Category: Essential Tips

The Importance of Managing Challenging Behaviors by Becoming Trauma-Informed in Head Start Programs

In early childhood education, Head Start programs play a crucial role in fostering school readiness and overall well-being for children from low-income families. However, educators and staff often encounter challenging behaviors that can disrupt learning and strain relationships. These behaviors—such as aggression, withdrawal, or defiance—are not always rooted in defiance or a lack of discipline, but often stem from underlying trauma.

Understanding the Impact of Trauma

Children in Head Start programs are disproportionately affected by adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including poverty, domestic violence, neglect, and community instability. These experiences can significantly impact brain development, emotional regulation, and behavior. When children lack the skills to express their emotions in healthy ways, they may act out—often in ways that seem defiant or uncooperative.

The Trauma-Informed Approach

Becoming trauma-informed means shifting from asking “What’s wrong with this child?” to “What happened to this child?” It emphasizes empathy, understanding, and proactive support rather than punishment. A trauma-informed approach helps educators create safe, predictable, and nurturing environments where children feel secure enough to learn and grow.

Key elements include:

  • Building strong, trusting relationships with each child
  • Creating consistent routines that reduce anxiety
  • Using positive behavior support strategies instead of punitive measures
  • Training staff to recognize trauma symptoms and respond appropriately

 

Benefits for Children and Educators

When Head Start programs adopt trauma-informed practices, the benefits are far-reaching:

  • Children experience improved emotional regulation and social skills
  • Classrooms become more inclusive and manageable
  • Teachers report reduced stress and burnout
  • Families feel more supported and engaged

Managing challenging behaviors through a trauma-informed lens is not just a strategy—it’s a compassionate, evidence-based approach that empowers Head Start programs to meet the needs of the whole child. By understanding the root causes of behavior, staff can respond with empathy and structure, paving the way for healing, learning, and long-term success.

We would love to help your staff become trauma-informed.  Reach out to us at hsessentials.com or call Susan at (704) 277-7473.

Part 2: Invest in Your Staff for a Strong Start

Why Early Planning for Pre-Service Training Sets the Tone for a Successful Head Start Year

Previously we mentioned the importance and the impact of structuring a quality pre-service plan with attention paid to benefits of planning early and the support that quality training can have on the outcomes of a program. Now, let’s take a look at what happens intentional planning is not done and how this affects staff on a day today basis.

Common Pitfalls from Program Records

If your program keeps internal records, you’ve likely noticed a few patterns:

  • New staff are often overwhelmed by the volume of information shared during a single week of pre-service.
  • Returning staff tune out when training is too repetitive or disconnected from their daily work.
  • Managers and specialists report spending the first month re-teaching policies or practices that were unclear during onboarding.
  • Family service staff often receive the least targeted training, though their role is central to Head Start’s two-generational model.

These are not signs of failure—they are signs of opportunity.

When programs step back and treat pre-service as leadership strategy, the ripple effect is powerful. Staff feel seen, supported, and prepared. Managers become more aligned. And children and families benefit from a team that starts the year united and ready.

Make Pre-Service a Strategic Investment. Early planning allows you to:

  • Customize training content by role (classroom, family services, health, admin)
  • Incorporate team-building and culture-setting activities to improve retention
  • Address high-need areas like trauma-informed care, mental health, or inclusive practices
  • Include reflective supervision or coaching-style leadership training for managers
  • Balance federal requirements with your program’s specific goals

 

And perhaps most importantly—it lets you bring in expert support that lightens your leadership load.

Support is Available—And Worth It. Planning pre-service training doesn’t mean doing it all yourself. A skilled training consultant can work with you to:

  • Review past training outcomes and develop a customized pre-service schedule
  • Deliver high-quality sessions on priority topics aligned with HSPPS and CLASS
  • Equip managers with coaching tools to sustain momentum beyond the training week
  • Create a training experience that energizes rather than exhausts your staff

If you’ve ever wished your team could hit the ground running on day one—or that you didn’t have to “re-train the training” by October—now is the time to rethink how you approach pre-service.

Let’s Talk. No matter the need for your program, a half-day session, one day with a specific focus, a week of cohesive events, you will receive professional development that is purposeful and carefully constructed. Pre-service is more than a start-of-year task—it’s an investment in your people, your program quality, and your long-term success. When you connect with Essential Elements to create the plan that is most appropriate for your program, you will find that there is:

  • a strong focus on adult learning principles
  • a brain friendly design of the training sessions
  • a connection between ideas, information and practice
  • a relationship-centered approach to the participants
  • a structured plan with specific outcomes and expectations for results

 

Partner with Essential Elements to create a purposeful, high-quality pre-service plan that sets your staff—and your families—up for a successful year.

Part 1: Invest in Your Staff for a Strong Start

Why Early Planning for Pre-Service Training Sets the Tone for a Successful Head Start Year

As a Head Start director, you know that the start of a new program year is more than a date on the calendar—it’s a strategic opportunity. Among the most critical pieces of that strategy is pre-service training. It’s not just a compliance requirement—it’s the foundation for the culture, quality, and consistency your team will carry forward all year long. And it is a measure of the care and importance that you place on each staff member and the role they play in your program.

Too often pre-service becomes a rushed checklist instead of a meaningful launch. When training is planned late, squeezed in, or treated as a one-size-fits-all event, we see the results in the data: lower staff engagement, inconsistent implementation of Head Start Program Performance Standards (HSPPS), and increased turnover within the first 90 days.

The good news? You can shift that outcome with one key move: plan your pre-service training early—and with purpose.

Why Pre-Service Matters More Than Ever
Head Start and Early Head Start programs are complex systems, offering comprehensive services to children and families with diverse and often high-need backgrounds. Staff members are asked to do deeply meaningful and emotionally intense work—often without formal training in all the areas they’re expected to manage.

Research and program data consistently show that staff who receive clear, intentional, and high-quality pre-service training are:

  • 40% more likely to remain past the first 6 months
  • Significantly more confident in implementing curriculum and child assessment tools
  • Better equipped to support family engagement from the start
  • More compliant with HSPPS and CLASS expectations in the first quarter

But quality pre-service training doesn’t happen overnight. The best programs begin planning months in advance, building a training schedule that reflects the actual needs of their staff—and the strategic goals of the agency.

Let’s Talk. Whether you’re looking for full support or just want help refining your plan, now is the right time to connect. Pre-service is more than a start-of-year task—it’s an investment in your people, your program quality, and your long-term success. Help your staff experience success every day and feel validated and supported in their routine tasks. Make sure that the outcomes you expect are those that you invest in.

Let Essential Elements help you craft a pre-service plan that matches your program’s vision and supports strong outcomes for children and families.

The Art of Intentional Center Time: Balancing Freedom and Focus

Center time in preschool is a crucial part of a child’s development. It is a period where young learners engage in self-directed, hands-on activities designed to promote social, cognitive, and emotional growth. The concept of intentionality in this context refers to the purposeful design and guidance provided by teachers to ensure that activities align with your curriculum and children’s developmental goals, fostering meaningful learning experiences for each child.

Intentionality during center time involves carefully planning the learning environment, selecting appropriate materials, and offering structured yet flexible opportunities for exploration. Teachers are intentional not only in how they set up the space, but also in how they observe, support, and interact with children. This might involve encouraging problem-solving skills, supporting social interactions, or extending learning through thoughtful questions and guidance.

For example, in a dramatic play center, a teacher might intentionally introduce props or scenarios that promote role-playing and social negotiation, while also observing how children interact with each other and step in to guide them toward deeper learning when necessary. In the block center, the teacher may provide diverse materials that encourage spatial reasoning and collaboration, fostering both cognitive and social development.

Ultimately, intentionality in center time ensures that children are not just playing but engaging in purposeful activities that promote their growth across a variety of domains. It allows teachers to meet each child’s individual needs, fostering a rich, dynamic learning environment where exploration and discovery are at the forefront of early childhood education.

For more information on intentional center time, training and coaching for your program please contact Susan at (704)277-7473 (susanwitek@hsessentials.com or Kristine at (704)451-3255 (kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.)

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.

Creating Pathways for Economic Mobility

Family economic mobility is a core aspect of Family Well-being, one of the seven Family Outcomes in the Parent, Family, and Community Engagement (PFCE) Framework.

The Head Start Program Performance Standards state that programs must integrate parent and family engagement strategies into all services to “support family well-being” and “address prevalent needs of families” (HSPPS 1302.50). With the uncertainty and many changes surrounding the last year in our society, this support has become even more important, especially in the area of economic well-being.

The health issues of COVID-19 resulted in unemployment, reduced hours, challenging childcare situations, and other related concerns for our Head Start families. The families and children we serve, have faced economic, health and resource challenges prior to the pandemic, now our families confront a variety of additional tough situations. They need the strong and constructive support of their Home Visitors and Family Advocates more than ever.

The Essential Elements training on Economic Mobility will allow your staff to learn how to:

  1. Build capacity to support families who struggle with economic insecurity.
  2. Partner with families to set and achieve goals for financial strength.
  3. Empower their education and to inspire employment advancement.
  4. Locate resources to support further learning and development.

Through the use of the Head Start Parent, Family and Community Engagement Framework and other tools specific to Head Start families, the Essential Elements Economic Mobility training can strengthen your program and support your efforts as you work to benefit the children and families that you serve.

 

 

 

A Different Look at Pre-service Professional Development

classroom Pre-service season is fast approaching and here at Essential Elements, we are more than a little excited to be able to offer both in-person and virtual training for all of our training topics. Our trainers are ready to travel or meet with you virtually. We are gearing up for a very busy pre-service professional development season! We have added a few circumstantial topics to our available trainings:

  • Helping Children Feel Safe in Today’s Society: COVID-19 and Racism
  • COVID-19 impact: Strengthening Routines and Procedures as Children Return to the Classroom
  • Partnering with Families to Navigate the Challenges Presented by COVID-19

 

Many of our clients have identified an increased need for CLASS based training after shutdowns, staff turnover, and virtual learning. As teaching staff and children return to the classroom, there are quite a few new challenges, including within the CLASS framework. How do we continue to offer emotional support with distancing and masks? How do we support student autonomy during meals, without family style meals and the ability to have children set tables or pass out food? With cross contamination guidelines, how do we continue to offer students choice of materials?

We have worked with our clients’ program staff to provide tools and resources to continue to create high quality classrooms and learning environments within state and local restrictions and the CLASS framework. We can frame your training based on management observation and internal or external CLASS scores.

We have also heard from clients that their Family Service Workers and Home Visiting staff have struggled with partnering with families virtually, making an already challenging position much more difficult.

Consider a customized training that addresses both self-care for these amazing providers, and the challenges these professionals are facing in delivering needed services to families and children. Let’s address how to create that “bridge” for families to connect after the last year of restrictions and difficulties.

We at EE are so impressed with all of you who have continued to support Head Start and Early Head Start children and families during these unprecedented circumstances, often while struggling yourselves. Each of you are that touchstone, making a monumental difference in the lives of the children and families you serve.

For a complete list of training topics, please visit our training page.

Jump Start Your In-Service Training With A Virtual Boost

training topics For most of our clients, providing services to our Head Start and Early Head Start children and families has taken on a very different look than in the past. Some programs are operating on a solely virtual basis, others have reduced size classrooms while other have re-opened with a hybrid schedule. Many programs have re-opened only to have to shut down again due to COVID 19. All of our interactions with children and families have been impacted.

There are measurable benefits of in-service training and consistent professional development opportunities throughout the year. As new challenges arise during the year and new areas for growth are identified, virtual training sessions can help staff to tackle these challenges and address potential growth areas as they are occurring, instead of waiting for the pre-service season. People take in new information a little at a time.  While pre-service is a good time to provide staff with training, it is just a few days of the year. Consider instead of presenting a lot of information at once, creating multiple training opportunities for staff.  Creating a multi-layered plan to provide training to staff throughout the year, will lay a foundation of learning that can be built upon, while addressing current struggles as they are happening.

Our trainings are customized to your program’s current needs and available in a virtual format. We have added some training topics to address the needs of our clients and the struggles resulting from COVID 19 restrictions. Below are some of our most requested topics from clients after reopening:

  • Facilitating Small Group Instruction – With social distancing requirements, much of classroom time is spent in small groups. This training focuses on the shift from whole group instruction to small groups and how to maximize teacher/child interactions while facilitating learning.
  • Helping Children Feel Safe in Today’s Society: Covid 19 and Racism – This training generates in-depth discussion while taking an honest look at systemic racism and its impact on children and families.
  • Increasing Instructional Support Scores Within a More Restrictive Environment – This training focuses on strategies to capitalize on opportunities that are available throughout the day, (even amid restrictions), to promote children’s higher-order thinking skills and increase learning, with facilitation of conversation and exploration of ideas, (asking those juicy questions!)
  • Change Your Questions Change Your Life – Examine your work relationships and communications with a new perspective. Do you approach interactions from a Learner or a Judger approach? Dig deeper to understand motivations, plan for difficult discussions, and create agendas based on goals that will open up communication, build collaboration and increase problem-solving.  (Certified Trainer).

 

See the training area of our website for more information on topics.

 

Is There Value in Conducting Virtual CLASS Observations?

CLASS observations The answer is yes! While most of us would prefer live observations, for many of our clients, this is not possible due to COVID 19 restrictions. Forgoing CLASS observations until such time that restrictions are lifted 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. Virtual CLASS observations will not only guard against drift; our clients have found the following additional benefits to virtual observations while operating during COVID 19:

  • Having access to uploaded video-taped teaching cycles adds an additional tool for Education Managers and Coaches to use when working with teaching staff on professional development.
  • More time to work with teaching staff using the classroom summaries, recommendations for improvement and video segments we provide, due to reduced class sizes and hours of operation.
  • The ability to target an underscoring content area of the day and obtain objective feedback from outside observers without bias. Meals are a prime example of a challenge directly related to new guidelines. For most, family style meals have been eliminated and teaching staff are struggling with how to implement meaningful teacher/child interactions as they pertain to CLASS during this time. We can provide feedback and recommendations on how to increase scores in this area within current restrictions.

 

Whether you are looking for program-wide observations inclusive of all activities during the day or want to focus observations and feedback on times and activities that are proving the most challenging for teachers, by nature of the virtual format, we can customize your observations to fit your program needs.

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.
  • We will provide you with CLASS scores for each classroom observed, a written summary of individual classrooms, highlighting strengths and recommendations for improvements that can be used by your staff for professional development, and 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 for those programs that are able to invite observers into their classrooms.

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

Beyond Training

Head start services You know what our high-quality trainings can do for your program, whether it be for your teaching staff, your family service workers or your Board of Directors and Policy Council.  We can also help you with our other services.  Your time is valuable, let us help you.

We offer the following services:

  • Grant Writing. We write your grant application. First, we collect information about your program. We then write the entirety of your grant application and tailor it to your program. We’ll highlight your strengths and include all the requirements necessary in the instructions.
  • Strategic Planning. Knowing where you are going is key to a program’s success. Our strategic planning services provide an opportunity to come together, as a team, and plan for the future.  We review your program’s mission and vision (or help you create them) as well as your guiding principles.  We work together to analyze your program’s strengths and challenges.  We work with you to create both long-term and short-term goals.
  • Annual Reports. Your Annual Report should capture the activities, experiences and accomplishments of your program. We will work with you to include all information required by the Head Start Performance Standards, as well any additional information which will highlight the successes of your program.  We will highlight your program’s mission, vision and core values.
  • Wage Comparability Studies. Being competitive when it comes to salaries and benefits is important. It ensures that you can hire, and retain, the best employees.  We review your program’s current salary and benefits structure, and then compare it data collected from comparable agencies.  We go beyond collecting the data. We analyze it and explain it using charts, graphs and narratives.  Armed with this information you can ensure that your program remains competitive.
  • Community Assessments. Your Community Assessment should do more for your program than fulfill a requirement; it should be a working document. It should be a resource when writing your Refunding Application, your Recompetition Grant Application, or when applying for other grants.  Our Community Assessments are custom designed to meet the specific needs of your program or agency, while meeting the requirements of the Head Start Performance Standards (and those of your CAP or other program regulations).  We also include information on Covid-19 and it’s impact on your program and the families that you serve.
  • Policy and Procedures Manuals. We can rewrite your Policy & Procedure Manual (PDM, Program Governance & all content areas) and turn it into a user-friendly document.  The Policy & Procedure Manual will be concise, with easy to find specific policies, and procedures and reflective of the Head Start Program Performance Standards.  We recommend that the order of the Policies & Procedures in the manual are reflective of the order of the Head Start Performance Standards.  We further recommend that your procedures are kept broad enough so that your program can accomplish them without having to change the policies. It also protects you so that, during a Review, you are never caught not following your own policies.

For more information on any of these services, or to request a sample, please contact susanwitek@hsessentials.com.