Have you resolved to continue your education (or pursue new education opportunities for you or your center staff) in 2020?
According to U.S. News & World Report, most New Year’s resolutions fail by February. People quit their resolutions for a host of reasons: the goals were too vague, the change was too ambitious, there wasn’t enough time, the incentives were low, and so on.
I’m Leslie Coleman with ChildCare Education Institute (CCEI), the No. 1 online education provider for early childhood educators, and am here to help you keep your professional-development resolutions strong for the long haul – all of 2020. My advice:
Don’t overcommit! Instead set small, achievable goals.
First, start by resolving to take two online courses a month on topics that interest you. With CCEI, you can take classes any time of day from wherever you are – at your own pace. Plus, with 150+ courses to choose from, with subjects spanning from mindfulness to risk-taking to technology, it’s hard to choose just two each month.
Encourage your staff to reflect and set their own resolutions for the year.
At CCEI, we encourage child care providers to reflect on the past year and identify the areas they need to work on to make 2020 even better. Our reflective course, PROF104: Reflective Practice in Early Childhood Education, teaches educators self-reflection and critical-thinking skills to help identify areas for improvement in the New Year.
Ask your team members to pick course-accountability partners.
Through our center-based annual subscriptions, you can specifically assign different courses to individual staff members. By encouraging your center’s educators to hold each other accountable (even with different course tracks), you’ll have better retention – plus you can use the same strategy to get team members to complete state required training hours via CCEI.
Also, an extra incentive to sign up for your center-based subscription: When you purchase the annual training subscription, we’ll gift you with free school supplies (of equal value) from Discount School Supply (more about our BOGO offer here).
Create an education-focused community that includes parents.
Professional development doesn’t just apply to staff – your students’ parents can get involved too and try a free course from CCEI. How will this help you and your team keep your resolutions? Same strategy – as accountability partners. If the parents are proactively learning more about their child’s growth and development, then your team will feel more inclined to follow suit.
Remove obstacles to success.
Professional development and securing CDAs and certifications all become much more attainable when you remove barriers by offering classes your team can take whenever and wherever from the convenience of a laptop. CCEI offers certificate programs to meet the coursework requirements for national credentials (CDA), child care directors’ credentials and more. Not to mention, in addition to the added conveniences, CCEI’s annual subscription can cost as low as $20 per team member.
Keep the ‘education energy’ high at your center.
Professional development may sound like too much work to some early childhood educators, but at CCEI, our course library is constantly growing and evolving to include courses based on popular topical trends and innovations to keep things exciting – and energy high. In our portal, you’ll find educational classes on STEM, gender bias and stereotypes, technology, bullying and more. With exciting new timely courses launched continually, you’ll keep the “education energy” high, and keep your center staff engaged longer.
Start your 2020 journey today and let CCEI help you achieve your education resolutions – and build a more educated child care staff. For more information, visit cceionline.edu.
