Rights & Needs of Young Children
Defending the Early Years
DEY’s Mission
approaches to learning informed by child development theory and evidence-based research.
DEY’s Primary Goals
- To advocate at the grassroots, local, state, regional, and federal levels for education policies based on child development theory and research.
- To mobilize the early childhood community to speak up for age-appropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices that are based on research.
- To promote appropriate practices in early childhood classrooms and to support educators in counteracting policies and practices that undermine whole child health and optimal learning.
What’s New at DEY?
Our next webinar in our Reflective Practitioner Series (RPS) course, Seeing Ourselves Seeing Each Other: Nurturing Healthy Identity in the Early Years, will be on Monday, March 16th, at 7 pm. DEY ED Denisha Jones and guest presenter Kirsten Cole will lead this discussion on strategies for affirming healthy white identity development in the early years!
For $8 a month, RPS subscribers get access to the live webinar, recording, reflective workbook, and resources!
Seeing Ourselves Seeing Each Other: Nurturing Healthy Identity in the Early Years is our current Reflective Practitioner Series (RPS) course. Each month, we will discuss how to affirm a particular racial/ethnic identity in the early years.
Did you miss Affirming Black Identity in the Early Years? As part of the 2026 Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action, this webinar is free and open to all. Click below to watch the recording.
We are excited to share our upcoming programming, Research into Practice Book Talks. There are so many great books out there to support early childhood educators, caregivers, and families, and we want to help you read as many of them as you can!
Join us on Tuesday, February 24th, at 7 pm EST as we talk with Kirsten Cole about her new book, Teaching for Love and Justice: Learning About Race and Racism Alongside Young Children.
Kirsten Cole, Ph.D., is a teacher, researcher, and public-school parent based in Brooklyn, NY. Her research interests include anti-racist/anti-bias education, the study of teachers’ lives, and the relationships between families and teachers. She has published multiple articles and book chapters based on her research.
Did you miss January’s book talk with Amanda Morgan on her book Not Just Cute: How Powerful Play Drives Development? Click below to watch the recording.
Kisha welcomes Renata Bowers and discusses the many aspects of her early childhood advocacy work. From Authoring children’s books that promote positive self-image, autonomy, and freedom to her direct work with children and families.
Co-Founder of Frieda B., LLC and author of the national-award-winning Frieda B. series of picture books, Renata Bowers created the fictional children’s character Frieda B. to encourage children to dream big and believe they, too, are free to be their own one-of-a-kind, very important story.
The DEY Podcast with Kisha Reid is a monthly discussion-styled show featuring educators, advocates and other changemakers about their grassroots projects, innovations in education and reimagining early childhood environments. Our goal is to amplify these voices so we can all learn and work toward a more equitable and playful environment for children. Check out all episodes here.
Our February Diversity Is Not Divisive Resource is the Little Justice Leaders Facebook page. This organization makes social justice education easy. Their “mission is simple: We want to make it easy for you to build classrooms and schools rooted in social justice.” Their Facebook page has a ton of great resources for Black History Month.
Denisha talks with Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) Co-Directors Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari and Marina Marcou-O’Malley about the fight for universal child care in New York.
The Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) was founded 25 years ago to demand that New York fulfill its constitutional obligation to provide every child with a sound, basic education. You can follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
Moderated by DEY Executive Director Denisha Jones, these dialogues aim to inspire and reaffirm our dedication to protecting and nurturing childhood. Join us in this important mission to defend childhood and advocate for the well-being of society’s youngest members.
Did you miss the livestream? You can catch up on all our DEY Dialogues here.
We’re thrilled to announce the release of our resource for the campaign, In Defense of ECEC: Restoring the Link Between High Quality and Child Development. This advocacy toolkit is a powerful new resource designed to equip early childhood educators, advocates, and leaders with clear, compelling messaging that links what we know about child development to what we do in practice and policy.
Click on the image to download the toolkit, and you can watch the webinar recording below.
You can also download individual pages for each topic covered in the toolkit!
DEY has released a framework to support early childhood educators, caregivers, and parents in supporting young children’s healthy racial identity development. Fostering Healthy Identity Development in Young Children: Affirming Race, Culture, and Ethnicity in the Early Years is a framework designed for early childhood educators, caregivers, and parents to understand the development of racial identity and support healthy development in the early years. Click the image to download the framework.
Click on the image to download the framework, and you can watch the introductory webinar recording below.
Also, check out the DEY 2025 BLMAS Resource List here!
Do you want to explore the toolkit and framework in more depth? Become a monthly subscriber to our Reflective Practitioner Series and access our In Defense of Quality and Fostering Healthy Identity Courses!
From The Colorado Sun 2/15/2026 Ten empty cribs fill a canary yellow classroom at Mero Kaya’s Jump Start Early Learning…
Denisha talks with Alliance for Quality Education (AQE) Co-Directors Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari and Marina Marcou-O’Malley about the fight for universal child care in New York.
Our February Diversity Is Not Divisive Resource is the Little Justice Leaders Facebook page. This organization makes social justice education easy. Their “mission is simple: We want to make it easy for you to build classrooms and schools rooted in social justice.” Their Facebook page has a ton of great resources for Black History Month.
Kisha welcomes Renata Bowers and discusses the many aspects of her early childhood advocacy work. From Authoring children’s books that promote positive self-image, autonomy, and freedom to her direct work with children and families.
Co-Founder of Frieda B., LLC and author of the national-award-winning Frieda B. series of picture books, Renata Bowers created the fictional children’s character Frieda B. to encourage children to dream big and believe they, too, are free to be their own one-of-a-kind, very important story.
Our goal was to create opportunities for those who support early childhood learning to play and learn and about playing and learning.
DEY seeks to rally parents and educators to take action on policies affecting the education of young children, by encouraging them to speak out with well-reasoned arguments against inappropriate standards, assessments, and classroom practices.
DEY provides mini-grants of between $200 and $500 to individuals and organizations to help foster work in communities across the country. DEY’s first mini-grant, awarded in 2014, resulted in a rally for play that took place in Minneapolis.
DEY
Are you concerned about the direction that education policy is going? We are, too!
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