In The Wreck of Birds, the first winner of Bauhan Publishing's May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize, Rebecca Givens Rolland embraces an assimilation of internal feeling and thought with circumstances of the natural world and the conflicts and triumphs of our human endeavors. Here, we discover a language that seeks to at once replicate and transcend experiences of loss and disaster, and together with the poet “we hope that such bold fates will not forget us.” Even at the speaker's most vulnerable moments, when “Each word we'd spoken / scowls back, mirrored in barrels of wind” these personal poems insist on renewal. With daring honesty and formal skill, The Wreck of Birds achieves a revelatory otherness—what Keats called the “soul-making task” of poetry. --Walter E. Butts, 2009-2014 New Hampshire Poet Laureate

Jeffrey is excited to go to the park, yet Auntie forgot to include a few things necessary for the trip. See what happens next in Uh Oh Jeffrey!

Fast Forward One Hundred Years If what we spoke existed after us- every phoneme flaring in fraught spirals our voices turned votives: every hour candling from windowsill to sea- careful eyes veiling with cloud-threats, throats gonging open vowels- if one morning we witnessed neighbors clambering over fields, enormous dogs unleashed, upending clovers: Father passing down decades of letters, weight of scribbled envelopes in hand: if, in that moment, we planed our heads back, we'd find fortune in last casts of light: minds steeled for coming years' constellations- weft and weight of dust, galloping mares, birthed pups, maned foals, mother caught in a warren of bees-tail twitching, fast flag, hooved beauties beyond, testing legs-

Although her nephew, Jeffrey Givens Jr. was the motivation behind Uh-Oh Jeffrey, it is also intend- ed to motivate and encourage daycare providers, preschool teachers and parents. Rebecca often hear people speaking about how "bad" their children are behaving and believes that in almost every case, once having reviewed what lead up to the child's actions, the adult was at fault. She believes that teachers, daycare pro- viders and parents should always be prepared before engaging in any activity with children. As you see in Uh-Oh Jeffrey, being unprepared can lead to a very exhausting day!

Grounded theory and descriptive analyses were used to investigate teachers' perceptions of interactions with children and other professionals. A second study explored EC teachers' use of stress and classroom management strategies, particularly in the context of escalating cycles of stress, utilizing classroom observations of teachers and surveys on teacher job stress, self-regulation skills, and teacher experience in addition to the interviews above. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations for enhanced support of EC teachers in high-risk settings, as well as hypotheses to support practitioners and site directors in those settings. Overall, study findings reveal that teachers supported children's developing independence with explicit teaching, but struggled to maintain their sense of competence in their professional interactions. Furthermore, teachers' responses revealed challenges with self-awareness and difficulties with emotional expression, which appeared to be exacerbated in the face of stress. Finally, even in the face of daily classroom challenges and emotional exhaustion, teachers described persisting in their support of children's needs.