Join us for a conversation to learn how Mrs. P, the beloved and recently retired longtime director of West Side Child Care Center, was able to use her personal experience of growing as a professional to recognize, support, and amplify the individual gifts and talents that her staff brought to the center. Many of the staff who initially joined the team as high school students stayed on for years beyond graduation to continue working with this dynamic leader. Discover how she celebrated their unique interests and abilities and encouraged them to bring their full selves into the classroom.

Have you ever thought about returning to school to earn your CDA or teaching certification? Discover how colleagues at the Technical Assistance Center North, Darline Dowdy, and Melissa Rivera-Serna, created their own support networks to earn a degree while working and managing parenting responsibilities. Scholarships through NJCCIS are helping many early childhood professionals successfully earn credentials. Join us to reflect on how you can achieve your educational goals!

Where can early care and education professionals who support front line staff access high quality professional learning for themselves? If you’re a Director, Head Teacher, Quality Improvement Specialist, Infant Toddler Specialist, Lead Trainer, or Technical Assistance Specialist, you’ll want to learn more about Rowan University’s Certificate of Graduate Studies in Early Childhood Coaching and Technical Assistance! Join us for a conversation with Jen Cortes, M.S., Assistant Director of the Early Childhood Leadership Institute, to learn about this innovative program, created to be accessible to learners around the world.

Early Care and Education Topics with Early Childhood Champions

Today we’ll talk with GNJK TAS staff members Ashlee Saro and Valentina Malfa-Arango, They are both moms of toddlers who began looking for child care for the very first time during the pandemic. Learn how they each began to explore their child care options; factors that influenced their decisions around choosing child care, and once they chose a provider, how that provider continued to keep them engaged and raised their confidence level as working moms.

The pandemic has upended the business of many child care programs. Centers that had been full with waiting lists for decades are currently struggling to enroll new families. The need to be seen by more families looking for child care has never been more crucial. Staffing, a challenge before the pandemic, has become even more difficult. Thankfully, there are resources available with encouraging, innovative ideas.

Join Lori Harrje, Puja Mathur, and Andrea Targonski, Grow NJ Kids Technical Assistance Specialists from three different regions, as they discuss some of their favorite marketing, enrollment, and staffing takeaways from childcare business thought leaders. Learn some new strategies you can adopt today to help you succeed in taking your business to the next level, even during the pandemic. You’ll receive a comprehensive resource handout with clickable links to learn more about the articles, documents, webinars, and podcasts they share.

Do you get frustrated when you don’t see positive changes after sending your staff to training, after training, after training? Join our conversation with Constant Hine, a frequent speaker at NAEYC conferences and author of the book, Transformational Coaching for Early Childhood Educators. Learn how Constant’s experience as a high-quality professional development provider led to her epiphany that training without coaching does not help teachers become better at teaching. The strategies she discusses with us and outlines in her book will help you to employ transformational coaching practices, the secret sauce that can take the information presented at staff meetings and trainings and turn it into positive changes in teachers’ classroom presence. Transformational coaching is effective for everyone, from brand new, inexperienced staff to seasoned, credentialed staff. For more information about Constant Hine, transformational coaching, and her virtual professional learning experiences, visit her website - https://constanthine.com/

Early childhood program leaders have been presented with an unparalleled opportunity to develop new skills and refine their existing skills in leading their teams. Although directing an early childhood program has always been demanding, the pandemic has substantially increased those difficulties.

Join us as we discuss ways in which intentional, forward-thinking leaders have risen to the challenge of helping maintain responsive, high-quality environments for their front-line staff in this time of crisis. Brené Brown states that “Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior.” There are many ways in which directors can proactively invest time attending to staff fears and feelings, allowing staff to comfortably do what they do best,

Join us for Episode 5 of our Early Childhood Discussions podcast where we feature Diana Kwasnik, Director of Dover Child Care in Morris County. She will share her re-opening experience from a positive perspective; noting the challenges and how they were faced and even overcome. The focus of this conscious conversation will be on creating outcomes that can promote growth for staff, families, and children.

Since March, early childhood professionals have had unlimited opportunities to become masters of innovation. In a socially distanced world, when parents are not allowed to enter your building, how do you continue to provide meaningful family engagement? In order for families to feel comfortable returning to child care or enrolling in a program for the first time, they need to TRUST that the people in the program are doing everything they can to keep their children healthy and safe. We invite you to join us in a conscious conversation about Authentic Family Relationships in a Virtual World where we’ll discuss ways to planfully and intentionally develop and maintain family relationships by capitalizing on the many small ways to build trust remotely.