About Our Programs

Inner City-Inner Child is an Early Learning Arts and Literacy Program, Training Program and Mentoring Program that helps inner city childcare centers in the District of Columbia improve the quality of childcare. Through these programs, ICIC helps centers improve their quality and identify citywide opportunities and resources.

Inner City-Inner Child is an outreach program reaching inner city children in childcare centers in Washington, D.C.’s low-income neighborhoods. Through ICIC programs, such as Dancing with Books, an early learning arts and literacy workshop for children and teachers, Dancing with Books, Act II, a literacy training and book distribution program, and Thinking Thursdays, a professional development training program for inner city child care teachers, Inner City-Inner Child is changing the way children think, grow and learn; one book and one child at a time.

Dancing with Books!
ICIC takes this highly interactive, book based arts and literacy rich residency to different inner city centers each year. This 3-month series of workshops is based on well-loved children’s books, and teaches vocabulary and word recognition by singing, dancing and drumming portions of the books. Children and teachers create a word wall together, new dances and their own CD. The teachers love the teaching instruction and the children love learning shapes, colors and new words in a fun, interactive way.

Currently 61 percent of low income families have NO books at home for their children and 80 percent of low income child care centers have no books at all.

Dancing with Books, Act II
Last year, ICIC distributed 5,000 books to low income centers and children. This year, we will distribute 5,000 books to eight inner city childcare centers and children. The books for the centers are used to create classroom libraries and cozy book corners, ensuring that the centers have a wide variety of books for different ages, including their before and after care programs. In addition, Inner City-Inner Child conducts separate literacy workshops with the center teachers to follow up on its “Dancing with Books” program. Children’s literacy expert and author Maria Salvadore is our primary consultant on early childhood literacy.

Thinking Thursdays. ICIC’s neighborhood based teacher-training program, held at Southeast Child Development Center in Anacostia, is open to any teacher who has participated in the ICIC program or center director who has demonstrated a need for training. Topics this year include “When Sophie Gets Angry, Really, Really Angry, Beyond Time Outs, Developing Positive Discipline Techniques” with MCCA trainer, Jacky Howell and “Books, Books, Books! What’s Best for What Ages?” Teachers and directors request some workshop topics and some are proposed by ICIC staff in response to the need they have seen. Each year the curriculum changes, offering a variety of course topics and teachers and a reason to come back.

Attendees are charged only for lunch and materials, and ICIC provides all participants with credits for professional hours as Inner City-Inner Child is a DC Certified Trainer, Category 2: Depth of Content: Basic and Intermediate in Core Knowledge Areas #4 and #7.

All teachers completing the professional development classes receive certificates and earned credit units toward the District’s continuing education requirements.

Logistical support on the National Accreditation process. The benchmark of quality in early childcare is national accreditation. We have currently helped 25 low-income centers become nationally accredited by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, a mark of quality and excellence in child care programs.