using a pacifier. We talked a lot about how it would be without the pacifier and tried to practice sleeping without it. With our big day approaching we were all a little nervous. Fortunately, her sister was only two grades above her and she was going to the same school. Her first day went smoothly and that night as I was tucking her in, she knew that it would be without her pacifier. With big tears in her eyes she said, "it's ok Mama, I'll always have my thumb" and popped that thumb in her mouth! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry...she was struggling to make that sacrifice, and yet her little problem solving genious created a new problem!!! It wasn't until several years later that she gave up the thumb! The good thing was that she knew (from all our conversations about the pacifier) that she couldn't suck her thumb at school. So, when is it time to take away the pacifier?

Undoubtably a pacifier can interfere with a child's ability to speak. For that reason, I believe it's very important to begin weaning a child from a pacifier, at least during waking hours, early on. Giving a child the opportunity to speak is key to their language development and social development. This will have a great impact on their school readiness and their social interactions. The HIPPY program provides parents with daily activities to engage their children in school readiness skills. We encourage and inform parents how to read stories, play games, sing songs, count and so many other fun readiness activities. And, we help parents with questions they may have such as "when is it time to take away the pacifier?" Many times there's no "one way" to answer, but having someone to have this conversation with is a great resource!

Strong Start Strong Finish

2011-08-10T11:43:00.002-05:00

Social science research is connecting the dots between a child's successful start in early childhood and graduation from high school. It's probably been about a decade since third grade became THE benchmark year. The data became irrefutable that if a child is reading not on grade level by the third grade, their odds of graduating high school were four times less than if there were on level. In a report out of Maryland, children who were doing well in Kindergarten, were school ready, were eight times more likely to read on grade level when they reached third grade. See those dots being connected? If you're interested in more details read the recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Career Expo 2011

2011-08-03T08:32:00.003-05:00

Career Expo 2011, a photo by hippyprogram on Flickr.

Opportunities can be stressful! Our home visitors have the opportunity to go to college using their AmeriCorps education award, of up to approximately $9,000 (if they serve four part time terms). To help them get started, we host an annual career information day, called Career Expo, hosted at Irving ISD this year. We asked representatives from various fields to speak on a panel detailing their education, skills, experiences, greatest challenges and how they got started. Home visitors also had the opportunity to experience a mock interview, have their resume reviewed and to enroll in the online AmeriCorps member system to track and use their education award. Thanks to everyone who came out for this event, volunteered to mock interview, served on the panel and especially to Irving HIPPY for hosting!

DC HIPPY - new start up!

2011-07-27T14:10:00.002-05:00

DC HIPPY - new start up!, a photo by hippyprogram on Flickr.

Helping new programs start up is among the favorite things I get to do in my work with HIPPY. Taking HIPPY from concept to implementation is a monumental task in any community. It requires funding, research, partnership building, hiring a coordinator, recruiting families, hiring home visitors. And, these tasks are generally done by busy people already working a full time job. In the case of Family Place DC HIPPY, a non profit organization working with Spanish speaking immigrant families in the heart of DC, it was an organization wide effort. The start up phase culminated in the 3 days I spent training the new coordinator and home visitors, followed immediately by their first week visiting families. Starting up in May is highly unusual but with some creative scheduling and a lot of hard work by staff and families, the program cycle will be complete by early Fall and ready to restart another cycle. Congratulations to everyone at Family Place in DC for getting HIPPY started!

What a Difference a Decade Makes

2011-07-20T13:56:00.000-05:00

Our office manager and keeper of all things fiscal for HIPPY AmeriCorps, Susan Blackburn, is retiring at the end of August. I would like to thank Susan for her hard work and dedication during her decade of service and wish her the very best in her new adventures as a retiree. I asked her to share with us her own reflections from her time with HIPPY Texas, which are below.

"Ten years ago I began working with an AmeriCorps program called 'HIPPY'. I had no idea what a life changing event I was entering and how many times I would be asked to take a leap of faith and trust the funding would be there, a place to house the project would be found and all the other challenges coming with a grant funded project. Each time the challenge was met and, with team work, the program has overcome most obstacles placed in its way. In facing these obstacles I became stronger and more determined HIPPY would persevere.

It had always been my dream to join the Peace Corps and do something special with my time on this planet. My connection to the AmeriCorps program has given me a chance to fulfill that dream and far exceeded all expectations. I have seen families change, parent / child bonds formed, learned and lived the phase “si se puede”. All of the lives I have been welcomed into have added so much to mine, there are no words to express the depth of feeling in my heart as I write these words.

I wish to thank everyone who has participated in my growing process these last ten years and my inclusion in the HIPPY / AmeriCorps family; together we can change the world one child, one parent, one teacher, one school, one neighborhood at a time. A part of me will be with you always, my role is changing, my dedication to the program is unchanged."

Again, Thank you Susan! from Carla, Keshia and all the Texas HIPPY Gang.

Giving Credit Where Credit is Due

2011-07-13T09:54:00.002-05:00

Curriculum Training, a photo by hippyprogram on Flickr.

The HIPPY model provides parents in the program with the opportunity to serve as home visitors. This is often the first work experience, or the first professional experience for our alumni parents. With training, support and supervision they provide high quality educational home visits to their peers and neighbors. Through our AmeriCorps grant they earn a scholarship which gives them the opportunity to go to college. Again, this is a first for most of our parents and home visitors. As described by Kathy White, our coordinator in Snyder, TX "Our HIPPY Home Instructors have gone from being a parent in the program, to obtaining a GED, enrolling in college and finishing two years with future plans of becoming teachers!” Their experience as home visitors provides them with marketable skills. One of my dreams is to be able to package these experiences into college credit. Their weekly training, 2-3 hours of examining the skills taught in the HIPPY curriculum that week in the context of child development, along with periodic trainings add up to over 100 hours of "classroom" time a year. CLASP, a national research and policy organization that focuses on education, employment and poverty issues, recently published their recommendations to create a national "competency based qualifications framework for post-secondary education and training". The report is Giving Credit Where Credit is Due and if realized it would create exactly the right system which would recognize on the job work experience such as HIPPY!

Common Core and HIPPY

2011-07-06T15:49:00.000-05:00

(HIPPY Curriculum used in a home visit)

The Common Core is a new set of national education standards that have been coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices (NGA Center) and the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO). It details grade by grade knowledge and skills that America's children should learn. It begins in Kindergarten (wish it were Pre-K!) and focuses on Math and English throughout all grades. The general public might be surprised that we don't already have national standards. For parents, the big question is "what does my child need to know?", and the National PTA has a guide for us.

We recently had a meeting in Little Rock to review the HIPPY curriculum and outline criteria for changes and upgrades to the Age 3 and Age 4 materials. We used the Common Core to guide our discussions and ensure that any changes we suggest are made in accordance with these new national guidelines.

HIPPY from a Social Scientist's Perspective

2011-06-29T17:05:00.003-05:00

Researchers, a photo by hippyprogram on Flickr. Angela Nievar on the left and Arminta Jacobson, UNT Professor on the right.

I asked Angela Nievar, Assistant Professor here at UNT, to reflect on why she's interested in HIPPY as a research project. Her thoughts are below. I'd like to take advantage of this opportunity to thank Dr. Nievar for her interest in HIPPY.

From Dr. Nievar...

I started working with HIPPY shortly after I came to UNT. I had worked on evaluation projects with other home visiting models as a graduate student. In the past, I saw it as a great way to find out valuable information about a population that was really hard to access. One of my first publications was from data we collected from a home visiting project. The amazing thing about HIPPY was that the home visiting model actually worked, with long-term outcomes for children's achievement as well as short-term changes in the home environment. My thinking has shifted now from simply "this is a great way to access low-income families" to "this is a great program that helps children in low-education, low-income families succeed." I see home visiting in general as a model that helps even moreso than preschool, and my two latest publications (after a few years of hard work with HIPPY) show positive effects for home visiting in general (Nievar, Van Egeren, & Pollard, 2010) and positive effects for HIPPY at a site close to home (Nievar, Jacobson, Chen, Johnson, & Dier, 2011). The project coordinators and home visitors have really worked with us. They have been helpful and kind, and we haven't had the usual red tape that slows down grants even getting started, much less funded. So, yes, Carla, HIPPY is a valuable research project in terms of monetary rewards, but more than that, it is personally rewarding and valuable. My research has been used to inform policy and practice at the national level, based on a project that can help children succeed. To me that is more of a success story than any publication or grant that could simply further my career.

Graduation 2011!

2011-06-18T11:52:00.016-05:00

HIPPY graduation 2011 - Dallas, a photo by hippyprogram on Flickr.

This year, graduation time is particularly poignant for me. My youngest daughter, with whom I piloted some of the Age 3 curriculum with many years ago, graduated from high school. I couldn't be prouder of both my daughters, Hannah and Sofia. They are smart, funny, independent, creative and kind. They are HIPPY kids! Graduation is a time of excitement, reflection and changes and it's a time to thank and recognize those who made it happen! Congratulations to all of our HIPPY parents, their children, their home visitors and the coordinators who accomplished another successful program year.

"Without equity there can be no excellence"

2011-06-15T09:12:00.000-05:00

I recently attended a US Department of Education Equity and Excellence Commission, Dallas Town Hall Meeting. It looked to me like over 100 people, including a small group of parents and high school students, were there to listen to a panel of experts and give their own input on the state of education in our community. Dr. Bonnie Lesley was a panelist who spoke from her experience as an classroom educator, district administrator and then college professor in various communities across the state. Her words are quoted in the title of this blog, "Without equity there can be no excellence", and this certainly rang true to me. Equity comes in so many forms and is most easily captured in a statistic shared by Dr. Wayne Pierce of the Equity Center. The per classroom difference in investment between the lowest 20% and highest 20% funded Texas school districts is $42,000. This also greatly resonated with me.

I had the opportunity to leave written comments for the US Department of Education Equity and Excellence Commission. Here's what I wrote:

"Very little in education is indisputable - we disagree on much more than we agree on. However, the value and impact of parents on their children's education is universally recognized - both in research and practice. And yet, enriching in-home educational experience and preschool preparation remains the most underfunded area in education. How will the Commission recognize the value of parents and school readiness? Please recognize research proven models, like Home Instruction Program for Parents of Preschool Youngsters or HIPPY."

It's true, without equity there will never be excellence. HIPPY can provide every child with a successful start in school which is known to greatly increase a child's chances for success in graduating from High School. And those $42,000 per classroom? If HIPPY were provided to every child in one Kindergarten class, it would only cost $31,200. With only 40% of incoming high school freshmen in Dallas graduating 4 years later, a better start is the place to start.

Importance of Fidelity

2011-06-08T15:26:00.002-05:00

No, I'm not going to write about a man and pictures he tweeted to single women even though he is married ~ that's nasty and I'm tired of hearing about it.

I'm taking about PROGRAM FIDELITY, what it means and why it's important. Whenever something works, whether it's a restaurant or a literacy program there's always a need to replicate that good idea. At the same time, adjustments need to be made for it to work in other places. In making those adjustments, we have to figure out what is the most essential part of the program that needs to be replicated. The HIPPY model is over 30 years old and has been replicated in hundreds of locations in Israel, Australia, US, New Zealand, Canada, Argentina and many other countries. Over the years we've refined what program elements are necessary and must be replicated and devised various structures to ensure fidelity to the model. These include preservice training of coordinators, onsite training of home visitors, manuals/documents, onsite monitoring, and last but not least accreditation. I've been involved with the accreditation committee to update and finalize a new and simplified accreditation instrument that will be rolled out nationally in the Fall. This document reflects a sea change in our approach to model fidelity. In the past we've identify all the quality indicators that we would like program sites to implement. This new document pares down criteria to the absolute "must haves" for program implementation. A separate process is being developed for identifying and recognizing programs who show excellence and go above and beyond the accredited must haves. Why is this important? Are we just being control freaks? It's important because social science research / evaluation is difficult enough, but is impossible and unreliable unless we can ensure that what is implemented in one community is substantially the same as what is implemented in another community. Program fidelity allows us to say with confidence that if a program works in Irving Texas it can work just as well in Irvine California.

So, that's an inside look at program fidelity!

Why not computer programs?

2010-09-29T10:53:00.002-05:00

I've explained HIPPY to random strangers on planes, elevators and grocery stores; as well as decision makers in schools, legislatures and the media. My "elevator speech" goes something like this: "We provide 30 weeks of home visits to parents of 3, 4, and 5 year olds, using a weekly curriculum that the parent works on with his/her child. This prepares the child for school and helps parents understand the importance of their role as their child's first teacher." Most of the time people get it, they have their own childhood experiences to draw from, or their experience as a parent with their own children -- reading to them daily and later helping them with homework. As technology takes such a front seat in our society, education and parenting practices, more and more people have asked me "Couldn't you get a computer program for the kids to work on?", it always shocks me a little but I try to stay calm! NO! I want to exclaim. No video, computer game or video game will ever take the place of a parent playing with or reading to his or her child! I know that our kids need to learn how to use computers, and they will!!! Many of our parents have and use their own computers and internet, but nothing can replace that one on one interaction - that's the best way a love of learning and reading will be developed and handed down from one generation to the next. I saw an interesting website by an advocacy group trying to reduce the effects of corporate marketing on our children. I found it interesting because it relates to the fact that children spend more time in front of the TV and computer than ever before, and often this means less time with their parents. This makes that one on one time reading together, playing, singing, talking that much more precious and important!

Home Visitation in the National Spotlight

2010-09-22T08:30:00.004-05:00

Children's gifts distributed to Dallas HIPPY family (mom in red, remainder is Dallas and Texas HIPPY staff)

The buzz has been growing about Home Visitation with lots of things happening at the national and state levels. At the national level, home visiting was included in the controversial Health Care Reform Bill. Every state has until the end of September to conduct an assessment on the need for home visitation programming. A statewide coalition has been formed in Texas, under the leadership of the Texas Early Childhood Education Coalition. Our first act as a coalition has been to offer our support to the state as they engage in the required assessment. We are hopeful that if funding comes in from the healthcare funding, it will allow us to expand much needed services within the communities already served, and to open new communities to home visiting services. It's interesting to be discussing the basic concepts of home visiting now, in my 22nd year in the field! For example, is home visiting a program model or a methodology? Can it be effective as a stand alone activity or does it need to be embedded into an overall strategy?

Texas HIPPY program coordinators would tell you that once you enter a family home, even though you may be there for educational purposes, all sorts of social, psychological and financial hardships are revealed, and program staff must be well versed in community resources and how to refer families to receive help. All of our programs have developed a strong network of partnerships that help families who are faced with a myriad of problems, including developmental disabilities in children; lack of basic resources such as utilities and food; and family crisis issues such as violence, depression and legal problems.

Blue Print for Education Starts in Kindergarten

2010-09-14T08:52:00.001-05:00

There's a big push going on right now to try to convince the Administration to include pre-K in the new Blueprint for Education--the education reform initiative. It seems only logical to include pre-school in the education plans for our country. We know beyond a shadow of doubt that the "home" is the greatest influence on a child's educational success. The blueprint exhorts for such improvements as better teachers and leaders in schools, equity for all students, raising the bar and promoting innovation. These are all commendable and desirable - and yet they can only take students as far as parental support, knowledge and participation will allow. Most preschool education happens in the home, especially with Latino parents, who represent the most rapidly growing sector of the school population. Begin with parents and better student outcomes will follow.

Serving Latino Youngsters

2010-09-07T08:30:00.004-05:00

HIPPY Irving "graduate"

"States have a long way to go to develop early learning programs that are responsive to the needs of Latino and English language learner children and families," findings from a recent white paper by the The National Council of La Raza. One of the strengths of HIPPY has always been the Spanish language curriculum which allows parents to work with their children in their native language. Research by the Southern Education Development Laboratory: SEDL found that Latino students entered school with less competence than whites in foundational math and reading. Where 75% of white children could recognize letters while only about half of Hispanic children could do so. Our most recent evaluation results show that 83.1% of HIPPY Kindergarten students were rated overall as "ready for school" by their Kindergarten teachers across the state. Moreover, 87.7% were found to be particularly ready in the area of classroom adaptability, and 90.8% were rated as ready in terms of their classroom verbal behavior.

Impact Texas

2010-08-30T13:42:00.000-05:00

Throughout 2009-2010 program year I had the opportunity to participate in "Impact Texas". Our program was selected from among a host of applicants who participated in the CCAT: Core Capacity Assessment Tool. The assessment helped us identify areas in our organization and program that need strengthening. I participated in a series of training in the area of strategic thinking, influence development and team management that have benefited me personally / professionally (how to manage a team under changing circumstances, creating outcome oriented employee evaluations) and our team as a whole. One of the great team benefits has come to us in the shape of Ann Ranson who has coached us individually, as a team, and program wide with our coordinators and advisors. As a result, we are developing an in-house Team Operating Agreement, and have undergone a strategic planning process statewide. This document is being finalized and will guide our operations for the next 3 years. Thank you One Star Foundation for selecting HIPPY Texas for Impact Texas!

Jumo - new social network

2010-05-10T15:39:00.003-05:00

Just when I begin to feel like I've got a handle on social networking I read that one of the founders of Facebook is developing Jumo, to "Bring together everyday individuals and organizations to speed the pace of global change. We connect people to the issues, organizations, and individuals relevant to them to foster lasting relationships and meaningful action." I'm wondering how it will fill a niche that's different from Ashoka/Changemakers, or Network for Good, and who knows what other things that are out there that I haven't seen yet! Read more about Jumo here.

Webinar Archive

2010-05-04T14:43:00.002-05:00

Back in January I did a webinar, my first experience! I've finally gotten ahold of the link to that webinar and can share it with everyone. It's a presentation on HIPPY 101 - ie. all the basics of the HIPPY model. Please listen if you're interested! Here is the link to that archive. In the Participant Login section, put in your name and hit the Enter button. If you have not used Wimba before may want to run the Wizard to make sure your computer is set up properly to view/listen the session. One note: There is a period of about one minute silence around the 45 second mark (probably due to computer glitch).

Now that I've had the first under my belt and understand the technology better I have a lot of ideas on how to make it interactive and more interesting. I'm looking forward to trying it again!

Connecting, A-twitter?

2010-04-26T14:27:00.005-05:00

At the 2010 Southwest Cluster Conference I attended a workshop on non profits getting the most out of web 2.0, and heard some startling facts! Here at Texas HIPPY we're trying our best to get connected on the web...please join, promote, comment or view us online in whatever formats you use!

WEB 2.0:

1. Since April 2009, Twitter has been receiving around 20 million unique visitors each month - so far I've only tweeted about 50 times, follow me

2. Flickr hosts more than 3.6 billion images, we have about 200 pictures, check them out

3. Close to 20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, we haven't done this but just purchased a Flip Camera, which I saw demonstrated at the workshop, here, (bad video alert!). Prepare for some GOOD HIPPY videos in the future!

4. The average US internet user spends an estimated 68 hours a week online, both at home and at work. (this was the startling fact, I hope we still have time as a society to talk to our families, walk our dogs, tend our gardens and read to our children...)

5. Facebook has more than 400 million active users, with over half of them logging in daily!!!! We're working on our facebook presence, figuring out the different ways to use causes, fan pages, groups, company pages, etc. For now you can join the HIPPY Texas Group page on Facebook ~ we need a wonderful volunteer to help us work on our presence there!!!

6. I've also joined Linked In, a professional social networking platform, please join me there!

El Paso Partnerships

2010-04-20T14:43:00.001-05:00

At El Paso HIPPY community partnerships are the norm. Over 40 home visitors are each linked with one of 12 partner non-profit organizations in the community. Corporate and volunteer partnerships are also at work in El Paso. Recently they were adopted by El Paso Kickback whose annual tournament raised them $1,000 for literacy materials. Earlier this year, Toro Employees were recognized by the El Paso times for their Community work at the Christmas celebration at the YMCA on December 22nd. The YMCA executive Director, Bill Coon offered Toro a place for the event and donated toys for the kids.Over 50 kids and 20 families were invited to the event. With the support of the Giving Program, Toro employees organized the event throughout the year by doing fund raisers. Guadalupe M. Arellano, United Way Director for Community Services said, “these are all the presents these kids might get this Christmas, you have impacted the lives of these children so much, thank you for serving our community.” Kids were amazed to see their presents and Santa with Elf.

(pic shows Muriel Thomas Borders, left) being interviewed for the El Paso Kickball HIPPY fundraiser)

1963 ~ A Big Year

2010-04-15T11:47:00.002-05:00

I had the opportunity to visit HIPPY in Anniston Alabama recently. I flew into Birmingham on a Sunday and rented a car, faced with an open afternoon. I was so happy to find (thank you Birmingham Airport for the free wi-fi!) that there's a Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham and I spent a fascinating and emotionally exhausting afternoon there. I was born in 1963, right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement, and the year of the Birmingham bombing that killed 4 little girls (in the church right across from the museum). How different a city is Birmingham today. Yes, there's always work yet to do, but in my birth-year Birmingham buses, hotels and restaurants were segregated. On that day, I sat at a restaurant with an integrated clientele of barbecue lovers. I know that Civil Rights is a lot more than sitting together at the same dining table, but it seemed to be a good sign. On returning home I was reminded of at least one good thing that came out of that tumultuous era -- AmeriCorps VISTA which is 45 this year. Our HIPPY*VISTA program focuses on increasing support, funding and volunteerism in the communities HIPPY serves. This work was recently recognized by the Dallas Foundation who awarded us a grant.

Events?

2010-04-06T17:34:00.004-05:00

(thanks to Kate Sumbler for the pic)

I recently went to a really great training by the DFW Chapter of the American Marketing Association on hosting effective events. I've been thinking about having a HIPPY event for a while but have been hesitant because of the nightmare stories out there about how events suck up all your time away from your core mission. And yet...there's an attraction to events too...gaining visibility, raising funds and the possibility of providing information to a greater audience of parents and young children. And so, there is hatching a possible plan, which will be discussed with the board, advisors, site staff and other collaborators...and maybe, am thinking May 2011 (yeah, that far out in advance!) maybe...we'll have a HIPPY event. Let me know what YOU think!

Little Kids Counting

2010-03-30T15:39:00.002-05:00

Early Ed Watch had an article about the important of developing children's math skills. While HIPPY is often cited as a literacy development curriculum (it is!) we often see strongest gains in children's math skills. In Dallas, across grade levels, 79% of HIPPY students met the TAKS Math Standards, compared to only 68% of non-HIPPY students. In Irving HIPPY, more students were found to have gained sufficient mastery in English to be able to take the TAKS Math administration in English, compared to non-HIPPY students. (This is significant because these second language learners completed the HIPPY curriculum in their native language of Spanish, but once they learned the concepts it was more readily transferred into their second language of English). These gains are attained because the HIPPY curriculum exposes children to math concepts such as counting, one to one correspondence, patterning and number recognition as early as age 3. According tot he Committee on Early Childhood Mathematics, 60% of 3 year olds receive no math instruction at all! For more information about the importance of early math experiences, check this out.

(pic below, Dallas home visitors preparing and role playing HIPPY curriculum, including Math activities (!), for the week.)

Maternal Depression

2010-03-26T10:53:00.003-05:00

Being a parent isn't easy, but for parents who face economic, social, cultural and personal hardships, it's an even more daunting task. That's why programs like HIPPY, that provide in-home support and information from a caring, trained peer can have such a positive effect on families. In Mental Health Needs of At-Risk Families, a report by Dr. Angela Nievar of UNT, she found a positive significant difference between HIPPY parents and non-HIPPY parents in the HOME (Bradley & Caldwell, 2000) score, which includes observations of parenting and survey questions. The HOME measures actual parenting, including appropriate responsiveness of parents, responsibility parents take for their children, and the type of environment that parents provide for their children. Parents who did not participate in the HIPPY program reported significantly more attachment-related stress on the Attachment subscale of the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1994) than HIPPY parents. Results of the parent interview are reported below by group. Higher percentages of HIPPY parents:

1. Thought that parents should quickly develop close, warm feelings for their child.

2. Reported having close, warm feelings for their child.

3. Did not describe their child as “mean.”

4. Felt more comfortable holding and taking care of children.

5. Said that their child knows them and wants them.

I was reminded of this recently when I read about a February 15th study published online in Pediatrics, which found that post-partum depression occurs at an elevated rate among low income women. Linda H. Chaudron, M.D., and colleagues studied 198 low-income mothers and found that 56% met criteria for minor or major depression, compared with a rate of 14% in the general population. Three routinely used depression screening tools proved to be effective in identifying post-partum depression in this low-income group, but the authors caution that scores two or three points below the traditional cut-off may require further evaluation in low-income moms. (Mental Health Weekly DOI:10.1002/mhw)

Children Count Too

2010-03-17T17:35:00.002-05:00

Today I received a letter in the mail, my US Census form. It turns out the young children are the MOST UNDERCOUNTED group in the US Census. Because of that, HIPPY is partnering with the US Census to get the word out to families. According to a recent webinar I attended with the Center on Public Policy Priorities, for every 100 people not counted, a community may lose $1.2 million over 10 years. The reason behind this calculation is that opportunities for Federal funding is tied to population statistics. You can hear the whole webinar here: http://www.cppp.org/events/event_details.php?eid=239. What can you do? Everyone knows parents of young children, and knows how hectic their lives can be. You can be the friendly reminder to them to fill out their Census form, and to make sure their children are counted! If you work with parents of young children, please get Census information to them, help all Texas children be counted this year!

Why isn't "things are going great" news?

2010-03-11T15:44:00.001-06:00

What's going on around here? Our programs have had their annual round of site visits from HIPPY USA and fared very well. Some of the national trainers pointed out that they observed some excellent home visits, home visitor training and parent meetings. Our sites are now turning their attention to end of year plans which are going to be bigger and better than ever! Houston HIPPY is having to secure a space for ONE THOUSAND expected attendees. Dallas HIPPY will be hosting 3 or 4 large events, each expected to have over 400 attendees. Grand Prairie will be receiving a visit from a local sports figure at their annual HIPPY Store event, an incentive program that gives parents points for participating daily with their child and enables them to "purchase" items such as clothes, household items and school supplies. On the funding front, Texas HIPPY received a grant from the Dallas Foundation to match our AmeriCorps and VISTA grants and will be selecting a new round of VISTA members for the fall. Business as usual? or good news? Both I guess...As an education program it's hard to get this good-business-as-usual story out there! It turns out that education stories account for only 1.4% of all national news coverage. http://earlyed.newamerica.net/blogposts/2009/ignoring_early_education-24178.

Praying for Rain

2010-02-10T15:46:00.002-06:00

Walk the Line - Se hace camino al andar
Originally uploaded by carladallas ~ ready for some Argentina pics?

AmeriCorps grants are for 3 years. This year our third year is up, and we submitted a recompete grant for another 3 year cycle. It's always a nervous time ~ we need to build on what we've learned, raise the bar, build on efficiencies. Soon after submitting the grant, I heard that the House passed Fiscal Year 2010 Funding Bill for ServiceOmnibus providing $1.149 billion to Corporation for National and Community Service. This figure fully funds the President's request for FY10 and is the largest appropriation in CNCS history. The bill now awaits passage by the Senate before it can be sent to the President to sign into law. The current Continuing Resolution (CR) expires on December 18th, though Congress could approve another CR to keep agencies funded if the Omnibus does not become law before that date.

Now I feel like the farmer...I've put the seeds in, and am prayin' for rain...

Online Workshop - join in!

2010-01-20T17:11:00.002-06:00

computer courses online, computer training, correspondence course
Originally uploaded by computrainuk

My first experience at doing an online workshop will be on January 29th, 12-1pm. Cool! I'll present an overview of the HIPPY model, and share with other parent educators some HIPPY strategies that I think they could adapt to their programs. This is being organized for the Texas Association of Parent Educators (TAPE) through the Collin Community College.

I've attended a few online presentations and hope that I can keep mine interesting, useful and interactive. Join in if you can, if not, spread the word!

Increasing Educational Achievement

2010-01-05T15:28:00.001-06:00

Can we put to rest the question whether preschool education is necessary? "One of the challenges for policy makers is sorting through the evidence..." says Steve Barnett, of Rutgers University, in a video interview on the Teachers College Record. His recent statistical summary of the impact of early childhood education reviewed over 120 studies over several decades and demonstrated that us that preschool has impact on cognitive, social/emotional development and schooling outcomes. The immediate impact of preschool is that it closes 70% of the achievement gap! What matters? The design must include intentional teaching and individualization - these increase effect size. HIPPY does this by providing parents with a well laid plan of activities over the course of 30 weeks, and teaches them how to adapt to their child's particular learning styles and needs.

Watch the full interview here:
http://www.tcrecord.org/voice.asp

Holiday Blessings

2009-12-22T14:21:00.004-06:00

Everyone is accounted for
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

This year for the first time, we were able to organize a drive to sponsor Christmas for 2 HIPPY families in great need. Both the Center for Non Profit Management and the tenants of the Meadows Executive Suites stepped up and generously fulfilled wishlists and donated money for gift cards to our two families in need. Both families were so appreciative and grateful to the generosity of strangers. Issa, pictured here, said "Now we can put a tree up. We have something to put under it." One of the donors mentioned to me "My daughter and I spent more time on that purchase than any other gift we bought this year...because we knew it would mean so much to that 11 year old little girl." This is a season of making lists, pressured purchases and overwhelming days. And yet, for too many parents, it's another in a series of disappointments and reminders that they cannot provide their children with that fairy tale holiday moment. While we adults can face "anything", there's nothing so hurtful as the disappointment of a child. As we head into 2010, I wish everyone the best in health, wealth, happiness and the ability to step back, give back and count our blessings!

Growing and Changing

2009-12-16T09:30:00.001-06:00

When my daughter was 4 years old one time I told her "I thought you didn't like broccoli" and she answered "Mama, I'm growing and changing"! So adorable! Well sometimes it seems like we adults don't grow and change so much, but it's not true! Last year we developed an instrument to measure the growth and changes in our home visitors over their year of service with us. It's called the "Know and Grow Checklist" and it measures how comfortable they feel with various skills and knowledge at the begining, middle and end of the program year. A few posts ago I shared their gains in the areas of organizational skills and flexibility. Another area of gains was in Communication, such an important skill in any job and even moreso in HIPPY where home visitors work with a group of families with unique interests, needs, challenges and personalities. We found that at the begining of the year, only 31% of our home visitors strongly agreed that they felt comfortable effectively communicating with others, by the end of year 44% feel strongly competent in communication.

PIC: a home visitor (r) and parent (l) in Houston, 2008-2009 program year

Barnes and Noble Event

2009-12-07T08:15:00.003-06:00

Shop for a Cause! Get your holiday shopping done and help support HIPPY all at once!

Texas HIPPY will be hosting a winter fundraising event on December 10, 2009 at the Lincoln Park Barnes & Noble in Dallas, TX. Get a jump on your Christmas shopping at Barnes & Noble, all you have to do is present this voucher

http://www.unt.edu/hippy/involved/pages/holiday_bookfair_flyer.pdf

OR mention HIPPY when you make your purchase on this Thursday, December 10th at ANY Barnes & Noble store across the country! The proceeds of the fundraiser will go towards new teaching materials and program expansion to reach even more families in Dallas. The fundraiser will include winter arts and crafts, a treasure hunt, storytime with acclaimed children's book author, Janie Bynum and live music.

11:00am – Preschool Storytime

5:00pm – Meet children’s author, Janie Bynum, author of Kiki’s Blankie

7:00pm – Holiday Storytime

Join us!!!

Thankful

2009-12-03T10:29:00.001-06:00

We're so thankful to the staff of the Center for Nonprofit Management(http://cnmdallas.org/) who generously sponsored a HIPPY family for the holidays. When they heard the plight of Alma G and her husband, they went all out and purchased gifts for the children, glasses, gift certificates for a grocery store and collected gently used clothing for all the family members. You see, Alma G. and her husband (Ernesto Sr.) have three children who are 2, 4, and 8 years old. The 4-year old, Ernesto Jr., has respiratory problems which causes him to use a breathing machine. Ernesto Sr. just lost his job and Alma is unable to work due to her own health problems (Alma is often very sick with a blood disease called sarcoidosis). The clinic where she used to receive medical treatment has recently stopped filling her medication due to the family’s inability to pay. The family has one car but it is up for sale. The 8 year old daughter, Ruby, needs glasses but Alma and her husband cannot afford them. The family lives in a mobile home that is behind in rent and have been threatened with eviction. At times, the nearby neighbors assist the family with food and rent when possible.

Thanks CNM Staff! Your generosity made a big difference in the holidays for a family who needed us!

PIC: CNM staff with their generous contribution

Organizational Skills

2009-11-19T17:39:00.004-06:00

One of the most exciting aspects of HIPPY has been to witness the professional growth and development of our home visitors. Part of our model is to recruit home visitors from the alumni, current parents and from the general population of the communities that we serve. HIPPY parents often make the most effective and dedicated home visitors because of their first hand knowledge of how HIPPY affected their own lives. It's quite a leap to jump from being participating parent to becoming a home visitor who works with 15 other parents. Our policy is to bring on home visitors, provide them professional development, support and training and then counsel them into other positions in the field of their choice. Many of them want to become educators, social workers and other helping professionals. Our challenge has been to capture their professional growth so we can better tell that story. Last year we piloted a "Know and Grow" checklist to measure how our home visitors grew over the course of the year with us. The area in which our home visitors grew the most was ORGANIZATIONAL SKILLS/FLEXIBILITY: "Meeting deadlines, maintaining schedules, and adapting to change". At the begining of the year 42% strongly agreed that they felt comfortable in this area; this grew to 69% by the end of the year. For many of our home visitors, HIPPY is their first "job" and this shows that they are learning some valuable skills and gaining confidence in an area that will help them in their future work.

pic: Dallas HIPPY Home Visitors during weekly training, 2008-2009 school year.

Stay at Home Moms Data

2009-11-12T16:23:00.002-06:00

Mommy wars? Seems that's missing the point. A recent report shows that stay at moms are "disporportionately low-income, less educated and often immigrant". Our current Early Childhood Education policies disproportionately focus on providing center based services to increase preschool services to children who need it the most. These efforts miss the opportunity to provide services to young children whose parents stay home and who still need school readiness. these findings also have implications for early childhood policy, where debates tend to focus on improving access to quality child care and preschool programs for disadvantaged youngsters. This data tells us that stay-at-home mothers disproportionately include women who do not have the educational background or resources that allow better-off parents to provide more robust learning experiences for their children. If that's the case, then policymakers may need to supplement efforts to improve child care with strategies that help that subset of stay-at-home moms support their children’s early development.

View the original report: http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam/p20-561.pdf

Read a policy summary from Ed Watch: http://www.newamerica.net/blog/early-ed-watch/2009/closer-look-stay-home-moms-15067

pic: a HIPPY parent reading to her child during a literacy event hosted by HIPPY Texas and Earning by Learning.

Health Bill Includes Home Visitation

2009-11-06T15:44:00.003-06:00

US senate
Originally uploaded by Bo Grünberger

The US Senate Finance Committee released the legislative language on the Healthcare Reform Bill - a whopping 1,502 pages! They call it "America's Healthy Future Act of 2009". The purpose is "To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes." Deeply embedded in there (Section 1801, pp 453-480) is a section on home visitation, I guess that's one of the "other purposes" referred to. You can imagine the excitement in the field of home visitation that there might be some resources finally put into our work. However!... the fact that we're looped into such a contentious bill is a little nervewracking. Anyway, here's the overview of what they wanting to do about home visitation programs:

13 ‘‘SEC. 511. MATERNAL, INFANT, AND EARLY CHILDHOOD
14 HOME VISITING PROGRAMS.
15 ‘‘(a) PURPOSES.—The purposes of this section are—
16 ‘‘(1) to strengthen and improve the programs
17 and activities carried out under this title;
18 ‘‘(2) to improve coordination of services for at
19 risk communities; and
20 ‘‘(3) to identify and provide comprehensive
21 services to improve outcomes for families who reside
22 in at risk communities.

Sky Ranch

2009-10-30T15:33:00.002-05:00

Sky Ranch
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

It's almost time again! It was only a few short months ago that the HIPPY Coordinators met for 2 days of training and networking at Sky Ranch in Van TX. It's almost time for us to get all our home visitors together for our annual Kick Off. This gives us an opportunity to work as a statewide team and provide training and support for our home visitors. Pray for nice, dry weather for our 70+ participants next Thursday and Friday. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

Corpus Christi HIPPY!

2009-10-01T17:33:00.002-05:00

We're so pleased to have another new HIPPY site starting up this fall! Corpus Christi HIPPY is being implemented by the Holy Family Catholic School. New coordinator, Teresa Koehler, went to preservice this summer and hit the ground running. According to Teresa, "The preservice training helped me to understand how the HIPPY model works and gave me the self-confidence to implement it at our school."
She's now back in Corpus starting up HIPPY as a pilot with 2 home visitors (AmeriCorps members) each serving about 15 families. Corpus Christi HIPPY is a collaboration between the Diocese of Corpus Christi and Corpus Christi Independent School District. Title I funding will be provided by CCISD to implement the program at Holy Family Catholic School. Says Teresa, "It is my hope that the parents will learn skills that will give them self-confidence and self esteem." Within the next 4 weeks a HIPPY USA trainer will come onsite to provide Teresa and her team with an orientation site visit and get them started!

(Holy Family Church, Corpus Christi TX pictured above)

My Civic Duty

2009-09-24T14:40:00.004-05:00

Oak Cliff Mirror & Glass - Dallas
Originally uploaded by twentysixpoint2

Recently I was called to Jury Duty for the Federal Court. Even though these things are never convenient it was an interesting experience when I got selected as a juror. The alleged crime took place in my neighborhood and several derogatory remarks were made by police and attorneys about my neighborhood of "Oak Cliff" Texas, which I totally did not appreciate! It reminded me that that the neighborhoods we generally serve in HIPPY are saturated with negative self images and stereotypes that are perpetuated both by those within and outside of the community. What's it like for a child growing up hearing that their neighborhood is "the bad side of town", and their school is "a bad school"? How does that affect their own self image and their hopes and dreams? Yes, we hear a lot about the kids that break out of their humble roots. What are we supposed to do with those who don't, those who stay in the neighborhood and raise children of their own there? We have a responsability to all children, those who stay and those who go. One of the strengths of HIPPY is that it builds upon the leadership and positive aspects of every neighborhood and every school. That's something that will make lasting change from the inside.

Curriculum Crosswalk

2009-09-18T17:54:00.000-05:00

HIPPY curriculum used in a home visit in Houston

This semester we are lucky to have a wonderful intern, Jamesia Johnson, who is taking on an important and difficult task for us. The TEA (Texas Education Agency) changed the PK curriculum guidelines last school year and we need to measure how the HIPPY 4 year old curriculum stacks up to these new standards. Jamesia is taking on the meticulous job of cross checking each of the skills developed in HIPPY with the skills outlined by TEA for preschoolers. TEA has identified 9 learning domains, the first of which is the Social and Emotional Development Domain. There are 21 learning goals in this domain. The first is for the child to be"aware of where own body is in space and respects personal boundaries". How does HIPPY address this? Children are given the opportunity to practice these skills 139 times in Age 3 and 136 times in Age 4. Some of the ways they practice these skills are:

Identifies & names body parts & their functions
Moves body according to directions given
Uses the body & senses to explore their environment
Discriminates between a variety of sights, sounds, textures, smells, & tastes

Helen is Helping!

2009-09-10T08:30:00.001-05:00

Thank you so much again to AARP for bringing us a wonderful opportunity, in the person of Helen H. She is our AARP volunteer and is such a thoughtful and hard working addition to our team. As we can all get quite noisy here in this little office, Helen's quiet and dedicated work ethic has had a calming influence. Thanks Helen!

Mentor Connect

2009-09-02T18:31:00.001-05:00

Two of my former home instructors, Zulema on the left (me in the middle) and Cecilia on the right, they are now full time early childhood educators with the family literacy project

At the end of May we held a HIPPY Transition Fair to introduce our HIPPY Home Visitors / AmeriCorps Members to a variety of career opportunities. Members had an opportunity to meet with representatives from a variety of careers, as well as brush up on their interviewing skills and get feedback on their resumes. We also inaugurated the HIPPY Mentor Connect program. The purpose of Mentor Connect is to ensure that members successfully transition from their position as Home Instructor into college and a successful career.

HIPPY Mentor Connect is an informally structured program focused on connecting HIPPY home instructors or alumni with individual mentors that can add insight and guidance as home instructors/alumni strive to reach their education and career goals. Recognizing that one of the primary factors toward achieving success is access to information, HIPPY Mentor Connect will assist HIPPY home instructors in their personal and professional development by providing a valuable resource to bridge the gap. HIPPY Mentor Connect volunteers will serve as a support and resource for HIPPY Home Instructors/Alumni. Each mentor will be assigned a home instructor with aspirations of joining the mentor’s career field. The mentor will assist the home instructor navigate toward reaching their professional goals by offering their expertise of the field and providing the home instructor with guidance, advice, and support as needed. Each mentor will commit to assisting in the personal and professional development of a home instructor. The primary way that a mentor will keep their commitment is by making themselves accessible to their mentee via phone, e-mail, etc. HIPPY Mentor Connect will host two formal events. Other relationship development will be conducted via the mentor relationship at the leisure of the mentor and the mentee.

Are you ready to connect?

Parenting Education is Economic Development

2009-08-28T09:00:00.000-05:00

Sibling of a HIPPY child at a family meeting in Dallas

"The impact of good parenting goes far beyond its influence on individual children." according to a June 2009 report from the Partnership for America's Economic Success. We all know that our economy is in a slump and HOPE that it is bouncing back. Faced with doom and gloom predictions and conflicting advice from economists, what can one person do? Well, parenting or supporting parent education is something we can all do! Research irrefutably demonstrates that children whose parents interact with them positively from birth onwards develop into more successful students, adults and ultimately parents themselves. The report identifies HIPPY as one of 10 programs that can "sharply increase the odds of healthy social, behavioral and cognitive development, helping them become the engaged citizens and productive workers our country needs." Who said we work in the "non-profit" arena? What better profit could there be?

Check out the full report: http://www.partnershipforsuccess.org/uploads/20090708_PAESParentingBriefFinal.pdf

Social Networking

2009-08-05T09:26:00.000-05:00

My "real" friend Sophana Kim and I, we met the old fashioned way, at work 20 years ago

I recently joined Facebook--will you be my friend? So far we people can join our group (HIPPY Texas) and donate to our cause (School Readiness and Parent Involvment). There's something vaguely strange about the mish mash of information I learn everyday about such a vast spectrum of friends, family, co-workers and contacts! For example, I learn when my friend Lisa Markley will be playing live at a local venue, and then learn what the AmeriCorps Alums are up to, followed by my colleague's post on a quiz she took which rates how latino she is (47% which is surprising since she's Mexican). I'm going to hang in there for a while and see if I can figure this thing out. I'm still holding out on twitter, linked in, myspace...by the time I figure facebook out, something else will be taking over! Meanwhile, I'll see you on Facebook...

Dallas HIPPY Spotlight

2009-07-28T09:37:00.002-05:00

Dallas HIPPY Team 2008-2009

Last year I was asked by HIPPY USA to serve as the external monitor visiting Dallas HIPPY. Usually other HIPPY USA trainers are brought in to evaluate Texas sites, but I quickly agreed because I felt it was an opportunity to provide in depth technical assistance to our original Texas HIPPY site and work in my home turf. Each site is assigned a national trainer for a 2-3 year cycle, and last year our “visit” began with an assessment of program strengths and challenges and identification of areas in which staff wanted technical assistance and support. We developed a plan together and this year I have followed up with in depth observations of home visits, a file review and observation of parent group meetings to see how the plan has been implemented. As I zoomed around town from one home visit and school to another I was suddenly reminded that this little corner of the world is abuzz with HIPPY! Right in the neighborhood where I live (Oak Cliff) there are several “HIPPY Schools”. Indeed, this is one of our challenges; HIPPY can often seem invisible because it’s happening in the privacy of family homes and in remote corners of school campuses. On my first home visit, the parent recognized me from 20 years ago when she was first in HIPPY with her oldest son and I was the HIPPY coordinator! She said that when she had her youngest daughter, now 4, she sought the program out even though she had moved to a new neighborhood. She wanted to ensure her daughter had the same opportunities she had given to her oldest son. At the parent meeting in another neighborhood the coordinator started the meeting with a quick warm up that resulted in parents identifying the skills that children were learning in the HIPPY activities. To have a group of parents of preschoolers engaged in “teacher talk” about vocabulary development, logical thinking and eye hand coordination caught the attention of nearby teachers who weren’t sure if this was a staff development or a parent meeting! Later, back “at home” in the Dallas HIPPY office, I was so impressed by the intensity and level of the home visitor training; the coordinators have developed a series of interactive and engaging training activities that prepare home visitors for enriching conversations with parents about the development of their children, the skills they are practicing and the instructional techniques used in HIPPY. Each component that I observed brought home the realization that we need to bring HIPPY into the public eye! We have some really great things happening!

Dallas HIPPY Board of Friends

2009-07-22T18:20:00.001-05:00

Off to a great start! The Board of Friends (known as Advisory Council at other sites) had the first meeting of the year on March 10th. Our format for the first meeting was a program crosswalk, giving all partners the opportunity to share what's upcoming in their organization. Information was shared that HIPPY staff will take to their HIPPY parents, such as:

Dallas Recreation Center resources

Dallas Public library, Every Child Ready to Read activities

Injury Prevention Center planning activities

Boys and Girls Club of Dallas initiatives

We were so pleased to have Irma Vela, retired HIPPY coordinator joining us and sharing her expertise and support for HIPPY. Thanks to her, Dallas HIPPY has since received a gift of various household items to be used as door prizes for parent meetings.

Starting a New Program

2009-07-15T18:30:00.003-05:00

One of the most challenging, and rewarding, parts of my job is supporting organizations that want to bring HIPPY into their community. Each start up is different, but in my experience all of them have the following similarities:

Need for school readiness and parent involvement - once the organization recognizes this need they see HIPPY as a viable solution that is cost effective and has the desired outcomes.

A champion, who advocates for the program until it becomes a reality! This person is a leader who is often within the organization that eventually hosts the program, although sometimes it's a dedicated volunteer or other member of the community.

Innovation culture in the organization - HIPPY often takes a change in perspective from seeing parents as a problem to recognizing them as powerful advocates and partners in their children's education. While home visitation has a proven track record, it is often perceived as risky or outside of the normal operations of an organization and it takes an innovative organization to recognize the power of this method.

Funding, this is what it all comes down to--finding that funding means grant writing, pulling together collaborations and partnerships and building HIPPY into existing resource streams.

Over the years I have witnessed so much interest in HIPPY, but unless all these aspects are in place, that interest does not gel into a new program starting up. It takes between 8 months and 3 years for that original interest to coalesce into a real program. This is a long and arduous process that can be compared to starting up a new business. The other day I found a website that helps non profits develop new parent education programs and identify what needs to be in place for a program to be successful. I thought it was interesting and an excellent resource for new programss to be developed so I'm sharing it here: http://www.cyfernet.org/pdpe/

RCT or die?

2009-07-07T21:35:00.001-05:00

How do we prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that HIPPY

has made a significant difference in the futures of these children?

OK, that headline sounded a bit dire and dramatic I know but my mind keeps wandering back to the heated discussions we had on RCTs during the National HIPPY Evaluation Summit. Randomized Control Trials (RCTs) had everyone avidly sharing their opinion both for and against. Let's see if I can outline some thoughts while still maintaining some neutrality. Almost all of social science is built on quasi-experimental designs as well as in depth qualitative studies (such as case studies). RCTs follow the medical model for studying the effectiveness of drugs or medical interventions. In an RCT, participants are randomly assigned to a control group or an intervention group and evaluation is done on both groups throughout and/or after the intervention. Recently this approach is being discussed among legislators and policy-makers and held up as the “gold standard” of social science research. Why aren’t we hopping quickly onto this bandwagon? Why haven’t we done this already? First of all, it’s a very expensive evaluation design that requires serious resources in terms of expertise and staffing that makes it inaccessible to most programs—it necessitates a separate source of funding for the evaluation component alone that is most likely more expensive than the cost of the program it evaluates. Second, it works best in the initial implementation phase of a program, not as an ongoing program evaluation design. This reduces the opportunity to implement RCT to new programs, which may be at their most vulnerable in terms of fidelity to the model due to the inexperience of staff. The third and last reason why we’ve been hesitant to implement RCT is the nature of the HIPPY intervention. As a voluntary program being offered to vulnerable populations we are recruiting families based on relationships we’re building with them. During this recruitment phase we discuss with parents how their child will benefit from the parent’s commitment to the weekly visit and to working with their child daily. We discuss the materials they will be provided and the support they will be offered through home visits and group meetings. In an RTC model we would then have to randomly assign parents to the HIPPY and control groups. While this is common practice in drug trials, it’s not common in social services and could be damaging to the credibility and standing of the sponsoring organization if not handled in a socially responsible and positive way. If we could work out those three “little details” we would consider hosting a HIPPY RCT.

Creating Intelligence

2009-07-01T17:41:00.000-05:00

In "Rising Above I.Q." a June 7th, 2009 NY Times op ed written by Nicholas D. Kristof, he says that by studying the "the success of Asian-Americans, Jews and West Indian blacks...there may be some lessons for the rest of us." What makes individuals in these groups rise above the norm? He scratches off higher intelligence and genetics as possible reasons. He recognizes diligence and hard work as factors. But ultimately the solution is...EDUCATION, EDUCATION, EDUCATION! Being read to and having parents regularly speaking to their young child are simple ideas that work. He cites research demonstrating that the average child of professional parents have heard 30 million words spoken by age 3, compared to a child who was raised "on welfare" (therefore the parent is presumed to be low income) has heard only 10 million words.

HIPPY gives parents words, so their child does not enter school with a 20 million word disadvantage.

Argentina HIPPY

2009-06-23T11:19:00.000-05:00

Argentina HIPPY Team
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

I had the fantastic opportunity to be part of the founding of HIPPY Argentina. This program is the newest international site and has some unique aspects I’d like to share. The sponsoring organization is AMIA—the most important and largest Jewish community organization in Argentina, a country that is said to have the third largest Jewish population after Israel and the US. Their services are vast, ranging from social services, religious education training, elder care, employment services and cultural exchange among others. Their history unfortunately includes a tragically brutal bombing in 1994 in which 85 casualties died. My daily visit to AMIA had me approaching what is currently the most fortified building in Argentina, moreso even than the “Casa Rosada” where the Argentine president’s offices are, yet planted in the middle of a bustling textile and warehouse district. I had been pre-cleared (my name was given in advance to security) and given the go-ahead to walk through a door the thickness of a bank vault, then a metal detector and through another bank-vault like door. Once inside I walked up a flight of stairs and into busy maze of the Department of Social Services of AMIA. There, HIPPY falls within the area of social services provided to young Jewish families. Other programs include food distribution, counseling and childcare. HIPPY will be working within this structure to provide school readiness and parent education to low income Jews in various areas of greater Buenos Aires. This in itself makes it unique, as the first program outside of Israel to focus on services to Jewish families. I spent three days training the home visitors and coordinator and then another two days in meetings with the team of social workers and other leaders in the community. Before leaving I had the opportunity to share the HIPPY story with officials from the City of Buenos Aires in the hope that at a future date HIPPY services could be expanded into other communities. I was inordinately pleased to be given this opportunity to start HIPPY in Argentina because I’ve periodically visited since early childhood since my Aunt and later my grandmother moved to Buenos Aires. It was such a treat to be able to see family again and also to have a chance to share what I’ve learned in HIPPY with one of the communities of my heart.

For more pictures of the training, see our flickr site:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/hippyprogram/

National HIPPY Evaluation Summit

2009-06-18T14:00:00.001-05:00

Miriam Westheimer, Director of HIPPY International at the Evaluation Summit

Research and evaluation on the effectiveness of HIPPY has many different permutations across the US and internationally. In early May, Texas HIPPY in partnership with Colorado Parent Child Foundation, HIPPY International, HIPPY USA and Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) sponsored the first HIPPY Evaluation Summit. Evaluators and invited guests from outside organizations spent two days discussing the cumulative lessons learned from HIPPY research and plotting a path for collaborative and strategic evaluation work across the country. It was fascinating to hear from our “outside” experts what, in their opinion, our strengths are, and identification of do-able and worthwhile next steps. One big “aha” moment for me was the realization that our evaluation strategy should focus on the strongest and most faithfully replicated aspects of our program model. To me this means that evaluation that measures primary effects of HIPPY (school readiness and parent involvement) should be our main focus. Evaluations on secondary effects of HIPPY (child abuse prevention, nutrition/obesity prevention, civic engagement) are tempting but less desirable. One exciting opportunity that I can see is to use our online MIS in conjunction with the relationships we’ve built with school district evaluation departments to identify the critical dosage at which HIPPY makes the greatest impact. I’ve always been curious about which point in our 90 week program is the watershed for change to take hold. Knowing this can help us know how hard to push for families to complete the curriculum.

Houston HIPPY Hosts

2009-06-10T16:42:00.001-05:00

Last Friday at Brookline Elementary, the Parent Engagement Department’s Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program, in collaboration with the Houston Women's Center and The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) kick off an eight week workshop series for HIPPY parents. The purpose of this project is to inform parents about Domestic Violence and Sexual Abuse prevention. Parents from the East, North and South regions of HISD are participating. In support of the HIPPY goal to empower parents to become leaders in the community, this preventive education will enable HIPPY parents to lead others and to disseminate information to prevent abuse at home and in the community. In the last of two sessions, parents will be working on a special project to present to the community by creating a visual symbol that will deliver of the message and advise the community about the importance of being informed and proactive in the prevention of violence. Participating parents will became part of the “Primary Prevention” team with Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA).

Strong Families Needed in View of Economic Crisis

2009-06-03T21:26:00.004-05:00

AP photo: http://blog.pennlive.com/thrive/2007/05/the_dalai_lama_coming_to_the_l.html

The May 18, 2009 edition of Business Week magazine had a short article on the Dalai Lama’s reflection on the current economic crisis. His take? There are three underlying causes of the economic collapse: greed, lack of transparency and speculation. He goes onto say that our society’s obsession with “money, money, money, money” is not right. While recognizing that, of course, money is needed to live, “it is not the only measure of value” and that our focus should be on other metrics which include the “happy family, compassionate family, the family full of affection and the compassionate community.” This brief interview gave me much to reflect on and connects viscerally to our work in HIPPY. How does one go about supporting the development of such a family? HIPPY does through concrete tactics that provide parents with tools to work daily with their children in a loving, nurturing and compassionate way. Our home visitors act as conduits, bringing positive parenting techniques into the home in a supportive manner. Our HIPPY children are given opportunities to have school readiness experiences in the nurturing support of their family home. And once they transition their children into full time school, HIPPY parents become a part of a compassionate community of parents who support their children’s education, empathize with and support their children’s teachers, and exercise their leadership either as home visitors themselves, or among other parents in the community. I think the Dalai Lama would approve.

Shapes and colors

2009-05-12T17:50:00.001-05:00

Shapes and colors
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

Part of the HIPPY curriculum is a set of plastic shapes. These are introduced in the 3 year old curriculum and used throughout the 4 year old curriculum in a variety of activities. They are used to teach...

* shapes
* colors
* pattern / sequencing
* counting
* vocabulary

El Paso HIPPY on the Horizon

2009-05-05T15:22:00.002-05:00

View of Downtown from Wyler Aerial Tramway State Park, El Paso, Texas
Originally uploaded by MikeL-911

New programs usually start small, not so in El Paso! We are thrilled to announce that El Paso HIPPY will begin in Fall 2009 with 400 families! El Paso United Way has received an AmeriCorps grant from the Texas OneStar Foundation to have 38 AmeriCorps members who will serve as home visitors, and two full time coordinators to supervise, train and support them. HIPPY is returning to El Paso, having been there in the early 90's, through 1999, at Regionl 19 Education Service Center. We are looking for program partnerships, collaborations, donors and volunteers to further strengthen our new program in El Paso. Please contact me if you would like to get involved!

HIPPY*VISTA Team

2009-04-28T17:57:00.003-05:00

HIPPY*VISTA Team with Texas HIPPY Staff
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

Our long planned for and much awaited HIPPY*VISTA initiative is coming into full swing! New VISTA members Luis Rocha, Cherri Dehart and Amanda Sims went to Preservice Orientation in Albuquerque and then started as VISTA members at their sites on Monday February 16th. They have hit the ground running, with meetings at their sites, getting to know their host organizations and settling in to their new assignment. Luis Rocha will be working statewide, supporting the overall development and expansion of HIPPY in Texas, he is placed here in our office (Texas HIPPY Center, UNT). Cherri Dehart is working to bring HIPPY to the Maypearl / Venus / Grandview areas, and is located at Lorene S. Kirkpatrick Elementary School in Maypearl. Amanda Sims is housed on campus at the University of North Texas in Denton, and is focused on bringing HIPPY back to the Denton area. I think the most excited member of the HIPPY*VISTA team is Sarah Thorne, who started as a member back in August, and finally has colleagues to work with! Follow the challenges and victories of our newest team on the HIPPY*VISTA blog: http://texashippyvista.blogspot.com/

Our program was highlighted in a recent Dallas Morning News article on news that President Obama signed the Serve America Act into law:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/042209dnmetamericorps.3b8d308.html

NEWSFLASH HIPPY!

2009-04-22T10:57:00.001-05:00

HIPPY was featured on the news, Univision here in Dallas (link below). We've received a wave of emails and phone calls from parents following the story! Many people have been connected with their local HIPPY site. It's always disappointing to tell parents that we don't have a program in their area. For those parents I've sent them a packet of information to share with their local principal or school district.

http://www.univision.com/content/videoplayer.jhtml?cid=1906425

Where are they now?

2009-04-14T18:27:00.005-05:00

Gina helped us out on the HIPPY USA video production whenshe was HIPPY Grand Prairie Corodinator

Those of you who are "insiders" here in Texas HIPPY may be wondering about some of the friends we've made along the way who are no longer with the HIPPY program, where are they now?

Joe G. who was a coordinator in Irving HIPPY, is now a teacher at Everman ISD--first grade I think! He's still big into kickboxing but goes easy on the kids!
Alicia Yaliweisei, was a Dallas HIPPY coordinator and is now assistant principal in a Dallas elementary school
Gina E. who was a coordinator in Dallas HIPPY, then moved to Grand Prairie and started HIPPY there is now an assistant principal in Eisenhower Elem, GPISD. She still has HIPPY in her heart, and in her school.
Irma V. who was a Dallas HIPPY Coordinator and retired several years ago is still working along with her husband Roberto in education. They mentor teachers, consult on projects, are active in their church. We are happy to welcome Irma back to HIPPY as an advisor in the Dallas HIPPY Board of Friends!
Melanie W.M., Austin HIPPY Coordinator, now works for another Austin non profit organization that works with parents of young children. She and her family recent downsized to a smaller house in Austin in a new development where houses were built to be very energy efficient and green.

Wishing you all the very best! Thanks for supporting HIPPY!

Effects of HIPPY on Pre K Students

2009-04-08T14:46:00.000-05:00

One of our HIPPY Graduates, Lluvia from Richardson ISD HIPPY

Part of our internal collaborations within the University of North Texas includes providing graduate students with the opportunity to conduct evaluation on the HIPPY program. Recently Veronica Martinez-Cantu, completed her Master's Thesis in Sociology, December 2007. She completed an independent study with Dr. Angela Nievar of UNT College of Education, and now works at Dallas ISD in the Research and Evaluation Department.

Together with Dr. Angela Nievar, Veronica completed an evaluation of HIPPY children in Pre-K. They have been accepted to present findings to the American Educational Research Association Annual Conference. Below are some excerpts of their findings:

"Early childhood intervention programs in this study are significant predictors of reading scores for low-income bilingual students. More specifically, participation in the HIPPY program predicted significantly higher reading scores; there were no effects for students who participated only in prekindergarten. This may suggest that the parental involvement curriculum in HIPPY programs helps bilingual students to overcome the barriers they face when ecological factors are in place, supporting the theory of developmental contextualism (Lerner, 1991)."

and

"It was of particular interest that prekindergarten alone was not an effective intervention for this group. The HIPPY program predicted higher scores on TAKS reading when combined with prekindergarten. A test of the HIPPY program, including students who were only in HIPPY and in both groups, was also significant."

It makes so much sense to me that HIPPY children in Pre-K do even better than their peers. That first year of school is such a huge transition for children. If they enter school well prepared, with parents who clearly understand their role and how to support their child's education, they are able to fully benefit from high quality classroom experiences. The evidence is clear...children need both quality pre-school classroom experience AND support at home!

Laredo HIPPY Closing

2009-04-02T14:42:00.000-05:00

Families celebrating the completion of the 2nd year of HIPPY in Laredo

Unfortunately, a sad announcement to make about Laredo HIPPY. Due to unexpected lack of funding this year the program will not be able to continue into the third year as planned. We are saddened with this abrupt change in plans. Unfortunately, this is happening in a community that needs it the most--in the outlying colonias of Laredo (Rio Bravo and El Cenizo). We would like to thank the Laredo Community Foundation, Texas A&M International University and the many parents, home visitors, school staff and others that made HIPPY such a success for 2 years. We hope that future education funding can make HIPPY possible in Laredo again. I wish Esther Hernandez and all the wonderful people we met in Laredo the very best.

Take Home Information

2009-03-26T14:17:00.002-05:00

Take Home Information
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

HIPPY provides a necessary link for our parents to the resources and information available in the greater community. Home visits focus on preparing parents, one on one, to work with their child that week. During parent meetings we try to bring in community resources and provide parents with the opportunity to ask questions and learn from each other. In light of the recent focus on the problem of obesity among children, all of our programs have made sure to bring in nutritionists and nutrition information to their parent meetings at least once a year. This picture shows the resource/information table provided to parents at a HIPPY parent meeting in Houston. The door prizes for this meeting were nutrition related such as healthy snacks and children's vitamins. All parents took home healthy recipes and had the opportunity to sample healthy snacks.

DARTing Around

2009-03-17T11:42:00.001-05:00

DART Transit Bus
Originally uploaded by wandrson

We're trying to be all urban and hip around here at Texas HIPPY...it all started with David when he bought a house in Richardson, and started taking the train in to work. Recently Susan and I have both had to start sharing our cars with our respective teenage daughters, who are now drivers (eek!). Susan takes the train in to Pearl Station a few times a week and walks a few blocks up to our office, and usually has a story to tell! Me, it's all a very intellectual concept still--I like the idea but haven't made the move. I'm thinking about buying a scooter, yeah gas/mileage etc...mostly because I think they are so cute!!! Then there's light rail...DART is going to be able to bring us within a block of our office. We're actually in between TWO stations, both of which will be opening September 2009. Once THAT is done, I'll be able to DART up to the airport, to Carrollton, everywhere!

The Challenge of History--Welcome New HIPPY USA Executive Director

2009-03-11T14:40:00.002-05:00

I had the priviledge of being part of the HIPPY USA Executive Director Interview Committee earlier this year. We had the opportunity to interview three really really good candidates. I walked away knowing that, regardless of who was selected, HIPPY USA would be in good hands. I was pleased with the final selection of Marvin Schwartz who I believe has a great combination of skills and experiences and will help us take HIPPY to the next level nationally. One of the things that impressed me about Marvin was the research and legwork he did BEFORE the interview. He went on multiple visits to HIPPY programs and obviously did a lot of homework on our organization. Even I, a 20 year veteran in HIPPY, learned something new about HIPPY during the interview process. This revelation (the Hebrew translation of our original program name) was later shared in a letter from Marvin to the field, which is excerpted below: "I bring to HIPPY a diverse professional background in communications and development for the nonprofit sector. I also place great value on understanding history, and I urge each HIPPY program to preserve its unique heritage. Our program origins offer an inspirational example in this area. Many of you know that HIPPY was created in Israel by Avima Lombard in 1969. But, do you know that the translation of the program’s original Hebrew name (Ha Etgar) is THE CHALLENGE? Forty years ago, an innovative educator was challenged with the task of preparing immigrant children for educational success. Today, that challenge is repeated thousands of times every day as HIPPY program administrators balance the complex demands of funding, staffing, accountability, and much more. I am very anxious to meet you, to hear about the experiences you face on a daily basis, and to help all sites share the ‘lessons learned’ that have made HIPPY such a successful program. Together, we will continue to make history, and together we will bring HIPPY into the national prominence it so rightly deserves!"

A Principal Shares

2009-03-03T13:23:00.002-06:00

If you ever get a chance to be "Principal for a Day", do it! Take your vitamins, get some extra sleep and then prepare for a heckuva day! I hear the stories every day (my husband Ricardo is principal of Hope Medrano Elementary in Dallas ISD). That's why it's so gratifying to hear from principals that value what we're doing at HIPPY. Recently, Jose Munoz, Principal at Cesar Chavez Elementary in Dallas ISD told us "Students who complete this program are better prepared for school, and the parents receive good training on how to help in the developmental stages of their child." Thank you Mr. Munoz, we couldn't have put it better ourselves!

Cesar Chavez Elementary:

http://www.dallasisd.org/schools/realtor_new.cfm?id_con=102

UTD Center for Children and Families

2009-02-26T09:30:00.000-06:00

I have had UT Dallas on my mind a lot lately. My daughter Hannah is a senior in High School, and while she hasn't made her final decision, she's seriously considering UT Dallas. You know how it is when you are considering buying a certain car you suddenly start seeing it everywhere! That's how UTD has been for me lately, with good reason! UT Dallas has just opened the Center for Children and Families, http://ccf.utdallas.edu/. The center is part of the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences. I had the pleasure of meeting staff member Emily Touchstone over the phone the other day. It sounds like they have hit the ground running! Their inaugural initiative is the Spring 2009 Lecture Series: "Helping Children Succeed". They are going to be addressing some topics that you usually have to pay good money for at a conference, things such as social aggression among children and helping families cope with chronic illness. They are a great addition to the professional community here in North Texas...and would make a great place for a young college student who might be studying special education to do an internship with :)

Texas Teaching Fellows

2009-02-20T09:50:00.000-06:00

We’re pleased to have recently met some new colleagues over at Texas Teaching Fellows (www.texasteachingfellows.org), particularly Mike Burlett and Melanie Moore. We found out that we’re working on some of the same issues, from different angles. Their work is to increase the workforce of quality, dedicated teachers in Texas and to improve education for all children in Texas. They do this by providing alternative certification training and ongoing support to their teaching fellows. Their fellows transfer into education from other fields, become alternatively certified teachers, and work in high-need schools. Well, HIPPY also wants to increase the workforce of quality, dedicated teachers, and we work toward improving education for all Texas children. How? Many of our HIPPY home visitors want to go into education, and they use their AmeriCorps education award to get their degrees. Their experience in HIPPY makes them passionate and dedicated teachers, as evidenced by several home instructors who became first time teachers this year. How do we improve education for children? Our HIPPY parents receive weekly home visits that provide them with the curriculum for them to work with their child for an hour a week, getting them ready for school. Students who were in HIPPY have demonstrated statistically significant higher test scores than children who did not benefit from the program. By forging a partnership with Texas Teaching Fellows it allows us to create a better support net for teachers, home visitors, parents and children. We are especially eager to create a partnership that can help bring HIPPY to Carrollton Farmer’s Branch, and create a pool of future teachers for the region.

Coordinator Spotlight - Esme

2009-02-03T08:23:00.006-06:00

Monica (l) and Esmeralda (r) at the Kick Off

Esmeralda Rodriguez is new to HIPPY but has years of experience in the field of parent education. After the founding coordinator, Gina Esparza, was promoted and left HIPPY we were lucky to have HIPPY transferred into Esmeralda’s Parent Involvement Department at Grand Prairie ISD. I had a chance to get to know Esme in Little Rock when she attended the New Coordinator Preservice, and then again when we were assigned to the same cabin during the Kick Off (you really get to know someone when you see each other first thing in the morning before you get your game face on!). I recently had a chance to ask her the following questions:

What brought you to the field of parent education?
I was interested in providing prevention assistance and community resources to the students and families in order for them to be academically successful and make informed decisions that would benefit the student and the families.

What is your philosophy when it comes to involving parents?
All parents need be valued and given respect. We need to provide them a variety of opportunities to share their talents and gifts at our campuses.

Could you share a HIPPY success story from Grand Prairie?
Florina Montenegro had her sons Washington and Irving in our HIPPY program. Florina was shy and quiet. Her involvement with HIPPY has helped her to be one of our best parent volunteers at the Parent Involvement Center. She has learned to be very involved with the teachers of her children. She is awesome and is trying to continue to learn English to help her kids in school. She attends our parent workshops consistently.

Pre K Now

2009-01-27T08:27:00.004-06:00

HIPPY Parent and Child, Houston ISD

There's a national movement underway to provide universal pre-Kindergarten, or at least full day PreK to elegible children. I fully endorse and support this movement. I also sometimes feel like the role of parents is getting a little lost in this effort. I've had the opportunity to review a lot of research regarding school readiness and it often seems like children are viewed as empty vessels that need to be filled as young as possible by professional educators. NO! Children enter school the very first day with experiences and skills thanks to their parents. Those of us in the field of parent involvement and education know that the research on the value and importance of getting parents involved early and keeping them involved is indisputable. It just makes sense that if parents work with their children at home (reading, playing, singing and conversing) and understand their role as first teacher...their children will do better in school. We KNOW that, but often don't know how to turn that into a reality with parents who are unsure about how to teach their child. I believe that what is BEST for young children is a high quality preschool with an excellent teacher who is well trained and compensated, AND with their parents' consistent and focused support at home. Schools and families are the "village" that raises today's children. If we don't invest in high quality, research based parent involvement for school readiness, we are missing out on an often untapped resource: parents.

For more information on the PreK now movement: http://www.preknow.org/

Coordinator Spotlight - Yolanda

2009-01-22T19:52:00.007-06:00

Yolanda Smith, Dallas HIPPY Coordinator

aka "HIPPY Cheerleader", encouraging everyone as they scaled the rock wall at our Kick Off!

Each of our coordinators brings special talents and gifts to our team. I'd like to share Yolanda's HIPPY story! When Yolanda and I first met it was her first week on the job as a Home Instructor in Fort Worth HIPPY. She had been recruited as a parent in the program, and quickly became interested in the position of home instructor. As a former teacher in New Jersey, Yolanda wasn't our typical parent nor home visitor in that she already had her degree, but she was at a crossroads in her life and as a member of the target community in Fort Worth she was elegible for the position. She quickly took to the HIPPY philosophy and by the next year she accepted the position of HIPPY coordinator when it came open! Over the next few years Yolanda grew and expanded the Fort Worth HIPPY program, doubling it in size. Again, she was ready for a change but didn't want to leave HIPPY. When she heard of an opening in Dallas HIPPY she seized the opportunity and was accepted for the position. Once she settled in Yolanda decided to use her AmeriCorps education award she earned while a home instructor and enrolled in college again to work on her MSW degree. With her positive attitude, motivation and sense of humor she has served as an inspiration to parents, home visitors and other coordinators in Dallas, Fort Worth and beyond! She's always ready to help out with trainings and presentations, she is insightful and is one of our strongest HIPPY Cheerleaders!

In her own words, when asked what HIPPY has meant to her, "HIPPY is the most fulfilling job I have ever had. Over the years with HIPPY I have had the pleasure of meeting such a wide variety of magnificent people such as Hilary Clinton and Dr. Ruth to name a few. I have also had the pleasure of developing wonderful relationships with my colleagues and the families we serve. HIPPY has been and continues to be a blessing to my family and me."

College Forward

2009-01-15T14:00:00.003-06:00

College Forward facilitating a team building activity during the Kick Off

One of our newest collaborations has been with a program in Austin called "College Forward". They offer college information and preparation to economically disadvantaged Texans. One of our funding partners, Texas Pioneer Foundation, put us in contact with them which has resulted in some great opportunities. Two of their VISTA members came out to our Kick Off and presented timely information to our HIPPY Home Instructors, on how to best use their AmeriCorps Education Award. We even went through the FAFSA together just in time for them to complete them in January when their tax information arrives. Our goal is to increase the number of home instructors who immediately put their education award to use. Even though they have 7 years to use the award, we know that time slips by quickly and there's never a perfect time to make the life changing decision to enroll in college as an adult!

Parents Volunteer

2009-01-08T17:08:00.000-06:00

Our primary focus is to teach parents of preschoolers (age 3, 4, 5) how to get their children ready for school. Home Visitors first establish a relationship with parents, and train them to work with their children. Once parents feel comfortable with teaching techniques and their own skills they are challenged to give back to the community by volunteering. Home visitors are the link between the community and the school. They bring volunteer opportunities from the school to parents and support volunteering and parent involvement in the schools. Principals like Kay Reynolds at Richardson ISD Dobie Elementary have expressed the wide-reaching effects HIPPY has on volunteerism in their school, “My Pre-K teachers comb through their class roster at the beginning of the year looking for HIPPY kids and their parents! They know that these parents are motivated, anxious to help their child and willing to volunteer. HIPPY helps parents understand they need to be involved and to look for new ways to be involved.” We challenge parents to volunteer 20 hours per year through bringing opportunities into the home visit, hosting volunteer events at the school, and presenting volunteer opportunities during the monthly parent meetings at the school. This year the Texas HIPPY Center has developed a 15 hour curriculum for program coordinators to provide home visitors with training on how to develop leadership and volunteerism among parents. This curriculum is available online at http://www.hippymis.org/ (click on backoffice). Once activated, parents have engaged in the following volunteer activities: reading to children in the classroom, supervising field trips, overseeing the lunch room, making classroom supplies for teachers, establishing a community garden, participating in PTA, and special projects such as painting a mural at a school cafeteria. As a result of our Home Visitors efforts (HIPPYCorps Members) 80.6% of HIPPY parents increased their level of parent involvement with their children’s school. At the beginning of the year 47% of parents had volunteered or otherwise supported their child’s school. By the end of the year, 65% were involved monthly or more often. Thanks to the continuous support and motivation from the HIPPYCorps Home Visitors 1,590 HIPPY parents volunteered a total of 25,110 volunteer hours!

The Juggling Act Called Parenting

2008-12-17T14:05:00.000-06:00

One of my colleagues over at the National Parent Education Network wrote a fine letter to the editor of the Wall Street Journal. I've reprinted it below, with permission. I admire how she took a strong stand!

Eve Sullivan

WALL STREET JOURNAL Dec.8, 2008, letter to the editor

In Business Bookshelf November 26, 'Up the ladder, step by step,' Philip Delves Broughton describes the so-called ‘work-life blend’ of an executive who takes his laptop and paperwork to his son’s baseball games. Something is wrong with this picture. It would certainly not be business-like to bring laundry to fold during Friday morning meetings at work.

It is hardly ‘parent-like’ to let work tasks encroach regularly on family life, although this may be necessary from time to time. Our children learn that we love them and value what they do by the good attention we give them and their activities. The epidemic of childhood and adolescent depression has at least some roots in inadequate parenting.

Parents, in turn, need support that we are not getting. Raising children and working outside the home are only two of the five-ball juggling act we are called upon to perform: we must attend to our own lives, to relationships, to productive work, to leisure and to involvement in the larger community.

As a society, we need parenting services, including parent education and support, to become normalized, widely available and affordable.

Eve Sullivan
Founder, PARENTS FORUM
Cambridge, Mass.

Texas HIPPY Kick Off

2008-12-09T13:02:00.001-06:00

Texas HIPPY Kick Off
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

Camp Pine Tree was the location of our first Texas HIPPY Kick Off. The idea was for us to "get away from it all" and delve deeply into a few topics, build our teams and have fun! This event was a collection of "firsts". Here are some of them:

* first trip away from home without family / children
* first time to try archery / canoeing / rock wall climbing
* first time staying at a camp
* first off site training / conference
* first time staying overnight with people from work, sharing a dorm with them!

I know that this was a hardship for some of the team, just being away from family, much less sleeping in a bunkhouse with a bunch of colleagues! I saw a lot of support, smiles and flexibility--even in the face of hardship. It was a pleasure to spend a few days under the pine trees, talking about dreams of the future and scholarships, and getting to know each other better. I especially enjoyed the evening chat around the fire, making s'mores and sharing funny stories. We're already planning next year's event!

Tribute to Avima Lombard

2008-11-10T17:20:00.011-06:00

When I learned that Avima Lombard, the founder of HIPPY recently died, and I wrote the following tribute to try and capture the impact she had on my life. My sincere condolences to her family, we will always remember her.

Years ago, when I learned that the name Avima means “my father” (avi) and “mother” (ma) in Hebrew, I had to smile. I imagined Avima’s parents bestowing this huge name on a tiny baby, knowing she was destined for greatness. She has been the mother and father of HIPPY, and created an extended international family who will carry on her social and educational heritage for generations to come. Indeed, she has impacted, inspire and energized so many people, with her vision, strength of will and character. With Avima, it wasn’t a matter of ego, but of how certain she was of her vision of a better future for parents and young children. She could go from giant to gentle in a minute—talking to a parent, child or shy home visitor. Avima was someone who took the education and future of the children of the world so seriously, without ever taking her own role too seriously. She was the same person always, whether speaking with the president of the university or the waitress at a café. I will never forget her, I will always be inspired by her, and will always be thankful for the opportunity she has given me to impact the lives of so many.

LEARN * LEAD * SERVE

2008-10-09T10:00:00.002-05:00

We’ve been investing some time in overhauling our training and technical assistance services we provide to our HIPPY sites. We're begining to see the effects of implementing our new training modules and getting great feedback from coordinators and home instructors. It's exciting to see our plans come to fruition. We began with a daylong meeting in with IDRA (Intercultural Development Research Association), two of our HIPPY Coordinators (Yolanda Smith and Marcela Montes) and ourselves (Keisha, Carla, David) to develop a training and technical assistance plan for the next few years. This is the 10th year of Texas HIPPY and over that time we’ve developed multiple training materials, resources and kits. These materials have been rolled out periodically and we’ve made some of them available on our website. We realized that we don’t need any more resource materials. What we needed was to connect the dots between what we're already doing and already have. Therefore we developed a comprehensive plan on how and when to use our resources, materials and opportunities effectively. We've developed a developmental model of “talent management” (the human resources buzzword to describe everything from recruitment, training, coaching and supervision). Our home visitors are on a 3 year cycle. They start with a nervous excitement, eager to learn and understand how this new work is to be done. That’s the “LEARN” phase and our focus will be to provide them with the start up tools they need to successfully work with families, schools and each other. Once they are comfortable in their skills, we need to move them into the “LEAD” stage. This is where they can begin to work smarter, more efficiently and grow into their strength and expertise. Before transitioning them out of HIPPY we hope to get them to the “SERVE” stage in which they reinvest their strengths and talents back into the program. At this stage they are asked to mentor others and take on special projects. LEARN * LEAD * SERVE: a three stage model of successful talent management!

Texas HIPPY = University of North Texas+AmeriCorps+Meadows Foundation

2008-10-01T10:00:00.001-05:00

Whenever I have to introduce myself I usually say “I’m Carla Weir, the director of the Texas HIPPY Center. We’re an AmeriCorps funded project. I’m on staff at the University of North Texas and housed at the Meadow’s Foundation Executive Suites”. This usually registers a flicker of confusion and eventually I’ll have to give a deeper explanation. Here’s that explanation. HIPPY is a national and international program model that is implemented by a sponsoring agency such as a school district or non-profit organization. Texas HIPPY is the training and technical assistance office for the 9 HIPPY sites in Texas and is sponsored by the University of North Texas which is in Denton, TX. Our primary source of funding is from AmeriCorps. Our little 4 person office is not housed at the University. We have been generously provided office space by the Meadow’s Foundation Executive Suites where we’re co-housed with other small non-profit operations. This all goes to show how complicated and seemingly fragile non-profit programming is! It's no wonder my Dad always says "Honey, I’ll never understand how all that works….”

HIPPY as Added Value

2008-09-24T09:00:00.001-05:00

One of the questions that principals ask us when considering implementation of HIPPY is “Why should I spend money on services to a few 3, 4, and 5 year olds when I have a whole school to take care of?”. It’s a valid point especially as resources continuously shrink for education. Our answer is that HIPPY services don’t just affect a few 3, 4, and 5 year olds for that one year. We have research that demonstrates that HIPPY children do significantly better in school, all the way through High School. Texas Kindergarten teachers rate 90+% of HIPPY children as well prepared for school, this affects those children throughout their school careers. Every month a parent meeting is held at the school in which all the parents of the school are invited to participate. Lastly, HIPPY parents are asked to give back 20 hours as volunteers at the school, and many schools report that PTA participation is up since HIPPY began. HIPPY adds value to the whole school by increasing parent involvement, making lasting changes in children’s education and bringing parents into the school as active and supportive volunteers.

Intervention in Early Childhood: Links to School Success

2008-09-18T10:00:00.002-05:00

We're often asked to demonstrate HIPPY's quantitative, research based effects. Below are highlights from a recent study developed by Dr. Angela Nievar, from the University of North Texas.

Research questions

Do students who have received a home visiting intervention program have significantly higher average reading scores than a comparable group of students, controlling for income and classroom quality?

Do students who have received an early childhood preschool program have significantly higher average reading scores than a comparable group of students, controlling for income and classroom quality?

In the Texas HIPPY program, 75% of families served are Hispanic, 18% are African American, 4% are Asian, 2% are Native American, and 1% is White. The median annual income of HIPPY families in Texas is $10,000, and almost 75% of parents surveyed had not graduated from high school.

The Classroom Effectiveness Index (CEI) measures the effectiveness of the child’s language arts teacher in the third grade (m = 5.01, sd = 9.69). CEIs are calculated through the use of multiple regression and hierarchical linear modeling and widely used to hold schools, principals, and teachers accountable for student achievement (Bembry, 1997).

Our results concur with a meta-analysis of early childhood parenting intervention programs (van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., & Juffer, F., 2003); intervention programs that involve the parent have a positive effect on at-risk children. Our analyses looked at the effectiveness of prekindergarten and home visiting programs, separately and combined, on third grade reading achievement. The majority of students in the HIPPY home visiting program also attended prekindergarten; hence the number of HIPPY-only students is too small to test. As expected, a preliminary analysis showed a significant association between the Classroom Effectiveness Indices (CEI) and TAKS reading test (r = .22, p < .001). Correlations between income and both the CEI and TAKS reading measures were, respectively (r = .04, p < .001, r = .08, p < .001).

The models in Table 1 provide insight into the combined effects of socioeconomic status, classroom quality, and early intervention within low-income Spanish-speaking families. It was of particular interest that prekindergarten alone was not an effective intervention for this group. The HIPPY program predicted higher scores on TAKS reading when combined with prekindergarten. A test of the HIPPY program, including students who were only in HIPPY and in both groups, was also significant.

HIPPY*VISTA Start Up

2008-09-15T10:06:00.005-05:00

Sarah Thorne, our first VISTA member!

The HIPPY*VISTA project is our newest initiative undertaken to expand HIPPY services in Texas. Four community agencies have expressed an interest in implementing HIPPY, and have committed to supporting a VISTA member on site at their organization. These VISTA members will develop partnerships, establish an infrastructure and secure funding to start HIPPY in the next 2 years. We are currently recruiting members for the communities of Denton, Carrollton-Farmer's Branch, Edinburg and Maypearl Texas.

We have three overarching goals in our VISTA plan:

GOAL 1: VISTA members will engage the professional community as well as stakeholders and potential collaborators in the community resulting in the establishment of a School Readiness Task Force that will develop and implement a plan to increase parent involvement and school readiness in the community.

GOAL 2: VISTA members will engage parents in the community in school readiness activities in order for children to enter school ready to succeed.

GOAL 3: VISTA members will develop the infrastructure, partnerships and resources necessary to establish a fully functioning and sustainable parent involvement and school readiness program in the community.

Austin HIPPY Closes

2008-09-09T14:13:00.000-05:00

Melanie Walter Mahoney, Texas HIPPY Rally 2008

It's never easy when a program closes, especially when it has been serving families successfully for over 15 years! It is with sadness I share the letter, below, I received from our Austin HIPPY Coordinator, Melanie Walter Mahoney. We have hopes that Austin HIPPY will return, and will be working diligently to make it happen!

Dear HIPPY Advisors and Friends-

Since 1991 HIPPY has been a program of Communities In Schools of Central Texas, serving families of Austin's young children' through home visitation with the goals of school readiness and parental involvement in children's education. As of 8/31/08, HIPPY will no longer be a program of CIS due to funding challenges for the past 5 years when Child Protective Services cut funding for its Prevention and Early Intervention Programs statewide in order to balance its budget, as all State agencies were mandated by the Legislature to do. I am writing to you to ask for your sage advice and help. Communities In Schools is looking for another organization to adopt HIPPY in Austin, perhaps an organization that works with parents of young children with funding for that purpose. Most HIPPY programs around Texas and the United States are parts of school districts and receive Title I funding, which is used in Austin to pay for parent support specialists in the schools. I ask that each of you please think about the organizations you are involved with and whether HIPPY might be a possible fit with them, including organizations with which you volunteer, and let me know of any thoughts that you have. HIPPY supporters will also be visiting representatives at the Capitol again to educate them regarding the need for funding from the next legislative session. If you need more information about HIPPY please refer to http://www.hippyusa.org/ or www.unt.edu/hippy. I do look forward to hearing from you.

Best regards, Melanie

Spotlight on Grand Prairie!

2008-09-04T19:00:00.001-05:00

The HIPPY USA preservice tradition is a Thursday dinner with talent show put on by the participants. Here Esmeralda Rodriguez of Grand Prairie joined an Alabama team for the HIPPY Olympics!

Grand Prairie HIPPY started in 2005 with two elementary schools and 3 home visitors. After 3 years of successful implementation the program staff had the opportunity to present the model to principals across the district. Immediately the demand for the program increased, when principals heard how successful it had been in neighboring schools! This year, Grand Prairie grew from two schools to seventeen campuses served! Our HIPPY end of year celebrations in Grand Prairie boasted 280 parents and children in attendance!!! Principals, parents, administrators, school board members and community representatives, along with "Maya and Miguel" celebrated together. Our congratulations to the 184 four year olds, and 37 five year olds and their parents who completed the 30 week curriculum this year.

The success of Grand Prairie HIPPY is thanks to the strong leadership provided within the District, especially from Sandra De La Cruz, who had experienced HIPPY in a former job with Dallas ISD, as well as Gina Esparza, who was also a former HIPPY coordinator in Dallas, and now Miriam Rios, HIPPY coordinator, and her team of Home Instructors. It is with pride and sadness that we say congratulations to Gina as she takes on a new leadership position as an Elementary School Assistant Principal at Eisenhower Elementary in Grand Prairie. We'll miss you Gina!

Communication Exercise

2008-08-21T23:58:00.001-05:00

Communication Exercise
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

The annual Coordinator's Retreat always marks the begining of our program year. This year we rolled out a new training design we developed for sites coordinators to use with their Home Instructors. We presented them with "phase I" which provides them with approximately 6.5 hours of training to be provided during orientation and by week 10 of the HIPPY curriculum. We will be meeting again in October to develop more training modules together, and then in November at the Kick Off. In November we will provide them with "Phase II" which is the training materials for weeks 11-30+.

One thing we did differently this year was that we presented to them the first day, and the second day they presented to each other. They were divided into teams and prepared one of 4 training modules, as well as an ice breaker. Here Gabriella is debriefing a warm up activity that focuses on team work and communication. Those are two themes that came up time and time again in a survey of training needs that we did in April.

As always, it's great seeing everyone, and this year we walked away revved up with new energy and training ideas and materials. HIPPY New Year!

Texas Pioneer Foundation

2008-07-27T21:02:00.000-05:00

A great big thank you to our newest foundation supporter, the Texas Pioneer Foundation. This organization supports access to higher education in Texas and is providing us with funding to ensure that HIPPY Home Instructors successfully access higher education resources. The funds will be used to allow us to:

1. Develop a mentorship program to provide individualized support to our members, using volunteers from the community and alumni from our program.

2. Establish partnerships with community colleges near our programs so our members can successfully transition into college. This is an effort to replicate and expand a successful partnership established at Richland College in Dallas, and Western College in Snyder.

3. Secure additional financial aid for members / alumni.

Meet the Evaluator

2008-07-10T10:00:00.001-05:00

Ursula Johnson, Texas HIPPY Evaluator
University of North Texas, Center for Parent Education

Evaluation was Texas HIPPY’s first connection to the University of North Texas. Dr. Arminta Jacobson, professor at UNT and Director of the Center for Parent Education, has spear-headed our evaluation efforts since 1996. Graduate assistants have played an important role in evaluation from the start. Their interests and expertise have allowed us to work smarter over the years, streamline our systems, improve instruments, benchmark our results and increase the scope and reliability of our evaluations. HIPPY has been the focus of two doctoral dissertations and two masters theses and countless student papers. This year we have had the luxury of building in a transition between one graduate student and the next, and are happy to welcome Ursula Johnson in place of Amber Brown. Ursula brings with her a wealth of experience of coordinating research projects, assessing children from birth to adolescence, and evaluating programs through the Texas State Center for Early Childhood Development at University of Texas- Houston Health Science Center. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Educational Research with a minor in public policy to help bridge the gap between good research and its application into the education field. Ursula will be helping us further improve our evaluation efforts by finding new avenues to standardize our research and make it more accessible and data driven to hopefully increase funding and publication of our hard work.

Home Visitors Moving On

2008-06-05T19:07:00.000-05:00

Our HIPPY home visitors are recruited from the communities we work in. Coordinators recruit current HIPPY parents, or alumni and train them to serve as AmeriCorps members visiting other parents in their own communities. This unique facet of our program means that each year we are recruiting, training and transitioning home visitors out of HIPPY. Throughout the year we provide each Home Visitor with the training and support they need to successfully serve their case-load of families. Our responsibility to our home visitors is to also provide them with the coaching they need to successfully transition from HIPPY to full time employment or higher education. They leave HIPPY with up to $4,726 in college scholarships (AmeriCorps education award). The end of the program year is always busy and exciting, and with mixed emotions we prepare to exit some of our families and home visitors who have been with us for 3 years. We wish them all the very best of luck!

Reflections of the Border

2008-04-08T23:27:00.007-05:00

Nogales Arizona on the left, Nogales Sonora Mexico on the right

With so much in the news and the national elections about "securing our borders" I find it very interesting to spend time on the US / Mexico border. I had the chance to visit Nogales HIPPY, the only HIPPY site in Arizona and reflect a little on the similarities between the border in Arizona and Texas. Here are some of my thoughts:

The border towns in Arizona and in Texas seem more similar to each other than to other towns in either Arizona or Texas. That is to say, there's a distinct "border culture" in both. One example, I heard more Spanish than English on the border. People are often surprised when I speak fluent Spanish because I don't "look Latina" (meaning olive skin, brown eyes and dark hair. As in Laredo, in Nogales I saw and met a lot of fair skinned folks and some African Americans and Asians who are fully bilingual, either by "birth" or by virtue of growing up on the border. It was refreshing to not have that register of surprise that I speak Spanish.

I learned that the border is no big deal to the people who live along it. It's a simple fact of life, and crossing it once or many times a day is very common to people living on both sides. Often commerce is cross-border, and I'm talking about legal commerce! Crossing the border legally is very easy and involves a short stroll into an official building, showing your papers and walking through. They even have a term for it, la linea or "the line" in Nogales (there's no river, just a line) and el otro lado or "the other side" in Laredo. Life on the "other side", ie. Mexico, seems a lot more colorful and lively. While there seem to be equal numbers crossing either way, once you cross everything is within walking distance in the Mexico side. A lot of shopping and eating is available immediately as you cross into Mexico, whereas the US side is a lot more spread out. Most people have family on both sides of the border, and live their lives on both sides of the border. This has even gotten into the lingo, Nogales on either side is dubbed ambos Nogales "both Nogales" and in Laredo they call it los dos Laredos "the two Laredos" or cleverly LareDos...

I learned some interesting differences in my visit too. Arizonans seemed a bit more resigned to the creation of the fence than Texans. I dug a little deeper because I couldn't imagine it was simply a matter of Texan's fierce independence...it turns out that the great majority of the border lands in Texas are privately owned, whereas in Arizona they are government owned land. Therefore, there really are not as many opportunities to protest and fight the fence in Arizona, even though people I spoke with were not happy with it. Another difference which was amazing to me was the imbalance of population on the Mexico side in Arizona. Nogales MX is a city of over 200,000 whereas Nogales AZ is 25,000. While I'm not sure of the exact figures in LareDos they weigh in more evenly.

Haven't talked much about HIPPY though, have I? Well, I found the program to be in excellent order. I got a chance to see an excellent parent meeting, as well as two well implemented home visits, family files and meeting with administrators. The new staff is highly energetic and is focusing on not only stabilizing the program but growing it to serve additional communities in the area. They are in a perfect position to do so as they have a few years remaining in their current funding source. Hopefully I'll have a chance to visit again in the future and support them as they progress.

Path to Scholarship

2008-02-29T17:06:00.001-06:00

Path to Scholarship
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

Last week was a whirlwind of activity! We hosted our annual Texas HIPPY Rally with almost 100 attendees including home visitors and coordinators from across the state. We started off the 2 days with a Texas HIPPY Advisory Council meeting. The advisors then joined the HIPPY teams for lunch and recognized the home visitors who are taking steps in higher education. This year we have one home visitor who is taking online courses, several enrolled in college, several in community college and others enrolled in ESL classes in preparation for college entry in the Fall. The remainder of the day was spent in training, with home visitors learning from Aurelio Montemayor and Frances Guzman of the Intercultural Development Research Association how to engage parents as leaders.

That evening was our 20 year anniversary celebration (more on that another day!) and then Friday was an all day training on Path to Scholarships--where we learned about the importance of being organized, informed and persistent in applying for the multitude of scholarships available. More on that too!

For now, suffice it to say...we had a wonderful 2 days together, learned a lot, shared a lot, planned a lot!

Peer Exchange with Colorado

2008-02-01T18:17:00.001-06:00

Welcome Texas Parent Child Initiative
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

The three of us, Susan, David and I, had a chance to visit with the Colorado HIPPY team for two days last week. We brought some Texas sunshine with us and the weather as well as the professional enrichment was great! We had a chance to each share our personal strengths and challenges, as well as our organization's strengths, goals and challenges. We each had a chance to learn how our counterpart at the other state office handles their tasks and share experiences and challenges. It was a highly productive 2 days that we hope can be repeated in the future! Thanks Melissa and the Colorado Parent Child Foundation team for generously sharing your time, expertise and energy with us!

HIPPY Holidays!

2007-12-21T17:08:00.001-06:00

Dallas HIPPY Family

Wishing you the very best in 2008! The holidays mark the halfway point of our program year. After a much deserved break we will return (January 7th) to focus on some upcoming projects:

1. HIPPY 20 Year Celebration: February 21 at 6:30 pm, at the Latino Cultural Center. Hold the date and let us know if you can join in the festivities! We are bringing together alumni parents, children, staff, stakeholders and home visitors to celebrate 20 years of HIPPY in Dallas.

2. HIPPY Home Instructor Rally, February 21-22, 2008. This is our annual training event for HIPPY Home Instructors. Each year we provide Home Instructors with both professional and personal development. This year they will receive training on how to maximize their AmeriCorps college education award, and then they will focus on how to develop leadership in parents.

3. Evaluation--we have several evaluation efforts underway this year, begining with our new online MIS (Management Information System) to track family progress. UNT professor Angela Nievar is completing the data gathering on a Timberlawn Foundation funded study comparing HIPPY and non-HIPPY families. Amber Brown will begin data gathering on a study of HIPPY parents who were teenagers when their "HIPPY Child" was born. All this on top of our "regular" evaluation using a parent involvement survey and kindergarten teacher survey!

4. HIPPY*VISTA: 2008 will mark the start up of this exciting project. VISTA members will be placed in various communities (Farmer's Branch/Carrollton; Denton; Fort Worth and one more to be announced soon...) across Texas. These VISTA's will focus on developing a network of stakeholders and funding for parent involvement and school readiness.

That's it for now!

MIS Online

2007-12-13T01:49:00.000-06:00

Where the MIS Magic Happens....

Hector Bojorquez of IDRA and David Tisdale of Texas HIPPY

MIS is the Management Information System, and this year we're fortunate to have entered into a partnership with Intercultural Development Research Association http://www.idra.org/ that allows us develop an online MIS for Texas HIPPY. As an online system, the MIS will be more user friendly, provide greater and yet more secure access to data and provide us with the ability to have up to date and real time access to the progress of HIPPY in Texas.

Our online system is being developed as part of the Parent Information Resource Center at IDRA. This move is helping bring HIPPY documentation and data management into the internet. Behind the scenes, a great deal of discussion and information management design had to take place before the heard work of designing an online system could begin. The person tasked with putting the MIS online is Hector Bojorquez of IDRA.

We are so thankful to our partnership with IDRA which will allow us to provide a user friendly program management resource to our HIPPY sites across Texas.

Thankful for Partnerships

2007-12-10T17:45:00.000-06:00

HIPPY Partnership with Earning by Learning

At this time of the year we are reminded to give thanks for all the gifts we've been given. Here at Texas HIPPY we've been given so many gifts, not only (but very important) funding, but gifts of talent, energy, time and spirit!

We are particularly thankful this year for new and ongoing funding and would like to thank the Harold Simmons Foundation, the HB and Edna Zale Foundation, the One Star Foundation, the Meadows Foundation, the University of North Texas, the 9 local HIPPY program host agencies, the Intercultural Development Research Association and individual donors who have given to our program. Donations and funding are the resources needed to help us make sure that all children enter school ready to succeed.

Here are some of the other organizations we're thankful for (in alphabetical order):

~ Earning by Learning Dallas, for helping us think creatively and reach more families
~ Half Price Books, for donated new books
~ KERA for donated materials
~ National Council of Jewish Women, in Austin, Dallas, Houston
~ Paciugo, for coupons and donated goodies
~ Texas HIPPY Advisory Council for their support, input and resources
~ Vistas Latino Film Festival for allowing us to partner on a film showing and host a reception
~ VISTA*AmeriCorps for granting us a proposal to focus on expanding HIPPY

Video Conference Presentation

2007-10-22T23:05:00.002-05:00

San Antonio and Richardson
Originally uploaded by hippyprogram

On Friday HIPPY had the opportunity to participate in a videoconference presentation. We invited Kay Reynolds, principal at Dobie Primary School in Richardson ISD to present. The HIPPY Coordinators (Maria Loera and Kit Prince) were also present and brought with them mom Celia and her son Adam. As you may imagine, Adam totally stole the show! Here he is working with his mom on the 3 year old curriculum. They demonstrated an activity and after a few moments Adam totally forgot about the camera and TV and really got into it. It was really cute. I love the look of joy on his face in this shot, waiting for his mom to read the story to him. We were linked via videoconference to San Antonio, Eagle Pass and Laredo. On the left side of the screen are the attendees from San Antonio, including a smiling Anna Alicia Romero, the organizer of the videoconference, who works for IDRA (Intercultural Development Research Association). For more pictures on the videoconference, click on the picture above.

Coffee Hour

2007-10-17T00:33:00.000-05:00

Menachem Granoff with Mary Greene

In October we welcomed a special guest, Menachem Granoff, to Texas HIPPY. Mr. Granoff was visiting from Israel and stopped for a few days in Dallas on his way to Laredo. During our informal coffee hour Mr. Granoff was able to meet and visit with HIPPY staff, friends and collaborators, including Mary Greene, above. Mary works for KERA and is on the board of directors for the Texas Parent Child Initiative (the non profit organization dedicated to supporting and expanding HIPPY in Texas.) Mr. Granoff shared his experiences as a supporter and contributor to HIPPY Israel as well as his connection to Laredo HIPPY. Having grown up in Laredo, TX and then spending his professional life in Israel since the 1950's, Mr. Granoff is at home in both corners of the world. His particular passion is for the inclusion of fathers in early childhood education initiatives. The National Council of Jewish Women, Greater Dallas Section co-sponsored the coffee hour, and guests included area HIPPY Coordinators, Texas HIPPY Advisors and Collaborators.

Successful HIPPY Reception at Vistas

2007-09-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

(left to right) Juanita Elizondo, Carla Weir, Alfreda Rollins, David Tisdale,

Adriana Trevino, Susan Blackburn and Yolanda Smith in the middle!

Thanks to everyone who came out to support HIPPY at the 9th Annual Vistas Latino Film Festival. The showing of "Viva Cuba" was very well received, and the reception following the film was attended by HIPPY friends and new aquaintances from the film festival.

A big thanks expecially to:

* JFrank Hernandez and the Herculano and Elida Hernandez Foundation who sponsors the Vistas Latino Film Festival

* Juanita Elizondo and Fiesta Mart

* Carlos Branger and Zaguan Bakery

* Mark Wren and Half Price Books

* Mary Green and KERA

* Brandy Koerner and Paciugo

* All the HIPPY supporters and staff who sold tickets and joined us at the event

We plan on continuing our year of celebration, so watch this space for opportunitites to join us, support us or volunteer! For more pictures of the reception including our special appearance from "Maya and Miguel", check out our flickr page:

http://flickr.com/photos/13890525@N05/

HIPPY Reception at Vistas Latino Film Festival

2007-09-18T17:49:00.000-05:00

Upcoming this Saturday, September 22nd at the Angelica. For full information check out our website!!!

www.unt.edu/hippy

We're really looking forward to this, our first, celebration of the 20 years of HIPPY in Texas! It's exciting to partner with the Vista's Latino Film Festival and we're looking forward to a successful event.

A big THANK YOU to our other partners for the event:

* Paciugo Gelato, for the goodies!

* Fiesta Supermarkets, for the refreshments!

* Zaguan Bakery, for the baked breads!

* KERA, for bringing "Maya and Miguel" to our party!

* The Volunteer Center of North Texas, Donated Goods program

Everyone who has (or will soon!) purchase tickets for the event!!! And to the coordinators, staff, and board members who purchased or sold tickets! Thanks!

HIPPY Around the World

2007-09-06T13:30:00.001-05:00

Home Visit, El Salvador

I had the opportunity to see HIPPY in another cultural context this summer during my visit to El Salvador. It was so interesting to experience the familiarity of HIPPY in such a different context.

It reminded me that 20 years ago I had the opportunity to see HIPPY in Israel when I went to preservice training. At that time all new coordinators had to travel to Israel to receive training from founder Avima Lombard at Hebrew University. I was lucky enough to be sent there and get a feel for the program. Even though the home visits and parent meetings I saw were conducted in Hebrew and I couldn't really understand what was going on, I could feel it! One of the things I took from that experience is that it is an honor to be allowed into people's homes, and the trust we build with families is a sacred bond.

I've had a chance to see HIPPY in action in such varied communities as Bed-Stuy in NYC, rural Colorado, Hawaii, a colonia in Laredo Texas and the island of Guam. Maybe someday I'll get to see more of our international programs. We now have programs in the following:

Australia
Austria
Canada
El Salvador
Germany
Holland
Israel
Italy
New Zealand
South Africa
Turkey
United States

The "simple" model of parents helping parents to prepare their children for school has taken hold and changed the lives of so many families, world wide!

Summer in El Salvador

2007-08-26T14:32:00.001-05:00

HIPPY El Salvador team role playing the curriculum

This summer I had the opportunity to visit HIPPY in El Salvador. The program is sponsored by the Hilda Rothschild Foundation and is implemented from the community of Joya Grande and serves several communities around Lake Ilopango. The program in Joya Grande includes a Montessori preschool, afterschool enrichment, a bakery and the HIPPY program.

I had the opportunity to see home visits and conduct training with the staff of home visitors and coordinators (pictured above). My daughter Sofia came with me and volunteered in the classroom, bakery and observed HIPPY in action.

It was so interesting to see how similar HIPPY works across the world! More interesting still are the differences! listed below:

**None of the home visitors have cars and walk to all home visits, including some that are up mountainous trails! To get from the central office back to their community they often hitch a ride with sand trucks that are mining the sand at the lake for use in construction sites in the city.

**Once home visits are finished for the day, the home visitors sell bread from the bakery that financially sustains the project.

**Families live in multi-generation family compounds and home visits are often conducted before a small audience of children and relatives.

**Curriculum materials are the most expensive part of implementing the program (unlike the US program in which salaries are the costliest part).

**The HIPPY office is in an open air corridor (see picture above).

I look forward some day to returning to El Salvador and supporting the project as it expands throughout the country. For now, we will maintain contact by email and hopefully the Salvadoran team will be allowed visas to come to the bi-annual HIPPY conference.

Finished with home visits, time to sell bread!

HIPPY USA Moves

2007-06-27T11:09:00.000-05:00

Gayle Hart speaking at the South/West Regional Conference in Dallas

April 2007

Our national office is closing down for the move to Little Rock. I got this email from Gayle Hart, who is the only person making the move from NY to Little Rock with HIPPY. I wish them all the very best in their new endeavors, and welcome Gayle to the neighborhood...Little Rock is after all a half day drive or 1 hour flight away...

Good Morning,

I am here waiting for the arrival of the movers and wanted to take this opportunity to send the last email from the NY office. Yesterday, Diane sent an email to the Board members and talked of turning off the lights and mixed emotions. While last night, Jen, Danette and I turned off the lights at 11 pm after a bustling day of packing; making copies literally as the docutrend movers were removing their property; faxing on a fax that decided it was mad at us and stopped receiving; and laughing with one another. Nicole had responsibilities with her new position and couldn’t join us, but she was here in spirit. Merle was with us until late in the day and even Gloria Carney stopped by to give me some last minute training on the fiscal system! HIPPY’s are HIPPY’s until the end….and beyond! J

Yesterday was a microcosm of the time that I have had here with HIPPY. There have been so many wonderful relationships and excellent staff – HIPPY has been very fortunate to truly have some of the brightest and best at its disposal. And, the staff this past fiscal year – including those who have already moved on – were the Very Best Team Ever! And, while I know that new and wonderful relationships and more excellent staff will be part of the organization in Little Rock, I still need to take this opportunity to publicly say “JOB, VERY WELL DONE!” to all of the staff. I have said to the young’uns – Nicole, Jen and Danette- that are moving into other positions, they are bound to succeed - they already have intelligence, competence and expertise working for them!

One of the things that we have found out this year is that if you ever need someone to coordinate packing up, Merle is your gal! Danette has proven that all debts CAN be collected. I cannot say enough about Jen – she makes it possible for me to accomplish whatever I do. And, Nicole has taken HIPPYCorps to new and wonderful heights. All the remaining staff, plus Gloria, Liz and Sheetal who was only here for a brief time, and Mala our accountant consultant, have made the last 9 months quite memorable!

So though right now the morning is not exactly feeling good, I welcome the opportunities the relocation brings for the organization and for me. I look forward to serving the organization with continued commitment and renewed zest. Last, but just as important, I thank each of you for your personal and organizational support during a very challenging time!

Gracias,
Gayle

M. Gayle Hart
National Program Director