• Teaching in public and private elementary and preschools
• Adjunct teaching undergraduate and graduate levels
• Directing Head Start and private and publicly funded preschools
• Consultant to small and large Head Start and other programs
• Advocate for high quality early childhood programs and for the children, families, and staff of these programs
• Grant writer (with clients)
• Published articles in Early Childhood magazines and journals
• Speaker at conferences and forums.

Mrs. Cogan, a life member of NAEYC, was an adjunct instructor in child development in the Childhood Education program in the School of Education, Department of Teaching, Learning, and Culture at The City College of New York (CCNY), City University of New York (CUNY), located in New York City, and in other branches of CUNY.

She was a member of Teaching Strategies, Inc. (publisher of The Creative Curriculum)’s Staff Development Network. Ellen was trained by Teaching Strategies to train directors and teaching staff in implementation of both The Creative Curriculum for Preschool, Fourth Edition, and The Creative Curriculum for Infants, Toddlers, and Twos. As a member of this group,  she provided Creative Curriculum training to many programs throughout the United States.  She continues to support many of the original concepts of The Creative Curriculum as she moves on with other consulting venues.  Since she left their network, Teaching Strategies published new versions and products on which she has not trained.  Ellen independently continued to offer seminars to help people understand and use some of those products. This was based on her attendance at conference sessions, purchase of new materials, and her vast experience in early childhood.  There is no connection to or endorsement from the publisher.

Clients include individuals, small agencies (both for-profit and non-profit), large multi-site agencies, resource and referral agencies, major corporations and consortiums of corporations and child care organizations. She has presented at many conferences – local, city-wide, state and national, including NAEYC.