The Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation announces that Leading for Change is now available to family child care providers in New York’s Onondaga County through a partnership with The Early Childhood Alliance. Leading for Change is the Institute’s leadership development program that trains program administrators, educators, and family child care providers on how to lead for change and quality improvement in their practice, program, or in the field.
“We are excited to partner with The Early Childhood Alliance to bring Leading for Change to New York,” said Anne Douglass, PhD, Executive Director of the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation. “This program has a significant impact on the educators who complete it, and we are thrilled to extend its reach to even more early childhood professionals. By empowering educators to lead for change, we are creating a stronger and more equitable early childhood education system.”
Taught as a professional learning community, Leading for Change cultivates leadership mindsets among educators who then develop a Change Project, or concrete action plan, that will improve program quality and promote equity. Some graduates of Leading for Change have pursued entrepreneurial ventures that increase the supply of quality child care in their communities. Others provide expert testimony to lawmakers to influence policymaking and share their expertise with the media to educate the public. All experiment with innovations that improve the quality of ECE programs. They also grow their professional network by building a leadership network with the cohort of peers going through the 14-week course with them.
The training in relational and entrepreneurial leadership that educators receive through Leading for Change differs significantly from more traditional approaches to leadership development that typically engage program administrators and focus on management skills.
“This leadership is central to quality outcomes and performance in early care and education,” said Debra Johnston-Malden, M.S., Coordinator of the StrongStart Metro Boston Professional Development Center and Director of the Early Childhood Fellowship program. “By attracting, supporting, and sustaining strong leadership at all levels of the early care and education workforce, we are building infrastructure for the field.”
We offer Leading for Change to early educators in Massachusetts through the state’s network of StrongStart Professional Development Centers, our Post Master’s Certificate Leadership Fellowship program, and to educators in Maryland through the Maryland Early Childhood Leadership Education Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County.
