Content Area Coordinators are responsible for ensuring that children and families are linked to all needed services in their content area. They are responsible for ensuring that their content area is and stays in full compliance. It’s also critical that they provide great leadership skills and work in collaboration with the other Content Area Coordinators. What should training for New Content Area Coordinators include?

Begin with the basics.  For new Content Area Coordinators, it’s important to begin with the Head Start Program Performance Standards.  Discuss each of the Performance Standards and Reauthorization regulations that the Coordinator is responsible for meeting.  It’s vital that the Coordinator has this information before they begin to create systems in their content area.  Having a working knowledge of the rules and regulations that the Coordinator must meet and adhere to is the foundation of a successful content area.

Establish effective and efficient systems.  Content Area Coordinators are responsible for setting up and maintaining high quality systems in their content area.  Examples of systems include policies and procedures, written plans and an ongoing monitoring system.  Provide the Coordinator with a template and a sample of these items.  This will provide the Coordinator with guidance as they write policies and procedures and create a written plan.  Encourage your Content Area Coordinators to work together on developing these systems to ensure that they are integrated across content areas.

Put support systems in place.    It’s essential for new Content Area Coordinators to have a multitude of support systems at their disposal.  Share the resources that are available to Head Start staff.  There are websites with helpful information that will assist new Coordinators as they navigate their way through the world of Head Start.  It’s important for new Content Area Coordinators to establish good working relationships with the other Content Area Coordinators.  It’s also important to find Content Area Coordinators (in the same content area) in nearby Head Start programs to have as a resource.

Looking for 1-on-1, on-site training for new Content Area Coordinators? Give us a call at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.

It’s essential to provide specialized professional development for the teaching staff who serve our infants and toddlers.  Whether you were recently awarded an Early Head Start/Child Care Partnerships grant or have had an Early Head Start program for years, providing effective training for your Early Head Start Teachers and Home Visitors is critical.

We’ve found that successful training in this area includes the following 3 points:

Offer a multitude of training topics.  Best practices in serving infants and toddlers includes providing professional development opportunities for your teaching and home visiting staff on all aspects of infant and toddler development.  These topics include:

• Developing language in infants and toddlers
• Supporting the individual needs of infants and toddlers
• Managing challenging behaviors in infants and toddlers
• Fostering the social/emotional development in infants and toddlers
• Facilitating learning in infants and toddlers

Consider your child care partners when planning trainings.  If you have new child care partners, think about providing training such as “The ABCs of Head Start: Learning the Rules and Regulations of Head Start.”  It’s important that your child care partners know what is expected of them.  Provide training to your staff on program monitoring. Conducting ongoing monitoring activities to child care partners is a key piece to the success of your program.

Utilize a “learning by doing” training model.  Provide training that is highly interactive and engaging.  Include a lot of small group activities, role plays, question and answer sessions and interactive exercises.  Design training that is based on the principles of adult learning.  This will result in high impact learning in which training participants can take back the information that they learned and implement it immediately.

Looking for highly interactive training for your Early Head Start teaching and home visiting staff? Give us a call at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.

In case you weren’t able to attend the 2014 National Head Start Association Fall Leadership Institute last week, below are the highlights.

50^th Anniversary of Head Start:

As we celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Head Start, it’s important to remember that it was the Cooke memorandum that began Head Start. President Johnson appointed Sargent Shriver to lead the administration’s War on Poverty. Shriver recruited his pediatrician, Dr. Robert E. Cooke, to head a committee whose recommendations led to the beginning of Head Start in 1965.

Update on the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships grant applications:

560 Early Head Start-Child Care Partnerships grant applications were received.  60% are partnerships, 20% are a combination, 15% are expansion only, and 5% couldn’t be identified from the Executive Summary. The applications are being read now. The plan is to begin negotiations in December and finish the announcements by the end of March.

Update on the revised Head Start Program Performance Standards:

The Head Start Program Performance Standards have been revised and they are now in “internal coordination.” It is expected that the Performance Standards will come out for public comment this winter.

Update on Reauthorization:

It does not look like Congress is ready to start a reauthorization in the near future. It is likely that the revised Head Start Program Performance Standards need to come out and see how they work before reauthorization is going to be discussed.

Update on Recompetition:

• 25% of all grantees have competed in Recompetition. The highest percentage of programs that have competed has been Community Action Agencies, programs that serve 200-499 children, and programs that serve Head Start only.
• 6.9% of regional Head Start and Early Head Start programs have been in Recompetition due to CLASS.  No program has ever fallen below CLASS thresholds for emotional support or classroom organization.
• Programs that had CLASS scores that fell into the bottom 10% tended to have Teachers with lower degrees.
• Supervision issues continue to be a leading cause of programs going into Recompetition.
• Outcomes of Recompetition: 72% of programs have gotten part of all of their program back; 20% lost their grant; and 8% have had their grant reposted.

Update on transitioning to the 5 year grants:

As it pertains to 5 year grant oversight, regional staff will be spending more time on addressing and correcting programs’ non-compliances. They are looking toward monthly contacts with grantees driving the agenda.

Other:

• 70% of Head Start Teachers now have a Bachelor’s degree.
• A complete review of all Head Start facilities will be conducted. For the next 2 years, Head Start will be taking pictures of your facilities. This information will be included in a report to Congress in order to tackle the issue of the state of Head Start facilities in a more consistent and coordinated way.

I bet you’ve just conducted – or are getting ready to conduct – many hours of training for your teaching staff.  I’m sure that the training covers a multitude of topics – curriculum, lesson planning, and ongoing assessment, just to name a few. You probably also have in-service dates scheduled for additional teacher training throughout the year. It’s important to have a plan in place to support teachers in between large and small group trainings – to provide individualized guidance to teachers as they implement what they learned in the trainings.

Mentor coaching is a critical part of a comprehensive professional development plan. It provides teachers with hands-on support that is custom designed to meet each teacher’s needs. It builds each teacher’s capacity and fosters continuous improvement. And, finally, it raises CLASS scores.

A high quality mentor coaching program includes:

• Assessment of needs. Review the CLASS scores and other observational data and determine the teacher’s strengths and areas for improvement.
• Setting goals. Ask the teacher what they’d like to work on. Starting with what the teacher wants to improve on will increase buy-in.
• Ongoing observations. Either in person, or long-distance, provide ongoing observations of a variety of skills.  If this is being done long-distance, the teacher can send videos to the mentor.
• Reflecting and sharing feedback. Through guided questions and activities, the mentor provides an opportunity for reflection as well as specific feedback.

Looking for long-distance Mentor Coaching? Give us a call at (704) 451-3255 or email us at kristinecortina@hsessentials.com.

In case you weren’t able to attend the 2014 National Head Start Association Winter Leadership Institute in DC last week, below are the highlights.

Update on the Sequester—

• The sequester is being restored for Head Start and the expectation is that the 5.27% will be returned to Head Start programs.  It is most likely that Head Start will be flat funded for the next few years.

 Update on Early Head Start – Child Care Funding Opportunities—

• $500 million dollars will be made available for Early Head Start – Child Care partnerships.  The priorities for these new monies are partnerships with child cares and plans to ensure a smooth transition as children leave Early Head Start.  A big part of the application will be how much the community needs Early Head Start – which will be driven by the Community Assessment.  The minimum number of Early Head Start children to be served is 72.  Webinars with more details to come shortly.  We’re expecting a short timeline between when the grant opportunities are posted and when the grant applications will be due (60 days).

Update on Reauthorization—

• The next Reauthorization is in the preparation stages.  It took about 5 years for the 2007 Reauthorization to be accomplished.  We are positioning ourselves to be in the driver’s seat because last time, others drove the process, and we had to fight to change important pieces of the legislation.

Update on the revised Performance Standards—

• While several drafts of the revised Head Start Program Performance Standards have been written, the revised Standards are still “under construction” – working on best language.  The plan is for the revised version to be out for public comment in a year.

Update on Monitoring—

• A Head Start Key Indicator Screener Tool has been developed.  The tool is a subset of the compliance measures in the federal monitoring protocol – 15 core indicators & 41 additional indicators.  This mini-monitoring tool will show if there are issues with programs – if you fail any one item, you would most likely fail the entire Review.  This screener will be used between now and May for grantees who won their grant back in Recompetition.

 Update on Recompetition—

• NHSA has recommended to the President that some changes be made to the Designation Renewal System (DRS) system. These include: 1) to stop referring to programs in DRS as low quality, 2) to release competition details in order to improve transparency, and 3) to treat low CLASS score as a non-compliance instead of a deficiency.
• 38% of deficiencies were non-compliances during Federal Monitoring Reviews that were not corrected.
• Will every program will be in Recompetition at some point? This question was answered at the Institute.  Programs will only be in Recompetition if 1 of the 7 triggers occurs in their program.  If no trigger occurs, then your program is automatically renewed for 5 years.
• The list of programs in Round 3 of Recompetition will be announced soon…….. and winners in Round 2 of Recompetition are expected to be announced in April.