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Archive for the ‘Professional development & preparation’ Category

Our Advocacy Network in Action: Leea Cooley

Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, English language learners, Family child care, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Professional development & preparation, Social-emotional development, Standards and curriculum, Strategies for Children, tagged , , on March 23, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Leea Cooley has been interested in working with children for a long time. As a child growing up in Indiana, she liked to play school. As a teenager living in Agawam, Mass., – where her family moved for her father’s career – she loved to babysit. 

But it wasn’t until she was a newly divorced mother of two children talking to her divorce attorney that she thought about weaving her interest in children into a profession.

“My lawyer told me that she thought a good career for me would be family child care. She saw the way that I cared so much about children. So I pursued my license, and I got it. And my lawyer put her two children in my program. Along with my children, they were my first customers. And since then, I’ve been running my family child care business for 25 years right here in my house.”

It’s a career that has been full of joy, generosity, and hard work. And one that has led Cooley to join Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network, so she can formalize the work that she has been doing for parents for decades.

“One of the main lessons I’ve learned,” Cooley says, “is that parents need help. They need advice. They need guidance. They’re working full time jobs and then they’re going home and caring for their families, and they don’t always have time to access the information that they’d like to have.

“Over the years, my biggest aha moment is I need to be that resource for families.”

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Our Advocacy Network in action: MyHanh Barrette and her love for families

Posted in Boston, Family engagement, Infants and toddlers, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children, tagged on March 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The second cohort of Strategies for Children’s Advocacy Network is underway, and we’re excited to share the stories of this year’s participants. 

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MyHanh Barrette

MyHanh Barrette moved from Vietnam to the United States when she was 11 years old, and her path to advocacy started with figuring out her own strengths and then helping to elevate the strengths of the families she works with.

One tool she uses in her work is love. 

“If I don’t love my community, if I don’t love my country, then I won’t want to change anything,” she says. “If I don’t love an organization, if I don’t love my school, I won’t want to improve them.”

Barrette’s professional story began years ago with a practical question. 

“My Mom and Stepfather said, Okay, are you going to be a doctor, a pharmacist, an engineer, or a lawyer?” 

Barrette made a practical choice and graduated from the University of California, Irvine, with a computer science degree – which she never used in her work. Instead, she became a court-certified interpreter, helping families who spoke Vietnamese access the legal system. 

“Language was used as a commodity, as part of the power dynamic: You don’t have access to language and I do, so I’m going to assume that because you don’t speak English, you’re ‘less than’ in every other aspect,” Barrette says. 

“As an interpreter, I was there to remove the language barrier. When I did that, I saw other barriers that these families faced. But even with these barriers, families were thriving in their own ways. They were facing so much, but they were resourceful, and they were strength-based. I learned so much from them, and I came to see myself as a facilitator, as someone who empowers families.” 

In her spare time, Barrette helped lead a co-ed Scout troop, which built on her love of children. She went on to raise her own children, and as they grew, she thought she might want to be a teacher. A trip to the library changed that. A career coach, who was volunteering at the library, listened to Barrette and said, You don’t want to be a teacher. You want to be a social worker. 

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The second year of the Advocacy Network: introducing a new group of leaders

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Funding, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children, tagged , , on February 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Advocacy Network Year 2 Cohort

Last year, Strategies for Children launched the Advocacy Network for Early Education and Care, a program for educators and leaders in the early childhood field who wanted to expand their impact. Seven advocates completed the first cohort, and are having a positive advocacy impact on their programs, communities, and state.

Now we’re excited about the second year of the program and how a new group of leaders will expand advocacy in their communities. 

“This program is all about the advocacy journey,” Titus DosRemedios, deputy director of Strategies for Children, says. “Last year’s participants went on a journey with us and with each other. They stepped out of their comfort zone, met knew people, learned about policy and ‘Advocacy 101,’ and took new strides in their professional development. They had the chance to speak on panels, serve on committees, write and share testimonies, appear in the news media and on social media, and develop advocacy projects for their programs, classrooms, and communities. This created a powerful ripple effect for the early childhood community, one that we know will continue with cohort 2 and 3.”

This year’s cohort 2 participants are:

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The National Early Care and Education Workforce Center – a federal effort deployed by local and national leaders

Posted in Child care, Cost and affordability, COVID-19, Federal, Funding, National, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , on February 14, 2023| Leave a Comment »

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Photo: Huong Vu for Strategies for Children

Earlier this month, federal officials announced that they are creating the new and promising National Early Care and Education Workforce Center (the ECE Workforce Center). It’s a national effort to rebuild the workforce that includes local leaders here in Boston.

Launched by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) with $30 million in funding, the new center will address an old problem: even before the pandemic, the early childhood workforce was plagued with low pay and high turnover rates. This situation has grown worse during the pandemic.

 “We know it is hard for families to find quality early childhood programs. One of the reasons is that programs are having trouble recruiting and retaining early educators,” January Contreras says. Contreras is the assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families, part of HHS. “We cannot continue to expect early educators to remain in these critical roles only to earn poverty wages.”

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra adds, “HHS is honored to launch this first-of-its-kind research and technical assistance center to support the essential early childhood workforce who partner with families every day to ensure young children have what they need to thrive.”

The new ECE Workforce Center will help by addressing recruitment and retention. The center’s work will include the input of early educators and be carried out over the next five years by six partner organizations. They are:

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A new toolkit for early educators who are also advocates

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Funding, National, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , on February 7, 2023| 1 Comment »

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Screenshot: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment

Given their expertise in working with children, families, and state agencies, early educators are uniquely suited to be advocates.

Now, a new resource — The E4 Toolkit — gives them more ways to do this work and explain why and how the field of early childhood education can be improved.

“We want to connect early educators to data and talking points about the early childhood education (ECE) workforce and offer potential solutions to some of the issues they face,” Hopeton Hess explains. Hess is a research and policy associate at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at the University of California, Berkeley.

Using the E4 Toolkit – E4 stands for “Early Educator Engagement and Empowerment” – early educators can draw on a collection of strategies and solutions that was created “to support early educators in their advocacy, power building, and engagement with stakeholders.” 

Specifically, Hess says, “Early educators could use the toolkit in group settings to contribute to their shared understanding of the early childhood sector.

“In conversations between early educators and advocacy organizations, the toolkit would be a useful prompt for identifying workforce needs and desires.”

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Boston is using federal funds to invest in the early childhood workforce

Posted in Boston, Child care, COVID-19, Early educators, Federal, Funding, Higher Education, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , , , on January 10, 2023| Leave a Comment »

The pandemic wiped out part of Massachusetts’ child care workforce.

Now Boston is trying to rebuild.

And the scale of this challenge is substantial.

“The childcare industry in Massachusetts lost about 10% of its workforce since the start of the pandemic,” WBUR radio reports. “In Boston, that’s translating into long wait lists and shorter hours of care. According to city officials, about 50 early education classrooms are sitting empty because child care centers can’t find enough people to operate at capacity.”

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu “was quick to point out that the estimate doesn’t include centers that have had to cut hours because they’re short staffed.”

To address this daunting gap, the city is using $7 million from the Biden Administration’s American Rescue Plan Act to launch the Growing the Workforce Fund.

The fund will provide scholarships and financial aid to 800 students who want to earn a Child Development Associate (CDA) or an associate’s or bachelor’s degree in early childhood education.

“Today’s investment is a welcome one for early educators like me,” Lisa Brooks, an early educator at Horizons for Homeless Children, says in a city press release. “Relieving the burden of debt associated with higher education will help educators continue to focus on the important work of building the foundation for our students’ future success.”

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Creating high-quality, outdoor spaces for young children

Posted in Developmentally appropriate practice, Early educators, Facilities, Head Start, Infants and toddlers, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, National, Play, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , on November 17, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Playing outside is a source of joy for children — and an opportunity for early educators to teach amazing lessons.

But many early childhood programs don’t have the information and resources they need to build engaging outdoor play spaces.

A policy brief from New America — Rethinking Outdoor Space for High-Quality Early Learning –addresses this by sharing the many options for creating an engaging “outdoor learning environment” or OLE.

The brief starts with a story about butterflies:

“Tiny monarch caterpillars arrived at the school, not floating through the air, but with the thud of a package on concrete.

“Our postal carrier had no idea how many lessons were going to emerge from that box for the prekindergartners at our public school in Washington, DC. First, we created a mesh net habitat and placed it in the tiny side yard of our concrete school building, which is just a few feet from a busy street known for nightlife, not nature. Within a day, the caterpillars doubled in size and the students watched, fascinated, commenting on the bite marks in the plants and listening closely for crunching.

“Over the next four weeks, children took turns watering the plants in the garden beds and tore off leaves to place in the mesh cage for the very hungry caterpillars.”

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Introducing: The Early Childhood Agenda

Posted in Cost and affordability, Early educators, Family engagement, Health, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children, tagged , , , , on October 12, 2022| 3 Comments »

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Photo: Pixabay from Pexels

We’re excited to announce the launch of The Early Childhood Agenda!

This is a new partnership that invites stakeholders like you to build a consolidated agenda for early education and care. 

The Early Childhood Agenda will connect organizations, parents, advocates, businesses, educators, providers, and government representatives that all support the growth, development, and education of our youngest children and the wellbeing of families in Massachusetts through public awareness, policy development, and advocacy efforts.

Strategies for Children will host a series of meetings and facilitate a consensus building process composed of five working groups:

These meetings will produce a list of policy priorities shaped by community needs and the lived experiences and perspectives of our partners.

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Maria Gonzalez Moeller joins EEC’s Board

Posted in Child care, COVID-19, Dept. of Early Education and Care, Diversity equity and inclusion, Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, tagged , , on October 6, 2022| Leave a Comment »

Congratulations to Maria Gonzalez Moeller for being appointed by Governor Charlie Baker to the Board of the Department of Early Education and Care (EEC)! 

As the CEO of The Community Group (TCG) in Lawrence, Moeller brings the perspective of early educators and families, and she has become an expert in managing the global pandemic so that children and families can get needed support.

She can also share how local early childhood innovations have helped move Massachusetts through the Covid-19 era.

“We had to do everything from scratch,” Moeller says of how her staff coped with the pandemic, “and we adjusted and evolved. That required a lot of flexibility from our staff and a lot of empathy. We knew everyone was going through a hard time.”

To keep its early childhood classes running even when staff were out sick with Covid, The Community Group developed its own employee pipeline, an apprenticeship program for early educators that began as an internal pilot program and then, with funding from the United Way, expanded to include other early childhood centers in the city.

“Training has been a big priority for us, specifically training in Spanish,” Moeller says. “There are a lot of new residents who come to Lawrence looking for a new career. Many of them are women who were teachers in their own countries. So we offer them the opportunity to become an early childhood professional.”

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Check out our Advocacy Network highlights video

Posted in Child care, Early educators, Massachusetts Cities and Towns, Pre-kindergarten, Professional development & preparation, Strategies for Children, tagged , on September 27, 2022| 1 Comment »

Last month, Strategies for Children hosted a Reception for Reflection for the first cohort of our Advocacy Network for Early Education and Care – and we’ve created a highlights video to showcase the work of our Advocacy Network participants.

The Advocacy Network is an engaging, year-long experience for emerging leaders. It creates a new structure for connecting and supporting educator-advocates across all regions of the state, while building participants’ advocacy skills and first-hand experience. 

For Anna Ricci-Mejia, an early educator at the East Boston Social Centers, the Advocacy Network experience was inspiring. 

“I decided to speak up more for children’s sake,” she says. “Every word counts. I know there’s a lot of frustration; this is a low-paying career. But when you’re compassionate with children, you learn something new every day.”

Marcia Gadson-Harris, a family child care provider and Advocacy Network participant, adds:

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