What Our Youngest Boys Need

This talk will focus on what our youngest boys need from us, boys in early childhood education, Head Start, boys birth to five.  Parent engagement and outreach has become perhaps more important for our schools than ever before as our children and families come back from pandemic isolation.  Children come to school with behavioral patterns that are problematic and schools need parental help with those.  Parents, too, need the help of schools in guiding their children.  In this talk, Lauren will share practical strategies and anecdotes from years of work in the Phoenix community – a how-to of what works and what does not work with engaging busy and distracted parents to help their sons, including parents whose native language is not English.

Lauren Paiva is Education Director of the Booker T. Washington (BTW) Early Childhood Centers in Phoenix, AZ. BTW works with Head Start in the pre-school space, serving children throughout the city. Lauren has also been involved in the Gurian Institute Pilots and Programs in Head Start of Phoenix for many years as an Educator, Education Director, and Gurian Institute Trainer. These Pilots and Programs focus, in part, on the needs of boys in the early childhood age group, including ways that teachers and parents hunger for help understanding boys and boy behavior in this eras of life.