Speaking & Staff Training
Early childhood specialist. Founder of Successful Black Parenting, the first national magazine for Black parents. Keynotes, staff professional development and family events on family engagement, school readiness and building trust with the families who are hardest to reach — delivered virtually to any program in any state, with in-person events by arrangement.
- Experience30+ years in early childhood and Black family media
- FormatVirtual anywhere in the US — in person by arrangement
- BookingKeynote · half day · program-year package
What programs bring Janice in to fix
- Family engagement plans that satisfy a monitoring visit but don’t change who shows up
- Attendance and enrollment that slide after the first few months
- Teachers who dread the call home, and families who brace for it
- Referral and screening conversations that end with a family going quiet
- Classrooms where the books, images and rules quietly tell a Black child this room isn’t theirs
Why Janice
Most family engagement plans are written for the family that already shows up. Janice’s work starts with the families who don’t — and with what your staff actually hear when they call home.
She has been on both sides of that conversation. She taught preschool, developed School Age Child Care programs across Philadelphia for the Parents Union for Public Schools, and ran a multi-million dollar YMCA as Executive Branch Director, overseeing its NAEYC-accredited child care program and summer camp. As an Early Childhood Specialist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Child Guidance Center, she worked with parents facing substance use challenges to protect their young children’s development. And for more than thirty years she has published the magazine Black parents write to.
That combination is the point. She is not a motivational speaker borrowing early childhood language, and she is not a researcher who has never sat across from an angry parent at pickup. She has done the job your staff are doing.
Sessions
Future-Proof Family Partnerships
Reimagining early learning with Black parents at the center. Janice’s flagship training. What a real partnership with families looks like when it is built for the families you serve rather than retrofitted for them — and how that shows up in enrollment, attendance, school readiness and the conversations your staff have every week.
Flagship · keynote, half day or seriesPast the Potluck
Why standard family engagement strategies underperform, what families are reading into the invitation, and a practical set of changes a program can make before the next enrollment cycle. Built from thirty years of reader letters and questions — the concerns your teachers will hear this year.
Staff training · 60–90 minThe Hard Conversation
Behavior, developmental concerns and referrals. How to raise them in a way that is heard as care rather than as suspicion, what to do when a family has already gone quiet, and how to keep the family in the room.
Staff training · 60–90 minCulturally Responsive Practice, Concretely
Books, materials, wall images, music, hair, food, discipline, and the small daily choices that tell a child whether this room belongs to them. Built as an audit your staff can run on their own classrooms the next morning.
Staff training · 90–180 minRaising Readers at Home
A family-facing evening your program hosts for its own families, with take-home materials and book lists that reflect the children in the room. Runs well as a virtual family night, and counts toward your family engagement calendar.
Family event · 60 minKeynote: “We Don’t Parent Like This”
The sentence a Philadelphia parent said in 1993 that started the first national magazine for Black parents — the building of it, the loss of it, and the decision to bring it back eighteen years later. A mission talk for conferences, staff kickoffs and leadership retreats.
Keynote · 45–60 minThree ways to book her
Who this is for
- Head Start and Early Head Start programs, delegate agencies, and state and regional Head Start associations
- Public pre-K, state-funded preschool and early learning coalitions
- Child care centers, networks and child care resource & referral agencies
- School districts, Title I teams and family engagement offices
- Libraries, family literacy programs, family resource centers and community organizations
- Nonprofits, foundations and health systems serving young children and their families
- Employers and employee resource groups
For Head Start and Early Head Start programs
Head Start programs still have to train their staff every year, and family engagement is still one of the things programs are judged on. The standards in force today set a floor: a minimum of 15 clock hours of professional development per staff member per year, training for child and family services staff on implementing family engagement strategies, and education staff development covering partnering with families. (45 CFR §1302.92(b)(1), (b)(4) and (b)(6), current as of September 2026.)
Those standards are being rewritten. ACF’s proposed rule, Reducing Federal Burden for Head Start Programs, published August 7, 2026, would remove what the agency describes as more than 1,400 regulatory provisions, and the public comment period closes October 6, 2026. Nothing is final, and the requirement to train your staff has not gone anywhere. Janice follows it closely, and she will not sell you a session whose only justification is a rule that may be renumbered next year.
What she delivers instead is training your program can defend either way: live and virtual, sized to your clock-hour needs, scheduled around your program year, and built around outcomes you will still be accountable for — enrollment, attendance, school readiness and the relationship between your staff and your families. Every participant receives a certificate of attendance listing the session title, date and hours for your records.
Background and credentials
- Degree in early childhood education; MBA; has held a Child Development Associate (CDA) credential
- Early Childhood Specialist, Child Guidance Center, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
- Executive Branch Director, YMCA — operations for a new multi-million-dollar facility including an NAEYC-accredited child care program and summer camp
- School Age Child Care Coordinator, Parents Union for Public Schools, Philadelphia
- Preschool teacher; has taught children through high school and at Hofstra University
- Founder and Publisher, Successful Black Parenting magazine (established 1993)
- Founder, the National Black Parenting Conference
- Host, the BACKtalk podcast
- Public Voice Fellow, National Black Child Development Institute
- Contributing writer, HuffPost
- Author of Future-Proof Classrooms, Pride & Joy (Simon & Schuster), Making A Supermodel, BIG Kid, and the award-winning Miles’ Stuffy Nose
Where Janice has spoken
Janice has spoken at Disney’s National Parenting Conference and at the National Black Child Development Institute’s national conference, and was selected as an NBCDI Public Voice Fellow.
Watch Janice interviewed by NBC’s Maria Sansone →
Book Me
Tell Janice the organization, the window you are holding, who is in the room and what your team is wrestling with. She replies personally, usually within two business days. For in-person events, call to discuss.
