Infant and Toddler Development and Responsive Program Planning

Sandy Petersen





Sandy Petersen is writer/ program analyst with the Early Head Start National Resource Center at Zero to Three. Ms. Petersen also coordinates Zero to Three's task force on Early Learning Guidelines for Infants and Toddlers. She is also part of the WestEd Program for Infant Toddler Caregivers, by developing and teaching the module on special needs. Before joining Zero to Three, she was Coordinator of Training and Technical Assistance for Early Childhood Initiatives at the Colorado Department of Education and continues to work on Colorado's Expanding Quality in Infant and Toddler Care Initiative. She was one of the primary authors of Colorado's "Building Blocks", preschool content standards in reading and mathematics, and the Guidelines for the IFSP and Service Coordination.



Ms. Petersen has direct service experience in early intervention, infant-parent psychotherapy, and child care. She has a Master's degree in Educational Psychology and completed doctoral coursework in Early Childhood Special Education at the University of California - Berkeley.



Donna Wittmer



Donna Wittmer has been a professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center for 17 years. She has taught a variety of courses for students obtaining their MA in Early Childhood Education and a license to teach in Early Childhood Special Education (ages 0-5). Prior to becoming a professor in Colorado, she taught behavioral pediatrics at the Health Sciences Center in Syracuse for eight years. She also was the coordinator and provided assessment and intervention services, on a grant from New York State, for five years on the Onondaga Nation for children (birth to six) and their families



Dr. Wittmer's Ph.D. is in Child, Family, and Community Studies from Syracuse University where she studied infant and toddler development, behavior, and intervention with Dr. Alice Honig and Dr. Ron Lally (now the creator and coordinator of PITC). She taught several courses at Syracuse University in the department of Child, Family, and Community Studies before moving to Colorado in 1990.





Infant and Toddler Development and Responsive Program Planning and PITC



The authors have both taught for PITC's national faculty. Their text embraces and captures the PITC language and philosophy and incorporates suggestions for use of the PITC videos throughout a course. You will find many quotes from Dr. Ron Lally in the book. The instructor's manual recommends specific PITC videos that instructor's could use when teaching a particular chapter. Donna and Sandy recommend that all of the PITC videos be used when instructors teach with their textbook. Ron Lally, creator and coordinator of PITC, wrote a strong recommendation for the textbook.



Both Sandy Petersen and Donna Wittmer are fellows of ZERO-THREE and have written articles for the ZERO to THREE journal. They have presented at national conferences numerous times. During their fellowship years, they studied with Berry Brazelton, Stanley Greenspan, Jeree Pawl, and Dolores Norton.



The authors have been on the faculty of the Colorado Department of Education's Infant and Toddler Expanding Quality Initiative (EQI) for approximately six years. The model is a trainer of trainer's model. The faculty of the EQI have taught over 100 Colorado community teachers/coaches to use a 48 clock-hour course developed by the faculty to train 2000 infant/toddler caregivers to provide responsive and relationship-based care to infants and toddlers. Donna Wittmer, with Sandy Petersen and other faculty members, have created the RELATE-A Coaching Tool for Relationship-Based Practice that is used by the community teachers to coach the infant/toddler caregivers.