More About Me

My name is Sara Beach, and I’m the author and creator of Every Child’s Champion Podcast and Every Child’s Champion Membership Site. An independent ECE Consultant and Infant / Early Childhood Mental Health Consultant, my primary focus these days is on Behavior and Mental Health. Twice a month I host the “Every Child’s Champion” podcast, providing child development and early education information, inspiration, and encouragement for ECE teachers. My goal is to inspire you, to inform you, to encourage you, and to even make you laugh a little! In addition to training on the Pyramid Model and the CLASS, I currently focus much of my time on Illinois’ statewide implementation of the Pyramid Model.  For this work, I am a member of the Illinois Pyramid Model Master Cadre of trainers and I work as an implementation coach for various school districts.

Here's a longer bio, if you’re interested!

Career History: In 1986 I obtained a Master’s in Early Childhood Education from the prestigious Erikson Institute of Chicago. In my early career, I started, developed, and directed a large successful non-profit child care and early education program (for 13 years). With a desire to do more direct application of research to practice, I moved into the Head Start arena to do training and teacher coaching  for the Ounce of Prevention’s original Educare programs, located on the south side of Chicago. In the era of Early Reading First, I continued coaching and training for other Chicago programs and led an assessment team in collecting child outcome data for a large ERF program (5 years).

For 25 years, I taught a wide range of Early Childhood Education courses in both community college and university settings (Northern Illinois University, Aurora University, Waubonsee Community College, and Joliet Junior College), and did extensive training of teachers and directors for the Illinois Trainers Network (QRIS) for many years as well.

In 2007, I was hired as a teacher coach and course facilitator by the National Center for Research in Early Childhood Education at the University of Virginia. Led by Drs. Robert Pianta and Bridget Hamre, authors of the CLASSroom Assessment Scoring System, this groundbreaking research study tested and validated the My Teaching Partner (MTP) coaching model. The success of the research ushered in a new era of teacher coaching, and My Teaching Partner later served as a model for Practice-Based Coaching.  In this work, I was trained extensively on the CLASSroom Assessment Scoring System and its use with teachers and instructional coaches. I coached teachers in Chicago, Memphis, and Rhode Island, and taught a college level course entitled “Teaching Language and Literacy Through Effective Teacher Child Interactions”. Mentored by Dr. Sarah Hadden, I began doing CLASS Observation Trainings as the CLASS was beginning to gain public interest (2009).

In 2010 after the completion of the My Teaching Partner study, I moved over to the newly formed company Teachstone (founded Drs. Pianta and Hamre) to work on scaling the My Teaching Partner model for a national audience. I wrote training manuals and early MTP materials and served as Lead MTP Specialist (overseeing newly hired MTP Specialists to work with coaches out in the field).

In 2009, the Office of Head Start (OHS) partnered with the University of Virginia and Teachstone to pilot and eventually adopt the CLASSroom Assessment Scoring System nationwide. I was privileged to be a Trainer of Trainers for OHS’s extensive team of Training and Technical Assistance providers from across the country, Puerto Rico and Hawaii. This began my 5 year-long stint as a Teachstone CLASS Master Trainer, and during this period I traveled extensively throughout the United States and in China to provide a multitude of different trainings at the Pre-K, K-3, Infant and Toddler levels. I was a Master Coder for Teachstone, and did Dual Coding  with evaluators for the Office of Head Start (Danya) and the State of Georgia’s QRIS system.

I received a doctoral fellowship at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and in 2011 went to work as a research assistant for Dr. Karen LaParo (the 3rd author of the CLASS). Throughout this time I also continued working as an MTP Specialist for Teachstone. Dr. LaParo’s research centered on professional development and teacmy coaching, and during my time at UNCG, I did in-depth literature reviews of these topics. Although I did not complete my doctoral degree at this time due to illness, this mid-life experience in academia solidified my commitment to the application of cutting-edge research to direct practice in schools, and in 2012 I returned to Illinois and recommitted myself to full-time training work with Teachstone.

By 2014, I accepted a position with the Ounce of Prevention (Chicago) as the Assistant Director for Lead Learn Excel, Illinois’ Race-To-Top funded leadership training initiative. This program grew out of the body of rich school improvement research generated by the field of implementation science. This position afforded me the opportunity to immerse myself into the world of public school state pre-K programs, which I did for the next 2 years.  Working with principals, superintendents, and instructional coaches, I played a lead role with a team of program implementation specialists. I brought my rich background with the CLASS to this position, and Illinois’ top performing programs across the state were trained in inclusive, collaborative leadership and the implementation of CLASS-based job-embedded profession development in schools and centers. I’s role in the administration of Lead Learn Excel afforded my the opportunity to contribute extensively to the development of a rich body of training materials, and to curate the LLE library of resources, available through the Start Early (formerly Ounce of Prevention) organization.

Beginning in 2017, I started my consulting company, Synapse Early Learning Systems. The word “Synapse” was used because I am a champion of CONNECTIONS. Synapses are the point where two brain cells connect with one another. I’m a lover of all brain research, especially the research that focuses on child development and mental health! In 2018 the Every Child’s Champion Podcast was born.

Since I have specialized in mental health and behavior ever since 2017, I created the Every Child’s Champion Membership Website in early 2024, to bring the messages, resources, and support directly into your classroom. Welcome home!

Brain Development from Birth to Five

Here are a few brain facts that are helpful to know foundationally.

Every emotion, sensory feeling, literally every experience is processed by a brain. The development and the condition of the child’s brain will directly impact what they can do, their behaviors.

Children are born with billions of neurons – estimated at 100 billion.  During the prenatal months, neurons are gathering into clusters to become the different parts of the brain. Still after birth,, there are tons more connections that need to be made. Think about the language center of the brain. Kids have to hear words over and over and over again before they ever actually learn and use a word. The synapses are happening every time they hear the word.  Ages 2-3 is thought to be the fastest period of growth, and age 15 is when the most number of neurons seem to be present.

You can see it looks like there are actually fewer neurons in the adult than in the 2 year old child. That’s because of pruning – that “use it or lose it” principle.  But brain structural development continues well into the twenties and is not thought to be complete until age 25 – that prefrontal cortex, which is believed to be responsible ultimately for the development of executive functions - skills like paying attention, controlling one's impulses, and regulating emotions.

Synapses that fire together, wire together. If you pair the image of a ball with the word “ball” enough times, the synapses for vision and hearing, and thinking all are firing together over and over. So over time and with enough experience, enough connections are made that neuropathways are laid down.

New connections are continually created while synapses that are no longer in use degenerate. ... Researchers only recently found out that even in the adult brain, not only do existing synapses adapt to new circumstances, but new connections are constantly formed and reorganized.

In general:

• The brain develops sequentially, from the more primitive parts that support basic bodily functions, including the "fight or flight response", to those that enable higher level functioning, such as thinking and emotions.
• Connections in the brain are influenced by experiences and stimulation.
• There are sensitive periods of development where the brain is most open to the influence of external experiences
• The neural circuits for dealing with stress are particularly malleable (or "plastic") during the early childhood period
• Healthy emotional development is shaped by caring and predictable responses from adults