BANK STREET COLLEGE'S INFANCY INSTITUTE
RECEIVES $5,000 FROM RONALD MCDONALD HOUSE

New York, Nov. 8- The Ronald McDonald House Charities has given a grant to Bank Street College's Infancy Institute in the amount of $5,000. The grant will provide scholarships for childcare workers who could not otherwise afford to attend.

The Infancy Institute is offered on a yearly basis in late June, and is designed to meet the needs of professionals who work in varied settings with infants, toddlers, and families. The three-day conference provides a high-quality, individualized experience with numerous choices among stimulating workshops and presentations. Each year, Institute participants develop skills in observing and analyzing children's behavior, working with parents, and working with children with special needs. They also increase their knowledge of the principles of child development and of creating and maintaining safe, healthy, and stimulating environment for young children. This is accomplished through a series of intensive, small group workshops on a wide variety of topics, as well as a site visit to an exemplary infant/ toddler center. Every year there is a keynote address, past speakers have included Dr. Ruby Takanishi, Dr. Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek, and Michael Trout.

This is the eighth year that the Ronald McDonald House Charities have supported scholarships to the Institute. These scholarships are important, for many of those who cannot afford this sort of training are precisely those who most need what the training offers. McDonald's generous contributions have touched the lives of hundreds of children and care givers.

For nearly a century, Bank Street has been a powerful force for innovation and best practices in teaching and learning for children. Its original ideas have shaped a distinctive approach to children's education that can be found in successful classrooms, schools, museums and other learning environments in communities across the country.

Bank Street's creative approach to teaching and learning takes expression in countless examples. Bank Street has launched successful initiatives to improve urban public schools, helped create Head Start, set new standards for children's literature, and developed programs to make parents and their communities more effective partners in the education of children.

The Bank Street Approach educates children who are curious, love learning, are high motivated, respectful and tolerant of human differences, engaged with the world around them, and prepared to lead lives of consequence.

The mission of Bank Street College is to improve the education of children and their teachers by applying to the educational process all available knowledge about learning and growth, and by connecting teaching and learning meaningfully to the outside world. In so doing, we seek to strengthen not only individuals, but the community as well, including family, school, and the larger society in which adults and children, in all their diversity, interact and learn. We see in education the opportunity to build a better society.

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