Early Education Leaders, an Institute at UMass Boston

provides the leadership development opportunities and infrastructure that early educators need to support thriving children and families.

March 12, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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Adopting the Essential Leadership Model: Early Learning Center at the YWCA of Northeastern MA 

As a longtime educator and ECE leader, Mandy Chaput is confident in her skills and in her work as director of the Early Learning Center and of school-age programs at the YWCA of Northeastern MA. 

“I pride myself on having a very strong program. I’m very close to my families, my staff, my children,” Chaput said. “Even as a director, I want to be known in the program, not just run it.” 

But like any experienced leader, Chaput knows there’s always room for improvement. 

She credited UMass Boston’s Early Childhood Support Organization (ECSO) with enabling her and her staff to collect the data they needed to pinpoint exactly what changes they needed to make to improve program quality. 

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March 1, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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Adopting the Essential Leadership Model: Little Voices Early Education and Care 

Initially, neither Maureen Myers nor Katie Shanley was enthusiastic about joining UMass Boston’s Early Childhood Support Organization (ECSO), a multi-year program for center-based ECE teams looking to build their capacity to provide the highest-quality learning experiences for the children and families they serve. 

Myers, the founder and program administrator for Little Voices Early Education and Care, Inc. in Hyde Park, has always sought out ways to boost program quality and form productive partnerships with other organizations, but she didn’t love the idea of introducing the new systems and protocols that are foundational to our ECSO into her 16-year-old nonprofit program. 

“I thought, ‘No—we have so many rules and so many protocols, we don’t need more,’ ” Myers confessed. 

Staff from ECE centers enroll in our ECSO in groups. In 2021, Myers asked Shanley, Little Voices’ director, to do the program with her. Shanley, who was relatively new to ECE leadership after spending much of her career as a lead teacher, found it overwhelming at first. 

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February 22, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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Leading for Change reunion!

Alums of our Leading for Change program recently gathered together at the Community Room at the Salty City Market in Syracuse to reconnect, share stories—and laugh! Leading for Change is offered in upstate New York through our partnership with the Syracuse-based Early Childhood Alliance Onondaga, a coalition of community stakeholders with a shared vision for a more coordinated and strategic early childhood system and which is funded through Home Grown’s Building Comprehensive Networks initiative.

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February 5, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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FY2023 Impact Report

The work of the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation is to cultivate racially, culturally, and linguistically diverse early education leadership and drive systems change throughout the field so that all early educators, young children, and their families thrive.

Please enjoy this overview of our efforts throughout Fiscal Year 2023. Click here to download a copy of the report.

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January 28, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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Media: In Healey’s child-care push, advocates have made their voices heard

In a letter to the Boston Globe in response to news of Governor Maura Healey’s plan to reform the state’s system of reimbursement for early care and education providers who accept Child Fare Financial Assistance, Executive Director Anne Douglass, PhD highlighted the advocacy role played by early educators in moving public debate around funding for early education forward.

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January 9, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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Two PMC grads team up to provide resources to FCC providers

Ami Patel and Julie Smith became fast friends at the first meeting of their Early Education Leadership Fellowship cohort in the Post-Master’s Certificate in Early Education Research, Policy, and Practice (PMC) program, bonding immediately over the realization that both were family childcare (FCC) .

Smith, despite holding a master’s degree and nearly 24 years of experience as an FCC provider in West Bridgewater, felt nervous and intimidated about returning to school after 10 years. That is, until she took a seat next to Patel, who has worked in ECE for 15 years, the last three as an FCC provider in her Holden home. Patel immediately put her at ease: “We were like sisters, right from the beginning,” Smith recalled.

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January 3, 2024
by earlyedinstitute
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Media: With funding challenges looming, Mass. child care could be in jeopardy

A story by the Boston Globe about the likely impact that the end of pandemic-era grants will have on early education programs reported on key findings from “Initial Findings on Utilization, Employment, and Financial Assistance,” a research policy brief by the UMass Boston Early Ed Cost and Usage Simulator Project (CUSP).

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This is the blog of the Institute for Early Education Leadership and Innovation, a university-wide initiative housed in the College of Education and Human Development at UMass Boston.
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