Day Nursery Indianapolis names new President & CEO

Ted Maple, Ph.D.

Indianapolis – The  board of directors of Day Nursery Association of Indianapolis, Inc. is pleased to announce the appointment of Ted Maple, Ph.D. as the President and CEO. He will succeed Carolyn M. Dederer who will retire August 2 after 15 years with the organization.

Maple comes to Day Nursery from United Way of Central Indiana where he led United Way’s education priority with a focus on early childhood and school-age initiatives.

He earned his bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education from the University of Indianapolis, a master’s degree in Elementary Education from Butler University and his Ph.D., in, Early Childhood Education from Ball State University.

Carolyn Dederer welcomed Dr. Ted Maple to his new office at Day Nursery this morning. They will work together for three weeks until Carolyn officially retires on August 2.

He began his career in education as a kindergarten and first grade teacher in Pike Township. Following his time in the public schools, he served as Director of the Early Childhood Program at St. Mary’s Child Center where he led the nationally-accredited early childhood program for 200 at-risk preschoolers at two locations in Indianapolis. In 2005, Maple’s career in early childhood took a different turn, when he was selected as United Way’s Director of Success By 6. In this role, over more than eight years, he crafted United Way’s early childhood agenda that included programs, policy advocacy and community engagement. In 2012, he was promoted to Director of Education to oversee United Way’s two education priorities: children entering school ready to learn, and performing on grade level by sixth grade.

He lives with his wife and three children on the northeast side of Indianapolis.

ABOUT DAY NURSERY:
Day Nursery Association is the oldest and largest non-profit provider of early care and education in central Indiana. Founded in 1899, the agency has been educating the youngest children of Indianapolis for over 100 years. Serving more than 1,350 children annually ages six weeks to six years old in 7 locations in Marion and Hendricks County, Day Nursery believes that all children, regardless of a family’s income, should have access to the highest quality of care. Day Nursery is a United Way agency.

Day Nursery IU Health students celebrate first day of spring

Tuesday, the Day Nursery IU Health Center had a family event to celebrate the first day of spring!!! Center Director Rene Withers said they put out flowers and butterflies for the children and their parents to decorate to welcome the first day of Spring.

Day Nursery students help tackle hunger in Indy

Federal Center

Congratulations to the staff and families of the seven Day Nursery early childhood centers and our administrative staff for helping to Tackle Hunger in the Indianapolis area as part of the national Souper Bowl of Caring annual event.  As a group,  Day Nursery made this contribution:

• Total food donated: 559 items
• Total money donated: $340.59

Here’s a recap of our success story center by center. The Day Nursery Federal Center downtown selected their Pennsylvania Street neighbor, The Metro Baptist Center food pantry to support.  In a typical month, this pantry serves 400-500 people.  Federal Center Director Sarah Parks reports her center  collected 118 items and $32 to help them out.

Ft. Harrison Day Nursery

Our Start Smart 4 Children Day Nursery at Ft. Harrison split their collections between the Damien Center on North Arsenal and The New Haven Missionary Baptist Church food pantry.  The center collected 100 food items and $19.22 in cash. Ft. Harrison Center Director Debra Ballard and her head cook Beverly Croom are pictured here getting ready to wheel the donation out to the car.

Day Nursery Hendricks County

The Day Nursery Hendricks County Center collected 73 food items and $31.50 for the Messiah Lutheran Church in Brownsburg. The MLC Food Pantry exists to provide food for families and individuals in Hendricks County who are experiencing temporary financial hardship.

Day Nursery IU Health

The Day Nursery IU Health Center was collecting for Dayspring Center at the corner of 16th and Central Avenue.  Day Nursery Director of Curriculum, Jesse McCloud, who is based out of our IU Health Center knows the Dayspring Center very well because her late mother used to run the food program there. Dayspring provides emergency shelter, clothing, and three nourishing meals-a-day for homeless families with children in central Indiana. The IU Health center collected 34 cans of fruit and vegetables and $143.69 in money for Dayspring. Pictured above, Jesse McCloud joins  Rene Withers of Day Nursery to make the presentation to Dayspring Center Executive Director Lori Casson.

Northwest Center

The Day Nursery Northwest Center chose to do their Souper Bowl of Caring collection for their Pike Township neighbors at the Fay Biccard Glick Center at Crooked Creek,2990 West 71st Street. They collected $81.23 in funds and 20 different non-perishable items.  Ms. Rene’s class, pictured here, collected the largest amount of money and food.  The classroom won a pizza party and Ms. Rene won a Souper Bowl of Caring t-shirt.

Lilly Center

The Day Nursery Ruth A. Lilly Center was so close to the beneficiary of their Souper Bowl of Caring collection that the Pre-K class took the donations over to them in wagons. The students collected 100 food items for donations to the Tabernacle Presbyterian Church,418 East 34th Street. TAB serves meals to their neighbors every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. More than 800 people come through our doors each month for a hot lunch and food to take home to families.

State Center

The staff and families of the Day Nursery Indiana State Government Center chose to collect for the Northside New Era Baptist Church Feed the Sheep program where Day Nursery teacher Debbie Beatty is a volunteer.  The food pantry served over 1400 families last year and is open twice a week. The center collected$32.95 cash and 74 food items.

Day Nursery Human Resources Director Cathy Johnson

Finally, the staff of the Day Nursery Administration office in the English Foundation Building chose to collect food for the Ronald McDonald House to honor our co-worker Marsha Hearn Lindsey, Day Nursery Chief Operating Officer, who is retiring from a position on the RMH Board of Directors.  Food collected will help restock the pantry at the Ronald McDonald House allowing families to prepare meals at the house so they can stay close to their child being treated at Riley Hospital.  We collected 40 non perishable items and also donated fresh fruit and eggs for their kitchen.

Day Nursery Ft. Harrison infants explore technology

From playing games to creating group artwork pictures to watching baby friendly You Tube videos like “Twinkle Twinkle” and “If You Are Happy and You Know It,” the infants at the Day Nursery Ft. Harrison center get excited-squealing and moving toward teacher Lisa Douglass when she brings out  the classroom’s HP Touch Pad.  Before the year is out,  every Day Nursery classroom will have  a tablet computer which will allow the teacher to expand the classroom resources based on the interests of the current group of students.

Thankful Thursday-Happy Thanksgiving from Day Nursery

Day Nursery Auxiliary Style Show community support

The Day Nursery Auxiliary’s Annual Style Show and Luncheon is just three weeks away and already there has been quite a buzz! This fabulous event provides scholarships to at-risk children to attend Day Nursery and is only made possible through the hard work of our Ladies Auxiliary and through the generous support of our event sponsors. Over the next few days, we’ll be highlighting our generous sponsors and their important partnership with Day Nursery.

We’d like to thank Dr. Daniel Stout and the Digestive Health Center-Gastroenterology of Indianapolis for their headline sponsorship for the second year in a row.  Dr. Stout is double board certified in gastroenterology and internal medicine and has been in practice in the Indianapolis area since 1980. Digestive Health Center was established in 1988 as the second, free-standing Ambulatory Endoscopy center in the United States. Digestive Health Center is located at 1120 AAA Way, Carmel, IN 46032. Contact the office at (317) 848-5494 or visit www.stoutdigestivecenter.com for more information.

Way to go Debra Ballard

Kate Warpool, Melissa Proffitt Reese and Debra Ballard

Day Nursery Executive Director Carolyn Dederer and Debra Ballard

Executive Women's Leadership program participants class of 2009-2010

Congratulations to Day Nursery Center Director Debra Ballard on her recent graduation from the United Way of Central Indiana Executive Women’s Leadership Program. Debra is the director of the Day Nursery Start Smart 4 Children early care and education center at Ft. Harrison. The leadership program is part of Leadership United, United Way of Central Indiana’s comprehensive community leadership and board development program. The Executive Women’s Leadership Program is a series committed to developing leadership skills of women serving the nonprofit community. Curriculum provides an in-depth study of female leadership in the areas of volunteerism and philanthropy. Leadership United is a community development program designed to identify motivated and aspiring leaders in Central Indiana. The program prepares participants for the challenges of their lifelong leadership journeys within the nonprofit community. The 2009-2010 Executive Women’s Leadership Program series moderator was Melissa Proffitt Reese, a partner at Ice Miller, chair of the agribusiness initiative and co-chair of the Employee Benefits Practice Group.

Team Day Nursery makes big showing at Walking for Dreams

If you were near the downtown Indianapolis canal on Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t hard to tell that something big was going on. Team Day Nursery (74 members strong!) joined with over 20 other area not for profit organizations to participate in the Walking for Dreams Family and Pet Walk which originated in the basin near Buggs Temple on the north end of the canal. The event, managed by the Sycamore Foundation, was founded in 2004 to pull together local organizations who did not have the manpower or could not afford to do a fundraiser like this on their own.  This was our first time participating in the walk and we were very pleased with the participation from staff and Day Nursery families as well as our supporters from the Day Nursery Auxiliary (thanks to Co-President Joan Lyday and past president Jenny Rosebrock for coming out) and our board of directors. I also had the chance to meet Day Nursery Wiles Center alum Rachel McCaffrey and her mother Beth who works for Mental Health America, another agency participating in the walk.  Rachel will be a freshman at Knightstown High School in the fall.  A special thanks goes out to AGIS and our representative Mollie Bean for underwriting our staff entry fee. The Day Nursery Employee Health & Safety committee is always on the lookout for activities that promote a healthy lifestyle and AGIS has been very supportive of the committee’s efforts. We also appreciate Olivia Roney from Crouching Tigers coming out to walk with us.  Many of our students know her as the instructor of the martial arts class at their center.  Also I wanted to shout out to Erin Slack, Day Nursery’s Human Resources Director and Beth Rodriguez, our Director of Development for their work in making sure this event went off smoothly. Donations from the event will go toward arts programming in the Day Nursery centers.  Pledges are still coming in so I don’t have a final tally on the amount raised but by all accounts, it was a successful event.  Here are a few pictures from my vantage point at the registration table.

Benny’s Pennies help teach Day Nursery students to Live United

As you may know, Day Nursery has been educating the youngest children of Indianapolis for over 110 years.  We not only teach children what they need to be prepared for the academic side of school, we work hard to equip the children with the social and emotional skills they will need to be successful in life. One of the ways young children learn is through role-playing.  For the past few weeks, Day Nursery employees have been setting a good example for our children by using our in-house United Way campaign to share an important lesson about giving. To further expand this lesson into the curriculum, Beth Rodriguez, our Director of Development and the mother of a Day Nursery student, discovered a picture book called Benny’s Pennies, written by Pat Brisson with illustrations by Bob Barner which became the springboard for a series of lessons about thoughtfulness, generosity and the power of giving. Each Day Nursery classroom was given a copy of the book and was free to expand the lesson to follow the children’s interests.  Sarah Parks, Director of the Day Nursery Federal Center sent me some pictures of the Benny’s Pennies activities from her preschool classrooms.  In the Pre-K classroom, the children were inspired by Benny’s generosity in the story and wanted to collect some pennies of their own.  Their teacher, Ms. Shirley brought in a glass jar and the students contributed their coins.  The children told their teacher they wanted to give the money in their jar to United Way to “buy something beautiful for children.”  Benny’s Pennies gave the preschool teachers a great chance to use life lessons to teach counting and number sense and social studies skills.  We are proud to report that 99% of our employees participated in United Way campaign this year resulting a group contribution of $16,423 plus a whole bunch of pennies.

The PreK classroom sorted their money into stacks to help the counting process.

The preschool three-year-olds class helps count pennies.

Picture Day

Six centers down, one to go for the Day Nursery picture day schedule.  We wrap up our fall student portraits next week at our Northwest Center on W. 73rd Street.  I have heard nothing but great comments from parents and staff about locally owned Dimensions Photography.  Thanks Apryl!

Picture day wrapped up Friday at the Day Nursery Indiana State Government Center