CentroNía Institute

About CentroNía Institute

The CentroNía Institute was created in 2011 during CentroNía’s 25th year anniversary to share CentroNía’s extensive experience and success educating young children, strengthening families, and training teachers in a bilingual, multicultural environment. The CentroNía Institute’s purpose is to connect cutting edge research related to education and child development with the teaching practices for early childhood education.

The CentroNía Institute developed a holistic model that outlines the following three agents of change in a child’s development:

  1. Teachers as self-reflective practitioners
  2. Center directors as instructional leaders
  3. Parents as the first teachers for their children

The CentroNía Institute strives to raise awareness and strengthen institutional capacity to address the needs of the early childhood education field and parents of young children by:

  • Developing, presenting, and disseminating research surrounding best practices for educating young children
  • Offering professional development workshops and training to educators, school leadership, childcare center staff, and parents
  • Providing on-site technical assistance and individualized coaching to teachers and staff in real life circumstances in the classroom

The CentroNía Institute offers the following:

CentroNía Institute Reflective Practice Approach (CIRPA)

CIRPA is a toolkit developed to improve scores for the ‘Instructional Support’ domain of the CLASS assessment, a scoring system used to evaluate the quality of early childhood classrooms. Along with the resources in the toolkit, CIRPA includes a professional development component followed by coaching and technical assistance cycles.

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Assessments

CentroNía Institute has the capacity to conduct Pre-K CLASS observations and provide a comprehensive report in English, Spanish, and/or Amharic. Many observer reports provide little guidance and/or strategies on how to improve scores to grow out of the threshold, CentroNía Institute uses a report template that outlines action steps for improving scores using examples from observations throughout the preschool day.

Conferences, Workshops, & Technical Assistance

Our coaches provides highly interactive workshops on a variety of topics that are responsive to the needs of adult learners for professional development. These workshops provide staff who are working with children, youth, and adults in diverse settings with evidence-based strategies to strengthen the effectiveness of their work and introduce them to innovative thought leaders who are shaping policy and practice in the early childhood field.

Examples of CentroNía Institute Training Packages:
Second Language Acquisition and Bilingualism
Brain Development, Language Development and Quality Interaction
Social Emotional Development (Terrible Twos)
Personal Care Routine (ITERS-R)
Unpacking Toddler CLASS
Unpacking Infant CLASS
Unpacking PRE-K Instructional Support (CIRPA Introduction)

Child Development Associate (CDA) Training Program

Child Development Associate (CDA) is a national credentialing program in early childhood education, including courses for home- and center-based programs. At CentroNía, we specialize in both infant/toddler and preschool endorsements with a bilingual specialization. CentroNía Institute coaches provide classroom instruction to prepare participants for the CDA credential exam which is administered by the Council for Professional Recognition.

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Meet the Team:

Esteban Morales

Educational Director

Heriberto Velasquez

Educational Coordinator

Eduardo Gamero

CDA Coordinator

Indalee Clark

Instructional Coach

Sebawit Yirsaw

Instructional Coach

Interested in enrollment?

The best way to learn about CentroNía and whether our services are right for you and your family is by making an appointment with our Admissions Office and speaking with a representative.
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