325: The Importance of Social-Emotional Development in Early Education With Sharon Burnett

In this episode of Childcare Conversations, you’ll join a warm chat with curriculum expert Sharon Burnett. Sharon shares her journey from kindergarten teacher to founder of Frog Street and creator of the “Foundations” program, which blends music, play, and social-emotional learning for emergent literacy. 

You’ll pick up practical tips on weaving these playful, research-backed strategies into your daily routine; no need to overhaul your schedule! Sharon’s stories and advice will leave you inspired and ready to make learning joyful and meaningful for every child.

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Transcript

Carrie Casey (00:05)
Hey guys, so today we're gonna talk a little bit about social and emotional learning with somebody who I consider kind of an expert and of course a friend. And every time we have a conversation with Sharon, I kinda come away going, we should have recorded that. So Kate and I have known Sharon ⁓ Burnett for a while. ⁓

Sharon Burnett (00:23)
Yes.

Carrie Casey (00:31)
I was trying to figure out the first time we had a long conversation and Kate, they, we think it was at a task, ⁓ session a couple of years ago in San Antonio, but regardless, this lady knows about curriculum, knows about the process of evaluating which types of curriculum are the right ones for your program and how to combine them.

If you have some stuff that you do really well in-house and you just need a little bit of support, she has ideas on that, all kinds of great stuff. So Sharon, come on in and tell everybody a little bit about your entry into the field and the things that you're super passionate about.

Kate Woodward Young (01:21)
the early childhood education field.

Sharon Burnett (01:21)
Well, Carrie and Kate,

yeah, it's just always so much fun. Every time I have a conversation with you two, I'm learning. And that, I think, is what has kept us on this track and in this career field for so long, because it is always a learning process. My field and my time in this industry started, I guess, a long, long, long, long time ago. So.

It could be that I'm just the oldest person in the industry and that may be how we've all connected, but started out as a kindergarten teacher 40, 45 years ago. And at that time, most of you and certainly all of you that are listening probably were so young that you may have thought that resources existed for earliest learners back then, but

earliest resources did not. So if you wanted to use a game or a book or a song for your young children at that time, you were probably thrown into a eighth grade language arts professional development day and you were probably coloring and making that game in the back of the room. And that's what we did as teachers just to have tangible items that our children could learn with that were developmentally appropriate for them.

Not that we were just stuck into a language arts enrichment program, but that we were looking at what would build skills so that our children could become successful readers. And you know, now when we look at the state of the union of our world, we have kindergarten teachers, first and second grade teachers that are busy, busy, busy in the area of phonics and busy, busy into blending and segmenting.

but there's a lot of specialty that has to occur building language skills and vocabulary skills long before they enter that kindergarten readiness period of time. So that is where my career pretty much started. I worked with a fabulous group of friends that were also my besties and my educator friends. And we would stay late at night and make a little booklet or make a little game or

put a little song to a tune so that it would be memorable and it would be repetitious and it would house a lot of the skill sets, whether it was learning their colors, numbers, shapes, alphabet letters, whether they were trying to learn nursery rhymes. And so we decided that all of those things needed to be taught through fun and through song so that the children could be up and down and playing and have that musical edge.

while they were learning skills. So we made a little concept called Sing and Read and we made a big book for those skill concepts that I mentioned. And we sold those and people loved them and as time went on, we became a little company and knowing that we were really becoming a business, we all had to stop teaching and jump into the world of sales to our brick and mortar and catalog.

Carrie Casey (04:32)
you

Sharon Burnett (04:42)
companies because that's how we did sales back in that day. We bought a little building. We made ⁓ an opportunity for us to buy presses and learn how to print those books. And we printed the first ones in black and white. And some of you teachers may remember you probably had to color the R E D book or the Apple Annie, Apple Annie. And so with being involved with creating those products,

Carrie Casey (04:53)
Mm-hmm.

Ha!

You

Sharon Burnett (05:09)
teachers really loved to be sure that they were going to use them. If they spent time making it and they knew an outcome of success that it could bring to that child, then they were fine with investing that time. So we continued that. It did turn into a business. We were very blessed and it was Frog Street and we started that company. And as it grew about 16 years into that process,

we had an opportunity to gain another partner, a majority partner, and he said, what do we do next? So we, at that point, said, let's enter the adoption for pre-K. And so we wanted to create an entire comprehensive program that really gave the basis of all the guidelines for pre-kindergarten children. So that was our first endeavor and that became

Carrie Casey (06:01)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon Burnett (06:05)
a very blessed success for us. And so the company continued on. We have done two or three different state adoptions now with infant, toddler threes and pre-K, but lo and behold, a few years ago, the company sold totally out and they have a lot of great people that still work in that company. ⁓ And then they have new people that have come in to take it a step further.

So we retired, those of us that had been in the business for so long retired. And then people started to laugh and said, Lord Sharon, what are you gonna do? You have done this all of your life. So I said, what? Yeah.

Carrie Casey (06:43)
You

Kate Woodward Young (06:44)
You don't look very retired, Sharon.

Carrie Casey (06:47)
Yeah, why do we keep

seeing you at conferences if you're retired? I think you might've failed. You may have failed.

Sharon Burnett (06:50)
Exactly. Yeah. So I said, well, I really

do love, I love helping children learn. And now it seems like, you know, as years have gone on, we do have many of those concept skills that are now really needed in pre-K before they get to kindergarten. So I bought back a proprietary product line that was very good to us called Sing and Read. And we have taken it on and made some significant changes.

to fit today's teachers. ⁓ We have aligned it to the earliest principles of science of reading. So talk about listening to all these blogs and podcasts and re-learning a lot of the research. I just kept hearing things about kindergarten and first grade and second grade and phonics and segmenting and blending. And it became pretty clear that

there weren't as many things that were still building on those foundations so that children would be ready for those science of reading strategies in the kindergarten, first and second grade. So we did our research and aligned a program that we now call Foundations. And Foundations can be used as an emergent literacy program along with what comprehensive program may already be in use.

We do our best to be sure that we use tangible items along with the music that goes with the books. So those children are building language and building vocabulary. They're getting to the point of written expression, being able to draw a picture of what their thought is. They're also extensively building those alphabet knowledge skills. But who can identify letters of the alphabet without learning?

about some of the shapes. So we have a shapes knowledge of slant lines, curved lines, round lines, and all of the little books and characters tie in to make learning fun for the children. And it does have just a real sweet little social twist to it because there's an opportunity for everybody to be a good friend or to help a friend or hold hands with me or let me give you a hand.

So there are things underlying that make it a sweet kindness concept, but the actual basis of it is for the importance of science of reading for our youngest children. Whether it starts with receptive language as those infant toddlers, or it begins as they produce words and reiterate sounds. And all of us know that talking and even singing to some point is

of a skill that you can just acquire, but reading is not.

Kate Woodward Young (09:48)
Sharon, you've not heard

Carrie and I sing, have you?

Carrie Casey (09:52)
I we can

sing for preschoolers, we can't sing for adults because adults care more if you hit the right note.

Sharon Burnett (09:58)
There's a big secret to that, girls. The

secret to that is you close your door and you let the children sing along. And then that just kind of covers us up, right? That's exactly. And that's the fun of it.

Carrie Casey (10:07)
That's right. Yes, absolutely. But

yeah, and part of what I really like about your curriculum is that it does include those social emotional parts of it as well and makes it, it doesn't feel as much we're going to stop what you're doing and go do this. It makes it flow more easily into the day because it's not like,

Sharon Burnett (10:34)
Thanks.

Carrie Casey (10:36)
some of those, we're gonna call them workbook curriculums, where the kid has to stop what they're doing, shift gears completely so that they can come over and get their pen or their dry erase marker and you know.

Sharon Burnett (10:41)
Yeah.

You are

right. You are right. And I love ⁓ learning at that pace as well because the children are just considering it play. It's fun. The characters have lots of humor and personality. So there's lots of laughs and giggles. And so if a child knows that Apple Annie is a form of the representation of that phonological sound,

A, then they can kind of begin to put that together. They may not recognize that lowercase a and be able to identify on a flash card, but they soon begin to understand, ⁓ that's the sound that I'm hearing in Apple Annie's story song.

Carrie Casey (11:38)
Yep, and isn't there a Halley one? Isn't there a Halley one?

Sharon Burnett (11:41)
⁓ yes,

yes, Hallie Hart.

And we introduced that one back again. It's coming up soon with Valentine's Day. So there are lot of themes that can be used with holidays and fun times throughout your day. Many people use the songs only during greeting times, circle time, transition times, just so they are filling those children with oral language skills that are so important. You know, we have a lot of specials.

children and they just need some help in speaking orally. And then we have a lot of children that may be using a different home language and it needs to be slow and repetitious but through song they catch on to that very very easily. And then we have now built guides that are very simple in instruction but they certainly do give you more than just the song to do. So you can take that right into your

Kate Woodward Young (12:37)
Okay.

Sharon Burnett (12:40)
written expression, take it right into your read alouds. you know, ⁓ Kate, there's a lot of these curriculums now that only have two structured read alouds and we're gonna read aloud all day long, but this would give you that third read aloud time that would be very, very intentional, yet very playful for your children to get that in.

Carrie Casey (12:53)
Ha ha!

Kate Woodward Young (12:54)
Absolutely.

Absolutely. So here's my question Sharon. So we've got directors and even owners of programs listening and they're probably already, you know, a lot of programs have a curriculum already. Talk to me about how or why this makes a good supplement to anything that already exists. You know, how do they, how would they incorporate that? Like if you, because again, I'm just thinking that we've got programs that are like

Sharon Burnett (13:14)
Thank you.

Kate Woodward Young (13:30)
I have my day and my day is set and we did it in house.

Sharon Burnett (13:33)
Absolutely,

absolutely. Well, when we come in for training, that's one of the first things that we address. Don't worry. You don't have to throw out your lesson plans. You're not going to have to create something all new. This is just going to very softly emerge into what you're doing, like Kerry mentioned earlier. So one of the places that we like to say you'd want to look at it.

certainly is in your period of time during the day when you are having read aloud, or you are having poems, or you are trying to build confidence with speakers. It also helps during that period of time during the day when it may not be written into your comprehensive lesson plan, but you certainly do have the goal of wanting to strengthen that attention span. We want them to gain more time

that they can have attention given to us for the later instruction. So it builds those skills. It builds confidence for those that may not yet be ready to speak or have a conversation with you back and forth, but they may be ready to just start to sing the song. had a teacher call me the other day and she was giggling and she said, we've had a

a little non-verbal. Just doesn't want to converse much, but through testing, we don't think there's a problem, but we just want to encourage this one to join in the circle time, join in on literacy centers and have some conversations with peers and answer questions with teachers. She said, I was in monitoring and she came and sat in my lap and she said, I was just thrilled. So I thought, okay, I'm going to have this child in my lap the whole time. But when they got

The teacher was introducing at read aloud the song and character letter G for Gus the goat. And when the teacher said, let's take a picture walk. What do you think this is going to be about? And she was starting her routine to introduce the book. She said the little girl jumped out of her lap, ran to the circle and said, I can be here because I know Gus the goat.

Carrie Casey (15:48)
Hahaha!

Sharon Burnett (15:49)
So she had

made a friend and she had gained some confidence and that was one of the characters in songs that drew her in. So you just look for those little special moments everywhere. And with the singing there happens to be a lot of it. If you're also doing a read aloud, if you're also using or looking for things that go along with the literacy centers, had someone the other day who was using Cathy Cook's cookbook.

she turned the home center into ⁓ a cooking station. So they made hats with the big coffee filters and the little tag board bands. So before she even knew it, they had their pots and their pans and they were singing Kathy Cook. So it's relating to them in a really spontaneous way, but also that instruction to pull them back together.

Carrie Casey (16:25)
Mm-hmm.

Sharon Burnett (16:45)
and talk about, let's listen for the sound that we hear in Cathy Cook's letter, so that we're certainly addressing those phonological awareness needs. And then we also encourage people with other curriculums to say, okay, let's just look at the themes that you're using. What would be a good time? What are some of the colors that you might want to pull together during the fall? Bring in red and orange and brown and yellow and bring those into play.

Somebody the other day said, we use that. We have a color day or a color week every so often. And even the secretaries find a way to make that whole atmosphere of the campus. What are we gonna be studying today? Are we gonna be studying Ghost of the Coat this week? And they all, because they're singing those songs going down the hall and during transitions, they know what's happening. Most of the time with your threes and fours, I say it's just a fabulous time.

to whatever letters you're introducing. And now, you know, all of our research says that we certainly need to be introducing more than one letter. So using that multiple letter approach, if your comprehensive curriculum is really focusing in on letter D and letter L, then why don't you bring Daisy Dahl and Larry Lyne and introduce those songs in books and go through to find the capital in lower cases.

And hey, let's talk about how are these letters the same and how are they different? They have curve lines and we learned about curve lines because we've already been in our shape book, Cindy Circle. We learned about straight lines because, and it just goes on and on and on. So when you said it kind of all fits together very well with some intentional instruction in what we call the big five, which is again, vocabulary, comprehension.

⁓ written expression, phonological awareness, and alphabet knowledge. If we are inclusive of those big five while we're introducing these concepts, then in our world, we feel like it fits into what you're already doing, but just gives you a extra little magic feather.

Carrie Casey (18:59)
Because again, one of those changes that's happened culturally is that, you know, I grew up and I knew all kinds of weird songs and I knew all kinds of nursery rhymes and stuff like that. And the kids today aren't getting that as much. Not everybody knows about Hickory Dickory Dock. so it's the introducing the rhythmic language helps with those kids who are

Sharon Burnett (19:21)
You are right.

Carrie Casey (19:27)
low expressive language users or who are second language, you know, English language learners or kids who need more of that other types of exposure to language in order to be where we would expect them to be. Because there are people who sing before they speak. And if you're never singing in your classroom because you're worried about your voice, then we have an issue.

Kate Woodward Young (19:52)
You

Carrie Casey (19:55)
But if you're not singing, maybe at least you can do stuff in that ⁓ kind of chanting rhythm that a lot of the songs that you have can be done in the chanting rhythm instead of song if somebody's particularly shy about their voice. So I think that helps.

Sharon Burnett (19:55)
You

Kate Woodward Young (20:11)
Okay, so Carrie, all

Sharon Burnett (20:11)
and you bring up.

Kate Woodward Young (20:13)
right, hang on Sharon. So Carrie, you've got an owner on today's podcast or at least a director that is still not putting the connections on why they need, and their viewpoint might be another curriculum. What would you tell them? And then we're gonna ask Sharon that same question.

Carrie Casey (20:29)
So here.

Sharon Burnett (20:33)
you

Carrie Casey (20:34)
Okay, so one of the things I'm gonna say is this is one of those things that it's very easy to point to to parents and to new teachers. So new teachers a lot of times want to know, they wanna have evidence that I'm a teacher, right? The teachers who've been doing it for five, 10 years, they know they're a teacher. But a lot of times somebody who is newly promoted into that lead teacher position is like,

Well, I don't know that I'm a real teacher, but by having a curriculum that they can point to that this is helping, it is science-backed and it is helping children with concepts they know their child is gonna need later, it is much easier to, for no other way to say this, but it's easier to sell to the parents and to those newer teachers that look,

your this is the end goal, then say creative curriculum or a Montessori curriculum or a lot of I love play based. I'm a play based person, but it is really hard for some parents to take on board the play based if it is standalone as just a play base. so adding this little piece in makes it much easier to show parents

and show those new teachers, this is part of how we are helping the kids be prepared for when they go to big kids school. So that's part of my thought process. Also, it's not as expensive as buying one of the whole everythings.

Kate Woodward Young (22:18)
So that

was actually the piece I was looking for, Carrie. And part of that was we've heard folks and we know of programs and we've all met that program that does it themselves because they look at curriculum as an expense because they haven't figured out how to use curriculum as a marketing tool. And we also know that there are folks who have a curriculum that may not match their educational philosophy. And I feel that

this curriculum and in case you are wondering we will have all of these details in the show notes so if you are looking it's celebratesel.com yeah okay have like one i think it's a .com and what's nice is it does give even that new teacher a place that they can start and hang their hat on even if you are having the program as a whole create

their own or you have resource materials and there's you know general guidance but yet there's not here open the book it's canned right and there's an opportunity for the teachers to put some of their own personality in it but like Carrie said if you're a new teacher you may not know what that looks like so hopefully ⁓ we've answered some questions we know you're going to have additional questions so

It's also a great first day. So if you are orienting new teachers, this is a great thing that you can give a brand new teacher on day one or day two, and they can feel like they were successful versus ⁓ some of the stuff we do in orientation for teachers. We often forget that joy. so Carrie often tries to remind people to include Play-Doh, Storytime.

other kinds of fun activities that first two weeks a new teacher starts. go to celebratesel.com, click on the message us tab on the show notes. We'd love to forward any questions over to Sharon. And with that, Carrie, how did they stay connected to us?

Carrie Casey (24:22)
Well, the best way, there's two really good ways. One, subscribe or follow this show, whatever it's called on your podcast player of choice or YouTube. And if you want even more, go onto childcareconversations.com and subscribe to our newsletter and you get some extra freebies in there if you're on our newsletter. And that way you get to hear from us twice a week in usually less than 30 minutes.

just enough for your drive to or from work. we make, hopefully we make running your program more joyful and much less overwhelming. So we'll talk to you in a few days.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your time with us today, Sharon, and we will see you at a conference pretty soon, I'm sure.

Kate Woodward Young (25:13)
rest of y'all we'll see you in a couple of days.

Carrie Casey (25:15)
Hahaha!