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Paul and Nettie Becker

Introducing a New Book from Teachers Union Members Paul and Nettie Becker:  Developing Quality Care for Young Children  Corwin Press, 2009 (200 pages)

Paul and Nettie Becker, two of the last teachers to join the New York City Teachers Union have just published their latest book on the subject of early childhood and it received great reviews.

Developing Quality Care for Young Children Book Cover

This book discusses the qualities of an effective early child care program and the need to provide children with experiences that will prepare them for future emotional, social, and academic success.

By examining high-quality early child care within a real-life setting, this resource transcends the gap between the theoretical and the practical in the education of young children. It illustrates how to build a successful program, handle the inevitable challenges, and achieve and sustain positive results. Using their experience in child therapy and child development, the authors demonstrate how, among other things, to build on children’s sense of wonder and joy for learning in preparation for later academic experiences and how to use families’ ethnic/cultural diversity as a teaching tool.

Paul Becker has pursued a dual career for many years as a high school teacher and a journalist. His journalism career began as a U.S. Army correspondent in Europe while in the service and continued through his years as a high school teacher. Throughout his teaching career, he authored many articles on American history as well as those that promoted the cause of public education. He has written for and edited teacher publications that championed the welfare of teachers and children.

Early in his career, he was a member of the editorial staff of TU's weekly, Teacher News,   a paper devoted to the ongoing battle for expanding and enriching public education for all children. Later, he was the editor of the quarterly Teacher Action, a publication that promoted the same cause.

For several years he was the editor of Between the Lines, a newsletter for freelance writers in New York and for ten years he edited Steel Industry Update, a newsletter on American industry for an economic research firm in New York.

Along with Nettie Becker, he is the coauthor of A Comprehensive Guide for Caregivers in Day Care Settings. With the large number of women now in the American workforce, particularly in light of current economic realities, he is a passionate advocate for a national program of high-quality affordable early child care for families who want it.

Nettie Becker has devoted her entire professional life to working with young people, first as a teacher and counselor of high school students, and for the past 20 years in the field of infant and early child care. She has designed, set up, and implemented a movement program of adaptive physical education at a school for special children and has worked as a child development consultant for day care programs in New York City. She has also taught parenting classes in the continuing education department at Molloy College in New York.

She currently conducts workshops in child development and movement through play for parents and their children in community library programs in Nassau County, NY.

Becker is a fellow emeritus in early childhood group therapy at the Child Development Center of the Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services and was part of the program’s continuing education committee that served as a consulting group for child care professionals.

She is co-author with Paul of  A Comprehensive Guide for Caregivers in Day Care Settings (1999). She is also a member of the Academy of Dance Therapists Registered, specializing in the combined use of movement and psychology in the development of young children.