♪♪♪ - good afternoon.- good afternoon. this is ourstudent study team, and let me explain the processof our student study team to you.
What Is Early Childhood Education, as we've been talking aboutsome of your concerns with justin that you've brought tothe teacher and some of our concerns that we see withjustin in the classroom, this is the process that we gothrough to identify what those
concerns are and come up witha plan of action to be able to support justin in theclassroom and at home. so, we're gonna start byasking you some questions, and the information thatteacher andrea is writing down, we will give you a copyof this at the end. okay, thank you. of the meeting, sothat you have it as well. (female)when i thinkabout leadership, i think that doing thiskind of work is very hard,
and that the leader has toreally be an inspiration to get everybody else to seethe hope, the value, the outcome, the reward ofcreating a program that really serves families and children. leadership is so invaluablewhen it comes to the way that a program is operating. and as a center director,i really do feel the weight of that responsibility and thehonor of that responsibility at the same time.
what's needed to reallysustain yourself as a program leader and help lead a program,the ability to lead by example, the opportunity to be able toshare with staff what it is that you're hopingthat the program will bring and enlist their vision asfar as what they would like to bring to the program and tomodel the way in doing that. it's important to have threereally dynamic understandings around systems. there's the pieceabout systems thinking.
so understandinghow systems work, understanding that these smallparts within my system create the whole picture; being ableto understand how important, like, communication isand healthy communication, and if i don't havehealthy communication within my program, what is the rippleeffect of that and how that will end upimpacting my system; being able to buildintelligence from that, so being able toassess, evaluate,
look at the information,and build intelligence from the information thatyou're receiving; and then to have the courageto create change when you need to create change. and i think we havea history of leadership ideas that leaders willhave all of the answers, and have a sense of certainty,and we want to create a new way of thinking about that. thank you for comingfor another exploration
of a professionaldilemma of practice. and tonight, we have thepleasure of having katie kuhl, who's gonna present adilemma on family engagement. so, the process itself willstart with katie taking about 10 minutes to just helpus understand the dilemma, where she's at. and she has an inquiry questionthat she's gonna ask us to think about and support herin thinking through her dilemma with.
and then we'll havethe clarifying questions for about 20 minutes. and then we'll moveinto recommendations, and this is the time whenyou get to share suggestions. you get to draw from yourpersonal experiences to help her think throughand give her advice. and most often, there's notone right answer and there are never quick fixes to anything,so it gives us a chance to develop thosedispositions of listening.
and you heard how manydifferent places from the field we're coming from, so we getto hear all those lenses and all those perspectives thatwe're bringing to the process, which is so rich, to make clearand visible to us how we're smarter together. so, i have been in mycurrent position as a program manager for 9 months, andbefore that i was a preschool teacher, a classroom teacherfull-time on the floor for about 5 years.
i feel that i'm trying toencourage what i see as major changes in behavior, attitude,and programs while having only limited interactions with thepeople and the programs that i'm working with. not just to havea learning stance, but to teach that notion ofrisk-taking and opening up one's practice to explorationin a way that you're saying, "i'm going to talk about thereal stuff that's happening." i want teachers andfamilies in particular,
as well asadministrators, though, to really believe that it'sworthwhile and valuable to engage with families,and that's not necessarily something that i feellike i'm experiencing now. (julie nicholson)i'm gonna sharewith you my successes, my small wins, and i'm reallygonna be very open and honest about what i'm struggling with. and i'm gonna have a senseof trust that in sharing that, that i'm gonna askyou for your help,
your input, and that i'm gonnaemerge out of this a stronger professional. so, i'm wondering if youcan articulate where would the overlap be between whatyou would see as authentic, and meaningful, andkind of success for you, with what the agency would see. i think that'sa great question. i think it would--you know,the stories that come up that i hear from co-workers are aboutreally positive conversations
that they had withparents, you know? (female #2)you're nevergoing to move forward, you're never going to be ableto push if you're not willing to take a risk. and in being a risk-taker,you're--sometimes it's gonna be good news and maybesometimes not, but what we learn from bothinstances will help to make the next thing better. it seems like you havea lot of leeway to do this,
so i think that there's noshame in asking what has and what hasn'tworked before. and i think that whenwe take a new job, you know, wewant to prove that, "hey, i've got this,i can do it, and kind of sometimes neglectthat there has been stuff that didn't work,stuff that did work. and we need to findout what that is, and it's not a signof weakness.
(camille maben)at the center of it islearning what you need to do, studying, making sure thatyou're listening to not only the latest and greatestof what's in the field, but also what has heldsteady for a long time and what remains true. i've actually done a lotof thinking about this process lately because i have a newgroup of student teachers that i'm working on beinga team in the classroom. (julie nicholson)no matter whereyou are in the field,
no matter what you're doing andhow you're working on improving the work, whether for theworkforce on behalf of children and families, that your workis important and you can develop leadership. i walk in the door and ijust have to really kind of be there 100% withfamilies and with kids. it's an interestingquestion to think about, because i think that's alwaysthe goal is to be authentically engaged, but there's alwayscompeting priorities
in the classroom or in yourwork of managing things. (female #3)a big part of my work isthat i mentor student teachers, and not just to the pointwhere they're observing in my classroom. they are my staff, and so ihave this parallel process where, in my work, i'm thinkinga lot about the children, but i'm also thinking a lotabout developing my student teachers in their ownreflective practice. so, i think--
(camille maben)we need to always be onthe lookout for that spark where you see that leadershipskill coming through, and then we have not onlythe opportunity but the responsibility to seek thosefolks out and help them develop those leadership skills. in our organizations,as we work with people, we need to give themopportunities to hone those leadership skillsand, along the way, give them the supportthey need.
i've been thinking about thedilemma that i presented about not feeling supported and notfeeling like i was ready to teach at a community college,and so i took to heart a lot of the things we talkedabout that night and how-- (camille maben)we need to not only dependon the senior members of the leadership in the field,but cultivate and inspire our young leaders to comeforward and take up this torch and move us down the road. i've been reading a bookby holly elissa bruno
who's talking about leadership. and in the book, they talkabout passionate curiosity, and i'm really tied into that. and i think when you thinkabout working with young children and you think aboutthe ways that we're asking them questions and having themdescribe and explain what they love and howthey see the world and what bothers them, i feellike this setting is what that does for me, is that it's givenme the ability to be able
to talk about things to considermyself a leader in a different way than somebody elsemight consider them a leader. from family childcare home providers, to a preschoolteacher in a center, to someoneat a community college, to someoneat a 4-year university, they're are many folks whoprovide services into making our early learning andcare system what it is. and so, as we lookacross the field,
we need to develop leadershipin all of those areas and help them make sure that we arecrossing over and talking with one another so that we all havea common message and we all have a commonvision moving forward. all of your classroomteachers are also leaders, and allowing them to have thatleadership and have that role is important as well,because otherwise, you're not allowingothers to make decisions, important decisions abouteveryday things that happen
in children and families' lives,because you're not always going to be there asthe center director or assistant directoror supervisor, whatever your title might be. in terms ofleadership competencies, i know that all the leaderswe have here are competent. whether they're an assistantcook in the kitchen or whether they're a higher-level manager,everyone here is competent at their work and we need totrust people to do their work,
and let people do their workand have ideas about how their work can be done. and so the way that i reallyfacilitate strong leadership is i let people do their work. we need to make openingsfor young people to have voice, and that meanssometimes saying, you know, "i'm bringingthis person along. "we need to havea new representative. i'm willing to step aside andlet someone else come forward."
you know, we need to have menof color in this conversation because there are childrenof color and they have fathers and grandfathers. (camille maben)we need to ensure that wehave a very diverse workforce that understands the culturethat families bring into our programs, that our workforcereflects the children we serve. and certainly, with the numberof dual-language learners that we have in california, we wantto be able to serve children and their families inthe best way we can.
(camille maben)so, how do we bring leadersfrom all kinds-- all walks of lifeinto this area? (female #4)as the leader, you're notthe ultimate decision-maker always, because there'sa lot of people involved and the decisions thatyou make are based off of the individuals,and the families, and the children,and the care teachers, and the staff as well,and the community as a whole. and one of thethings that i know,
if i can speak from myown personal experience, that i do is i find out moreabout the people that i work with every single day,and that helps me to gain an understanding of wherethey're coming from, and how they viewtheir role in our center. and it also helps us to havevery open discussions about how we can provide reallyrelevant care for our families. but i also think that whenwe talk about leadership, that we need to also lookoutside of what we think
of generally as a leader,whether it's a center director, or an administrator. sometimes, it's a grandparent,sometimes it's an auntie, or somebody in the community. and so if we are able to helpbe a resource for those future leaders in early careand education in speaking about culturallyresponsive approaches, i think that it's also our roleto bring them in and find a way to have a community base.
the value of bringingeverybody together is that we learn about all the differentperspectives that people in these diverse roles bring. it helps us push beyond the waythat we might be thinking about our professional work. many times, when we'reworking in our jobs, if something comes up,especially a particularly challenging dilemma,it can feel very isolating. and if you come togetherwith people and open up
your practice for exploration,it can not only help you see a way through, peoplewill give you idea that you've never considered. but it also helps you tosee the value of all of these different individuals who haverich funds of knowledge and resources thatyou can work with. that helps you understand yourpart in a larger profession and helps you to thinkabout your work as a collective effort.
one of the skills that i'veworked hard to develop over the years is to be able tonot only listen to what my colleagues might be saying,but in cases where their expectations or where theywant to go is not maybe where i want to go, to be able totry to put myself, as much as i can, in theirshoes to see where they're coming from to try tounderstand their point of view, and then to try to worktowards some solution
that is beneficial to allof us in some way. this takes a long time, andpart of that is you need to do the work together and youneed to have the conversations. and they take longer thanyou think they're gonna take, and you want it to be quicker,but you have to be patient and you have to allowthat process to happen. because in the end, not only doyou come up with something that people have collaboratedon and generally agree on, but they believe in itbecause they've done it.
and if you can, as a leader,help people through that process to getto the other end, it's gonna be so muchbetter and stronger in what you're trying to do. (female #5)each of these early effortsidentified three factors as being vital to quality. first, that programs forinfants and toddlers must support the relationshipbetween the child and the parents.
second, that programs must bebased on our knowledge of child development. and third, that programs musttake a comprehensive approach, including health, safety,and nutrition. (camille maben)i think the role ofleadership is to help to not only create a visionof what this can look like for the state of california,what early education and care can look like,but also to help us inspire people to get there.
the notion of knowledgemobilization is really about, how do we get what we know intothe hands of people who need it in a timely fashion in a waythat they can understand it and use it? there are three questionslinked to a notion of knowledge mobilization. those threequestions are: what?so what? and now what?
the what has to do with thework the researches are doing in terms of understandingchild development. (camille maben)our leaders needto be able to create and see and helpimplement that vision, and at the sametime, as i said, inspire folks to join them. i think a leader has theability to tell that story back to the world in a waythat anyone can understand. i think when yousee great leaders,
what they have in commonis that ability to connect. how do i connect with thepeople i'm working with? whether it's one-on-one orin a room full of thousands of people, how am i ableto connect and tell the story that not only gets the pointacross, but hopefully moves people to action. one of the thingsthat people are getting is that during the first 3 years,perceptual motor activity, language development,cognitive development,
and most importantly,social/emotional development are peaking in ways that thepeople who are caring for young children during these periodsof time must know how to attend to those things. (camille maben)our role is to informand educate everyone from the legislature, to our partnersat the federal level in what we're doing here,with stakeholders, with everyone fromparents all the way up to-- at the very highest levelof our government,
to help them understandthe difference that quality early education andcare can make for our children. and i think the other importantrole that leaders have is how do we help each otherunite around a common message? in a time when resources,both financial and human, are really at a premium,we need to band together and set our vision and setour path forward for where we want to go. and then each of us,carrying our own part of that,
join and movethe state forward. we also think veryintentionally about the purposes of leadershipand asking questions about, you know, why peoplewant to develop leadership, what those explicit goalsand purposes and aims are. and we link that to thinkingabout issues of social justice and equity, and thinkingnot only about these ideas historically in our field, butwhere we are in contemporary times so that we can havestudents and emerging leaders
really think courageouslyabout how to notice, observe, name the injusticesand inequities that they see around them, and to workskillfully to try to interrupt those. there's a place where ithink we have to engage in more advocacy-oriented behavior,which means being willing to break tradition andstep outside of the norm, and sometimes disengagefrom our colleagues who have a certain notion aboutthe way things should be
if we feel--and in thisparticular case, if i feel that what i need tosay is more representative of a new notion than it isa perpetuation of the same old thing. so, how can i do that in a waythat doesn't offend everybody to the point thatit's ineffective, but by the same token, letspeople know this is a new day, this is a new time,and we have to think a different kind of way.
i would say that anotherpiece that's really important is this notion--we talkabout it at some level, it's now described in thediscourse on leadership, and that is this notion thatleadership can be an inclusive concept, that it's not needingto be limited to particular roles in the field,particular levels of authority. but so often, we don't helppeople really understand what it looks like fromdifferent angles, and here we do.
we really--whether you areon the floor as a home visitor, you're aninfant/toddler teacher, you're directing a program, oryou're working in philanthropy to try to push change insupport of our profession, people are able to seefirst-hand what leadership looks like in all ofthese different contexts.
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