LENA (Language ENvironment Analysis) is a national nonprofit on a mission to transform children's futures through early talk technology and data-driven programs. LENA works with a wide range of partner organizations to boost early brain development and improve kindergarten readiness for infants, toddlers, and preschoolers.
Since 2016, LENA has served 4,600 children and 580 early childhood educators in Colorado, and LENA technology has recorded over 5.5 million conversational turns. Put your community on the map!
⬤
LENA Grow
offers evidence-based professional development for infant, toddler, and preschool teachers.
⬤
LENA Start
builds school readiness and strengthens families with parent-group classes.
⬤
LENA Home
adds an early language focus to any home visiting program.
⬤
LENA SP
offers reliable, detailed language environment data in research and clinical applications.
Colorado implemented LENA Grow through its Expanding Quality in Infant Toddler Care (EQIT) initiative in 2020. EQIT-trained coaches at regional Early Childhood Councils (ECCs) offer coaching supports to family childcare providers by using LENA data and coaching content. LENA partners with the EQIT program manager to train EQIT coaches across the state, develop alignments with the state QRIS, and analyze and report on data generated by the LENA system. LENA also partners with leadership and coaches at the individual ECCs to provide technical assistance for high-fidelity implementation of LENA Grow, effective use of LENA data, and provider engagement.
Teachers earn professional development hours that are required for teacher credentialing and Colorado Shines. LENA Grow 1 Essentials is approved for 4.5 hours and LENA Grow 2 Insights is approved for 3.5 Hours in the Colorado Professional Development Information System (PDIS).
LENA has crosswalks with Head Start, CLASS, The Pyramid Model, ZERO TO THREE, and more!
"It became clear that the fit of LENA Grow was perfect for us. Our values encourage us first to value infant/toddler early care educators. This model says ‘You caregivers, what you’re already doing in your day, you’re doing it – we just want to put words and numbers around it and give it back to you in a way that’s readable.'"
LENA is scaling quickly and has a goal to impact over 100,000 children annually worldwide by 2025. Whether you're with a library, school district, CCR&R, state agency, university-community partnership, public health initiative, or any other organization interested in improving early childhood outcomes, we invite you to learn more about bringing LENA to your community.
Connect with
Caitlyn Stafford,
Director, Growth Operations
CaitlynStafford@LENA.org
“This has been described by our coaches as like the sunshine and the light.”
Read these and other stories about partner success stories and research findings in Colorado and beyond.
The professional development program has been built into Colorado’s statewide initiative to improve quality in infant and toddler care.
What if we looked at early childhood education as an extension of “school”?
Highlights from a webinar where we hear directly from a teacher, coach, and administrator using LENA Grow.
Family child care providers face unique challenges. Colorado is trying to combat these challenges with job-embedded professional development. Learn more about the initiative and its early results.
Many previous studies have drawn connections between the quantity of back-and-forth interactions in early childhood and later linguistic and cognitive skills. Importantly, newly published research conducted in Chile has taken a novel direction, determining that infants’ language environments predict their socioemotional skills one year later.
What can we do in the here and now to keep our best educators in infant, toddler, and preschool classrooms? For one, we can rediscover just how wonderful classrooms can be.