It’s hard to believe it has been a year since we all gathered in DC for last year’s BUILD conference! We are gearing up for the trip to Denver and looking forward to catching up with friends at the 2014 QRIS National Meeting next week. We spoke with our friends at BUILD and there are over 700 people signed up for the conference, and all 50 states will be represented!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with BUILD, it’s an awesome organization that works with early childhood leaders at the state and national level to set policy and improve learning for children from birth to age five. BUILD’s annual national meeting is a wonderful opportunity to connect with these leaders, hear about the most recent trends in early ed, and brainstorm about how we can support one another in improving the quality of early learning across the country.

I took a quick look at this year’s agenda, and I’m already debating how to split my time across the sessions. In particular, I’m excited to see quite a few sessions on new approaches to professional development. Last year, my biggest takeaway was how important the “I” in QRIS is, so I’m excited to see that theme carrying through to this year’s agenda. I’m also looking forward to a workshop by the Early Learning Coalition of Duval in Florida: “Dropped ITERS and ECERS from QRIS? The Journey from QRS to QRIS to QRIS 2.0.” We recently did a case study on this group, so it will be great to build (no pun intended) more on that.

On Thursday, we’ll have two sessions of our own. Rebecca Berlin will be presenting with some of our higher ed partners and she’ll also be conducting a workshop on understanding and improving teacher-child interactions from 4 weeks to 3 years.

We’ll have a big team from Teachstone attending, so if you have some time, please reach out if you’d like to chat with us. In particular, we’re already helping some states think through their Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships and Preschool for All grant applications. We’d be happy to chat more about these or other issues related to improving interactions in your state. Please reach out to Amy Mountz, our Director of Partnerships and Outreach, if you’d like to set up a time to chat. See you in the Mile-High city!