I first became interested in LENA Grow somewhat unexpectedly.

I’d been hearing about it from other programs in our area, and I became curious about whether it could work in a setting like ours. I remember asking a simple question: Could we bring this to STARS Academy and see what it might add to what we were already doing?

I believed it had the potential to help our teachers become even more intentional in their interactions with children. Ultimately, I believed it would support better outcomes for both teachers and children.

What I did not anticipate was how much the experience would influence the way our teachers saw their own impact. And the way I approached coaching.

STARS Academy is a therapeutic preschool and pediatric therapy clinic in Batesville, Arkansas. We’ve been here since 2009. Our setting is a little different from a typical early childhood program. We have early childhood classrooms alongside physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, and nursing, all under one roof. Our teachers work side by side with therapists every day, and many of our children are nonverbal or have limited verbal language.

When I decided to bring LENA Grow in, I didn’t pilot it in one room. I brought it to every participating classroom, all 12 groups and all 39 teachers. All staff participated in Teacher Orientation, including our kitchen staff. I wanted anyone entering a classroom to understand the approach and be able to support it.

What LENA Grow Is

LENA Grow is a five-week, evidence-based professional development program for early childhood educators. It uses LENA technology to measure conversational turns. Conversational turns are the back-and-forth exchanges between an adult and a young child that research connects to language development, social-emotional growth, and long-term cognitive outcomes.

Teachers get data, but that’s not really the point. The point is what they do with it. They look at their own numbers. They set their own goals. They make changes that feel meaningful to them, with the support of a structured coaching model.

Surprise #1: We Started Seeing Communication Differently

One of the stories I tell most often about our experience with LENA Grow is about a little boy we’d had since he was about 14 months old. He was nonverbal and screamed frequently when he was trying to communicate a need. LENA Grow helped our teachers slow down, pay closer attention to his cues, and recognize that communication was already happening. Even before words were there.

As his teachers became more intentional about using what they were learning through LENA Grow, alongside his therapy team, something exciting happened. One day he said his occupational therapist’s name for the first time. She wasn’t even sure she’d heard him correctly. She took him back to his classroom and left, and then his teachers heard him say her name again.

They realized he was upset that his OT had left, and he had found a new way to tell them he wanted her back. That moment helped all of us see his communication differently.

A few days later, a previous teacher came to work with him. She responded to his cues, imitated his sounds. Then she used a technique LENA coaching had reinforced for her: She waited. She gave him a long pause and made space for him to respond. He said the name again.

That pause stayed with our team. One teacher said, “We learned the pause from LENA.” It was such a simple strategy, but seeing what happened when an adult intentionally created that space was powerful.

Sometimes one of the most effective things a teacher can do is wait, make space, and let the child lead the interaction.

Surprise #2: Teachers Could See Their Own Impact

One thing people may not fully understand about a setting like ours is how easy it can be for teachers to underestimate the developmental impact of their everyday work.

Our teachers work alongside therapists all day long, and therapy goals and progress can feel very visible and measurable. Even though I consistently reminded our teachers that their relationships, interactions, routines, and classroom experiences were a critical part of children’s growth, some still saw the therapists as the people creating the biggest change.

Encouragement from me was one thing. Seeing objective data from their own classrooms was something entirely different.

When teachers saw their own data, they could see evidence of the impact their everyday interactions were having. LENA gave them a way to see and measure something that had previously been difficult to make visible. That shifted the conversation in our building and strengthened the way our teachers saw their role on the interdisciplinary team.

That sense of ownership and empowerment is something I’ll carry forward no matter what.

Surprise #3: The Data Revealed Things We Weren’t Looking For

Another surprise came when one of our teaching teams noticed that their conversational turns consistently dipped mid-morning. They looked at their LENA Grow reports, talked it through, and realized the pattern seemed connected to their own energy. They realized by 10:30 or 11:00 each morning, the teachers felt tired.

Their solution was simple. They became more intentional about protein and water throughout the day.

I loved that because it wasn’t an administrator identifying the problem and telling them what to do. The teachers noticed a pattern in their own data, reflected on what might be contributing to it, and developed a solution themselves.

Most importantly, it worked. That kind of reflective problem-solving supports better outcomes for both teachers and children.

I shared that story at a countywide directors meeting, and another director later told me she discovered some of her teachers were experiencing something similar. Because we shared what our team had learned, another program was able to consider a similar solution.

That was another unexpected benefit. Something our teachers learned from their own data was useful beyond our own building.

What It Did for Me as a Coach

From an administrative and coaching perspective, LENA Grow gave me tools I had been looking for.

Before LENA, I was a strong encourager. I supported my teachers, built them up, and tried to help them recognize their strengths. LENA helped me move from encouragement alone to more intentional, strengths-based coaching. I’ve always believed in building on what people do well; LENA gave me a structure and concrete tools to make that coaching more focused and actionable.

Arkansas is rolling out CLASS statewide right now, and people sometimes ask me how LENA Grow compares with CLASS or Conscious Discipline. I don’t see them as competing approaches. For us, LENA Grow fills a different space. It gives teachers objective feedback about interaction patterns and then uses coaching to help them build on their strengths and grow specific adult-child interaction skills.

LENA Grow gave us a tool that strengthened work we were already committed to and helped make the impact of that work more visible. We are most excited to complete another round of LENA Grow this Fall

People ask me: How does LENA Grow work in a therapeutic preschool setting? How does it work with children who are nonverbal or communicate differently?

I tell them to come see for themselves.

We wondered how well LENA Grow would translate to a therapeutic preschool, particularly with children who have limited verbal language or communicate in different ways. What we found was that those differences didn’t make the work less meaningful – they made us more thoughtful about how we listened, responded, and created opportunities for interaction.

Learn more about bringing LENA Grow to your program.

Check out LENA Grow in Arkansas!