Year: 2016

Leadership Development & Supervisory Training

Happy New Year! I hope that you had wonderful holidays. The beginning of the year is an exciting time.  It’s a great time to make plans for the coming year.

When thinking about key steps to take to create a high quality program, I’m sure that developing leaders is near the top of the list. It’s important to have strong leaders in place across your program. They are responsible for leading and supervising the staff who provide direct services to the children and families.

Training on leadership development and how to successfully supervise staff is critical for your Content Area Managers, Center Directors and other supervisors. Managers need the skills to be an effective leader as well as the tools to guide and support their staff. It’s important that supervisors achieve buy-in with their employees. When staff feels that their supervisor is invested in them and their success, staff will give 100% to their job. This is especially important in this case as their job is to provide high quality services to the children and families.

We provide highly interactive Management Training that includes training on leadership development as well as training on supervising staff.  This training includes topics such as:

  • Leadership versus management;
  • Identifying your supervisory style;
  • Your role and responsibilities as a supervisor;
  • Setting expectations and accountability; and
  • Giving staff the tools to be successful.

Are you looking for Training on Leadership Development & Positive Approaches to Supervision? Give us a call today at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.

Practice-Based CLASS Training

As you know, it’s essential to have and maintain high CLASS scores. Having high scoring classrooms is a great indicator of positive teacher/child interactions that effectively support children’s learning and development. This leads to successful CLASS Reviews as well as best practices in the classroom.

Effective CLASS training consists of keeping the participants highly engaged by utilizing a “learning by doing” approach. It’s based on the principles of adult learning, which results in high impact learning. Training participants can then take back the information that they learned and implement it immediately. Adult learning is most effective when the participants can see, feel and experience the information that is being presented. This includes utilizing a variety of learning styles throughout the training.

We provide highly interactive and practice-based CLASS training designed to increase CLASS scores. It will be custom designed to meet the specific needs of your Head Start program. It can cover all of the domains and dimensions – or focus on specific domains or dimensions. You can expect hands-on training that includes specific examples and strategies in terms of the Head Start classroom. The training participants will have many opportunities to see what high-scoring domains and dimensions look like. A variety of learning styles will be explored, such as:

  • Small group activities;
  • Video clips;
  • Practice scoring;
  • Pair and share;
  • Role plays;
  • Question and answer sessions; and
  • Interactive exercises.

Are you looking for practice-based CLASS training to increase your program’s CLASS scores? Give us a call today at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.

Interpreting Data to Drive Instruction: Data-Driven Decision Making for Teachers

If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it 1,000 times…… data is the driving force of decision-making. Effective Head Start programs develop a culture of data-driven decision making, the process of making choices based on appropriate analysis of programmatic information. As programs consider multiple data sources and analyze their results, they are able to create changes that increase their overall quality and improve child outcomes.

Teachers play a critical role in this process through the use of ongoing assessment data to guide classroom instruction. Observing and gathering assessment information for every child is the starting point for decision-making in the classroom. Teachers must be intentional with every step in the assessment-instructional cycle, increasing their interpretive skills in order to monitor and support student progress.

Here are a few suggestions for strengthening this process:

  • Focused Observations: Teachers must target their observations and look closely for specific information. After observing that a child has difficulty with a given task, teachers take a more in-depth look at the areas of development that would support (or hinder) success in that task.
  • Interpret Data: Following a focused observation, teachers develop a hypothesis to be tested at the next instructional opportunity. For example, “Could Sara do the task if I provide more visual cues?” or “Could she do this in a different context?”
  • Adapt and Modify: Teachers use their data to design intentional groupings of students, increase environmental supports and adjust their instructional interactions to support students’ needs.
  • Engage Families: Parents are always an important part of the cycle, including the assessment feedback loop. The process of sharing with families provides teachers more information to improve their classroom practice and target learning goals.

Could your classroom staff strengthen their teaching strategies while using their assessments of children’s play to drive instruction?

Contact us at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com to shedule training for your Teachers to support them with data-driven decision making.

Strategic Planning: Setting the Direction for Your Program

Does your strategic plan include broad, long-range goals that define what your program wants to accomplish and short-term objectives that are specific and measurable? Are the goals and objectives based on your program’s critical documents? Strategic planning is a great opportunity to bring stakeholders together, provide focus for the program and ensure that everyone is on the same page. When creating your strategic plan, consider the following:

  • Achieve buy-in before you begin. Include all stakeholders in strategic planning to establish buy-in from the beginning. Staff from a variety of positions (teachers, family service workers, center directors, home visitors, management staff, etc.) will bring a different point of view. Also invite members from your Policy Council and Board of Directors. Ask everyone to complete a survey prior to strategic planning. Be sure the survey includes questions about what they want the program to accomplish for children, families, staff and community.
  • Create a list of your program’s strengths and challenges. This list should contain valuable information to establish your program’s goals and objectives. The challenges represent potential goals and the strengths represent potential strategies to achieve the goals. Also take time to review your program’s mission, vision and guiding principles. Ensure that they accurately reflect what you are working to achieve. Finally, for each goal and objective, in addition to timelines and persons responsible, include a “success indicator” column. This information will specifically describe how it will look when each goal is achieved.
  • Review and utilize your programmatic data. Strategic planning is a great time to collect and review key programmatic documents as a group. Critical data includes items such as your community assessment, self-assessment, child assessment data, CLASS data, ongoing monitoring data and family engagement data, just to name a few. Review this important data when creating your goals and objectives.

Looking for someone to facilitate your program’s Strategic Planning and end up with a written Strategic Plan? Give us a call at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.