PD update: Three Designations with Aligned Preparation Pathways… what does it mean?

by Rachel Hunter

Presenting the second in our series of professional development opportunities has been really inspiring as well as fun.  During the month of November we offered three sessions providing a combined 5 hours professional development.  The sessions are presented by Task Force members Christina Goodwin and Kim Freeman along with my support.

To date we have provided a total of 6 sessions focusing on the Three Designations with Aligned Preparation Pathways.  As we have continued to dive deeper and deeper into this work, I often feel as though we need a dictionary for some of these new terms.

So what are we talking about?

• Three Designations are the roles that early educators will hold within the workplace.
• Aligned Preparation Pathways talks about the preparation needed in order to hold different roles, and having that preparation be clear and easy to navigate.

Our engagement has been pretty consistent across settings and roles, since we\’ve targeted our sessions to both center based programs and family child care homes.We intentionally monitor our participants\’ roles (through registration information) to ensure we have a good representation from all categories.

One variation we are seeing is a higher participation by early childhood educators in the southern part of Vermont. So, our plan is to conduct specific outreach to areas north of Randolph and Bradford to ensure we have equal representation.

Because feedback from the workforce is essential to the success of the project to advance as a profession, we really rely on participants to complete their surveys. This month, I began challenging folks to complete the survey at the end of each PD session. It has been a lot of fun and I\’m pleased to say it\’s really boosted our survey response count.

Looking towards the next few months, we already have five additional sessions booked and plan to continue connecting with the workforce to deliver this important information. As I say in the sessions – this is workforce driven, and by attending you have a seat at the table. Be sure you continue to attend each new PD session as it comes up, because as this work is ongoing. Each time we come out to the workforce we present new information on different areas of the project. 

If you haven\’t yet taken Session 2: Three Designations with Aligned Preparation Pathways, stay tuned for more opportunities. And following that, we\’ll begin offering Session 3 on compensation. We need your voice – and you do not want to miss your seat.