Year: 2022

Promoting Self-Care For Your Staff

Now more than ever, as Head Start professionals, we are at high risk for experiencing stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout. Exposure to children and families experiencing trauma, ensuring every child’s (or family’s) basic needs are met, rising administrative demands, limited time, and competing priorities are daily realities. Still, as professionals, we show up, deliver high-quality services, day after day. But at what cost?

While we support families’ goals for better health, well-being, and education, we often neglect our plans in these areas, sending the “do as I say, not as I do” message despite our best intentions.

We have developed customized trainings, based on your program’s staff needs, that take a deep-dive into identifying areas for your professional and personal growth using sections of the Head Start Relationship-Based Competencies tool and research-based strategies to transform your health and well-being. These trainings will spark hope and give participants a real-life game-plan to be their best selves at work and at home. These training can be delivered on-site or virtually; whichever best meets the needs of your program.

As outlined in ACF-PI-HS-21-03 FY 2021 American Rescue Plan Funding Increase for Head Start Programs, ARP funds can be used for staff wellness and mental health support.

You can learn more about these and other support services online.

Please call us at (704) 277-7473 or email us at susanwitek@hsessentials.com to discuss how we can support you.

On The Road Again

We are so excited to be back on the road offering in-person training.  So many of our clients have expressed the desire for in-person training and we are happy to be able to provide it.  While live virtual trainings and webinars have filled a necessary void during the pandemic there are many advantages to in-person training.

  • Your trainer has the opportunity to read nonverbal cues. They can read the audience and adapt the training to best meet your program’s needs.
  • Trainings can be more interactive. Participants have a more active role.  They can practice the content that they are learning during the training.
  • Virtual trainings can be prone to distraction. The phone may ring; someone may stop by the office, causing the participant to lose focus.
  • Team building. In-person training allows your team to come together, building comradery. They can share experiences and learn from each other.
  • Trainings should have content that is customized to the specific needs of your program. Webinars are not customized, and the information can be outdated.

 

We recognize that many of our clients are not yet in the position to have in-person trainings or have found that they fill a need for their program, so we will continue offering our synchronous virtual trainings.

We are currently scheduling training for both in-service and pre-service as well as live CLASS™ Observations.  For information on our training topics please contact Susan Witek at (704)277-7473 or view our services.

Finding The Support Service You Need

While Essential Elements is well-known for our highly effective and interactive training, we offer many additional support services. Our clients have relied on these services for many years. Now, as staffing shortages and the need for classroom coverage have greatly reduced time and personnel available to complete compliance tasks internally, clients are turning to EE for external support.

Is it time to write your grant application? Let us take out the guess work and do it for you. We can write a comprehensive strengths-based grant application (whether it is a refunding application, a re-competition application or a 5-year baseline application).

Our grant writers have a long history of successful grant writing and consulting for Head Start and Early Head Start programs as well as other early childcare and education programs. For the past 20 years, our grant writers have procured grant funds and contracts from local, state, and federal funding sources, and currently have a 100% funding success rate.

Is your Community Assessment up to date with new census data and COVID related data? If not, we can help with that!

We create community assessments and community assessment updates for many of our clients. Our data collection process includes a combination of internal and external data, both qualitative and quantitative data. In addition to a comprehensive analysis of the data (graphs, charts, and key findings for each piece of data), your Community Assessment will include items such as an Introduction, Methodology, Executive Summary, Program Summary, Map of your Community, Description of your Community and a List of Community Resources, just to name a few. Our community assessments go far beyond simply meeting the required element of the Head Start Performance Standards.  We include data unique to your program to make this the “go to” resource document for your program.

Can’t find the time to complete a Wage Comparison Study, Annual report, Strategic Planning, Curriculum Fidelity Check, or write a Policy and Procedure Manual? We’ve got you covered!

You can learn more about these and other support services online.

Please call us at (704) 277-7473 or email us at susanwitek@hsessentials.com to discuss how we can support you.

 

New Year, New Training Opportunities with Essential Elements

The New Year is a great time to assess your program’s strengths and areas where there are opportunities for improvement. While it is a new calendar year, your Teaching staff, Policy Council, Governing Board, Family Service Workers, Management Staff and Support staff are halfway through the program year. This is the perfect time to take stock and “fine tune.”

If you have identified a need to strengthen family partnerships, assist teaching staff with challenging behaviors, create more effective transitions, increase Classroom Organization or Instructional Support scores, or strengthen your staff’s ability to interpret data to drive instruction, the second half of the program year is the perfect time for an in-service training. Implementing trainings to address identified areas for improvement as they are occurring is far more effective than waiting for the next year’s pre-service trainings.

Don’t wait, schedule your training while the year’s challenges are current and fresh in the minds of staff.

Our most requested in-service training topics amidst this year’s unique challenges are:

  • How to Have Hard Conversations (with families or staff).
  • Working with Challenging Families.
  • Change Your Questions, Change Your Life.
  • Self-Care and Team Building.
  • The “Well Oiled” Machine” (CLASS™-based Classroom Organization training).
  • Asking the Juicy Questions (CLASS™-based Instructional Support training).
  • Building Successful Relationships with Families-(navigating making connections during a pandemic).
  • Recognizing and Addressing Compassion Fatigue
  • CLASS™ The Heart of Teaching

You can learn more about our full list of training topics and services online.

Are CLASS™ Observations Important This School Year?

The answer is a definitive yes. And we can help with that.

Most of our clients have faced the challenges of re-openings in January following the winter break amidst another COVID variant, staffing shortages and classroom closures. Directors, Education Managers, Teaching staff and Support staff are having to wear many hats, making it challenging to complete the tasks outlined in their job duties.

If you and your staff are struggling with finding the time to complete internal CLASS™ observations, consider the benefits of external observations. Forgoing CLASS™ observations until staff are available to conduct observations can have a cumulative negative impact on CLASS™ scores. Without the data that comes from comprehensive CLASS™ observations, data driven decision making is impacted. Teaching staff can drift from best teaching practices and the goals set forth from previous observations and coaching.

We are currently conducting comprehensive CLASS™ observations, remotely.  Programs can videotape 20-minute cycles of their classrooms and upload the videos to a secure drive, specific to your program.  Our Certified CLASS™ observers with extensive live observation experience and consistent reliability using the CLASS™ tool, will then observe and score your videos.  We will provide you with:

  • A debrief with the Head Start Director (and your management team if you wish) to discuss the results of the observations.
  • CLASS™ scores for each classroom observed.
  • An Excel spreadsheet with scores from all classrooms and a comparison to the Head Start Grantee competitive threshold and quality threshold.
  • A written summary of individual classrooms, highlighting strengths and recommendations for improvements that can be used by your staff for professional development.
  • A list of program-wide issues that are causing lower CLASS™ scores, as well as recommendations to address and correct those issues.

We are also available to conduct live, in-person observations providing the above-mentioned data for those programs that are able to invite observers into their classrooms.

To learn more or schedule your CLASS™ observations, contact Kristine Cortina at (704) 451-3255 or kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.  You can learn more about our other services at www.HSEssentials.com.