Photo: Massachusetts Department of Higher Education Twitter page

Imagine a preschool teacher who has the entire community on speed dial.

This preschool teacher could consult with local education professors, public school teachers, or a local librarian.

All these contacts would help the preschool teacher grow professionally and become more effective in the classroom.

If this sounds like a powerful idea, then check out the Improving Teacher Quality-Early Learning Toolkit. It’s a blueprint developed by the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education (DHE) that explains how higher education, public education, community partners, and early educators can all collaborate to improve outcomes for young children.

A series of videos explains how this federally funded work has already been done by communities like Worcester and Chelsea. They built partnerships and, more important, relationships that supported the professional development of early educators.

“Each project required a lead institution of higher education (IHE) and at least one nonprofit community education partner in addition to at least one PK-12 district,” according to the toolkit’s website, which is hosted by the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

All of these projects included coaching, and they all “created new cross-sector relationships and increased developmentally appropriate practices and children’s engagement and learning outcomes.”

“We wanted to participate in ITQ Worcester because we believe that the way to help children understand science is by helping ensure that the teachers are comfortable teaching science and teaching not only the subject, but also teaching the science processes,” Martha Gach of Mass Audubon says in one of the videos. Mass Audubon sponsored a training program for early educators that was part of a project called, “Using Science to Strengthen and Align Early Childhood Teaching.”

Gach adds, “We would recommend this kind of a project to any science education center out there,” because it has linked Mass Audubon to local teachers.

In western Massachusetts, Berkshire Head Start and Child Care of the Berkshires worked with area public schools and museums and with the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts on a project called the Berkshire Early Learning Lab. The lab’s goal was to increase early educators’ understanding of “the science of early learning,” according to the Berkshire Eagle.

Taking this kind of community-based approach to professional development has a significant impact. As Winifred Hagan, DHE’s associate commissioner for academic affairs and student success, explains in the video, using this strategy means, “Any community can improve all of their outcomes for all of their young children and all of the early educators in their workforce.”

What’s the next step for interested communities?

“Start now. We have no time to lose,” Raynold M. Lewis, the associate dean of education at Worcester State University says in this toolkit video. “Review this early learning toolkit and organize your community to get started today.”