A NEW, non-profit pre-school is offering early intervention and language development for 11 children, including eight with speech and language delays.

Angela Fubler, head of local educational consulting firm Bercon Ltd., told the Mid- Ocean News that she and her colleague Mary Giordano are leading the effort to develop their "language acquisition" pre-school (LAP).

"This is an LAP, and that structure means that we use an observation window," said Ms Fubler, "the only one of its kind in Bermuda. We have a special visitor this week: Dr. Kim Wilcox will be here from Wednesday through Friday, to help us out, and he is one of the main people behind the development of the LAP concept."

Dr. Wilcox, Professor of Speech-Language-Hearing (SPLH) at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, gave a "community presentation" on "The Role of Pre-school Education in Language Development" at the Salvation Army Citadel on Wednesday night.

He spoke to Bercon staff yesterday, attended a "Chatterbox" open house last night, and this morning, he is scheduled to meet with the parents.

Dr. Wilcox's visit was encouraged by Ms Giordano, who was his student when he was on the faculty of the University of Missouri

"We invited Dr. Wilcox to join us at our open house," said Ms Giordano, "and we felt it was important, while he was here, to give the community access to his expertise. So we asked him to give a workshop on Wednesday night, to discuss the importance of language in a pre-school curriculum. Angela and I knew there needed to be a pre-school with a language focus in Bermuda, and we talked about doing it. Then one day, I happened to be flying through Kansas City on the way to having knee surgery, and I just ran into Dr. Wilcox at a baggage claim. We got caught up, and I told him I was in Bermuda, and that Bermuda really needed a pre-school setting for language"

" 'Well, that's funny,' he said. 'I wrote a book on that! This is the research I have been doing.' I had no idea, I was just talking off the top of my head, and he said he would send me the book."

Within two weeks, Dr. Wilcox's book Building a Language Focused Pre-school arrived in Bermuda, and it had a galvanising effect on Ms Fubler and Ms Giordano.

"Angela and I read it, and we said, 'This is it'!" remembered Ms Giordano. "We knew what we wanted to do, but Dr. Wilcox had done it for us. There were similarities to language-based pre-schools I had worked in, but he had thought it through and had the research base. We had what we needed to get going."

The University of Kansas, whose SPLH department, a leader in this field, dates back to the early 1900s, developed the LAP programme. The number of students in this department has doubled since 1990. With some 200 undergraduates and 100 graduate students, faculty numbers, under the leadership of Dr. Wilcox, have also increased dramatically, which has in turn increased the instruction and research activities which led to the LAP finding its way to Bermuda.

The Chatterbox Pre-school and Child Study Centre opened last September at the Bercon property on Church Street in Southampton, and Ms Fubler and Ms Giordano ensured that their schoolroom conformed to the LAP model.

"We had to renovate to get the space properly organised," advised Ms Fubler, "and to put in the observation window, but we haven't added on to the property yet, but that is the goal. We would like to expand, but stay in the same building, because the location is ideal." In addition to children with speech and language delays, LAP enrols normally-developing children, who serve as models for appropriate and normal language use, and are considered "mentors".

Ms Fubler is confident that many students, parents, educators, and therapists will benefit from the Chatterbox LAP programme, and the observation window is a requirement of the system.

"This feature, unique in Bermuda, will open the way for local research, parent-child studies, student-child observations, and focus group discussions," said Ms Fubler. "We also insist on the participation of parents, who are required to support their child's language development at home or with direct classroom intervention."

The involvement of parents in early education seems to be accepted as crucial; in a recent report in the Mid-Ocean News of the ground-breaking High/Scope Foundation's Perry Pre-school Group study, which has followed underprivileged children in Ypsilanti, Michigan from age three in 1962 through age 40, a common theme in producing improved educational and broader societal performance was the importance of parental involvement in early childhood education.

Ms Fubler said: "Mary and I are both involved with Chatterbox, with teacher Patrice Williams, but it will go ahead under Mary's direction. Right now, we have eight children in the morning, and three in the afternoon.

"Expansion will obviously allow us to include more children, and that's part of why we asked Dr. Wilcox to come down, to expose the community to what it's about, to give parents some education on language acquisition, and to teach other pre-schools that they can implement some of the principles of language acquisition within their own pre-schools.

"We will follow the LAP model intensively, but some of the principles can be implemented in any pre-school. The Government pre-schools would absolutely benefit from it. Chatterbox is a non-profit, and our interest is that children develop to their maximum potential, so 'giving away' our LAP knowledge is a plus for the community. Hundreds of children here could benefit, especially if it's implemented to some degree in what we think of as the typical pre-school setting.

"Because there are many children in typical pre-school settings who have language delays; they are just not identified. We go through an assessment process to identify our children as having language delays, but there are many children who are not identified, or who are on a wait list in the government sector who don't have the opportunity to be identified. "

The educational community here has taken note; at a recent conference of the Bermuda Association for the Education of Young Children, Minister of Education Terry Lister said children in Bermuda were not having an equal opportunity to excel in school. He said "he was concerned about children and how they learn".

Ms Giordano is excited about the progress being made at Chatterbox after just four months.

"We feel it's going wonderfully; we have an amazing group of children and supportive parents," she said.