Every month, LENA sends out program newsletters to our LENA Start, LENA Grow, and LENA Home partner sites. We share best practices and ask for ideas from sites. This month, we received a wonderful letter from a coach in Georgia highlighting how she incentivizes teachers:

Hello,

My name is Naomie Banatte and I am a Towne Lake Academy Peer Coach in full support of the LENA Grow Professional Development Program for early childhood teachers. Through targeted feedback and coaching, I am able to help teachers set goals, develop professional confidence, and support children to be emotionally, socially, as well as academically prepared for school through the increasing of back and forth interactions.

In order to support LENA Grow directives, enhance performance, and encourage teacher participation at Towne Lake Academy, I have applied an incentive based coaching practice called “Caught In The Act”. With the support of our management team, I am able to (on a weekly basis) reward the teachers that we find to be most active in utilizing and meeting LENA goals and standards within their classrooms.

The rewards that are given vary from certificates to gift cards and more. Our amazing teachers love being recognized for doing a good job with our students and we are happy to see our teachers encouraged. As we continue forth, I look forward to applying more practices to support our teachers, our children, our school, and ultimately LENA Grow. We are all so very excited about our anticipated growth and grateful to be a part of such an awesome, beneficial, and fulfilling program.

Warmest Regards,

Naomie Banatte

LENA Team

The LENA Team is a dedicated group of professionals who are passionate about increasing awareness of the importance of early interactive talk. We are statisticians, speech-language pathologists, curriculum specialists, engineers, and linguists.