Visit to Parents as Teachers National Center in St. Louis

After 6 weeks in my new position as the Parent as Teachers Program Director, I had the opportunity to attend PAT Foundational 1 and Model Implementation training in St. Louis, home of the Parents as Teachers National Center. It was a motivating and inspirational week packed full of learning and meeting new people. I was able to see first-hand all that the PAT curriculum offers to families and it’s a lot! Going into the training, I knew that the curriculum was flexible and contained a lot of great information, but I was overwhelmed by the amount of resources for Parent Educators to use to best support families. There is a lot of flexibility so Parent Educators can customize their visits to meet the needs, goals, and interests of individual families. There are seemingly endless resources to help Parent Educators choose topics to discuss, child development areas to highlight and activities to do with parents and their children.

In addition to learning about the PAT curriculum, I met new Parent Educators from across the country. New PAT staff from Montana and Florida and everywhere in between were represented at the training. It was great to see how every agency implements the PAT program differently to meet their individual community’s needs, yet the foundation and core components of the program remain the same.

I also had the opportunity to meet PAT National Center staff that I’ve communicated with by phone or email over my first 6 weeks as Program Director. It was wonderful to put faces to all the names and voices and see that a real person actually exists on the other end of the phone and computer screen! I had the pleasure of having a casual lunch with Constance Gully, the just-named new PAT National Center President and CEO. I was honored that she took time out of her busy schedule to talk with me about PAT national initiatives and the great work we are doing in Colorado. We are thrilled that Ms. Gully will be attending the Parent Possible Home Visiting Conference in Denver in early April and look forward to showcasing all the superior work happening in the home visiting area in Colorado.

Michele Provost, Parents as Teachers Program Director

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