Community Services

Harris Fellowship in Child Development and Early Childhood Education

This well-established program is a collaboration between the Yale Child Study Center Section on Child Development and the Calvin Hill Day Care Center of New Haven. Harris Fellows work and study here with great success. We again anticipate fellowship openings for August 2006.

The fellowship represents a unique partnership between a well-established model early childhood education program and a clinical department of child psychiatry with a special focus on early childhood. The fellowship blends educational and clinical perspectives on working with young children. In contrast to other more traditional early childhood education training programs, this initiative is not simply a "placement" in two training institutions in which the trainee spends an allotted amount of time in specified activities or a few hours a day in a classroom. The Calvin Hill training model involves the trainee in every aspect of the early childhood curriculum; trainees truly become a part of the day to day life of the program. They work side by side with the master teachers and are an integral part of the teaching team. They learn the responsibility of providing a creative and interesting environment and curriculum for young children and are part of a community in which teachers and families work together. Similarly, the Child Study Center model emphasizes direct supervision by senior clinicians who work in community programs as well as with individual children.

Through this collaboration of educators and clinicians, the fellows will learn about the wide range of adaptive (and maladaptive) behavior and development. While developing an understanding of how broad and flexible is the definition of normal, trainees will also have the opportunity to learn about early childhood disorders and abnormal development. Through this exposure, they will become familiar with the processes of clinical referrals, diagnostic assessment, how clinicians think about the behaviors of children in groups, the differences between an educational and a therapeutic intervention, and models for working with children in an educational setting.

The curriculum for this fellowship will include both direct supervised experiences and informal reflective meetings with mentor teachers and clinicians with an emphasis on observation and developing participation as a member of an early childhood teaching team. Through direct experience, supervision, and coursework, fellows will integrate the theoretical and the practical. They will develop a theoretical base in child development and become more sensitive and careful observers of young children.

Successful candidates will come from two tracks -- one experienced educators and/or clinicians seeking an advanced practicum experience in early childhood education and the other, beginning trainees at the college graduate level but with minimal experience in child care and early childhood education. We anticipate that graduates of the fellowship will go on to other childcare settings to provide direct service and to provide leadership as teachers or work in other related fields such as pediatrics, social work or child psychology that strive to improve the quality of care for children.

We invite interested individuals to contact us for an application and further information. Requests for applications should be made to Susan Taddei, sataddei@adelphia.net or (203) 530-6606. Applications are due by March 9, 2006.