Summer is in full swing! Along with the fun the season brings, young children, expectant parents, and those who care for them face many decisions about how to safely navigate heat, poor air quality, extreme weather, and more. Compared to the general population, infants, young children, and pregnant people are more susceptible to the effects of extreme heat.

It is important for child care providers to know how to manage these environmental risks as they plan to keep children and staff safe. Child care providers are also in a unique position to support families by providing resources and guidance to keep children safe while at home.

Below are some common questions caregivers might have about how to protect young children and families from extreme heat and resources to help answer them:

• How do I know when it’s too hot for infants and young children to play outside?
  • Check out this informative Child Care Weather Watch Poster from the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services. This resource tells us how to determine if the weather is suitable for outdoor play for infants and young children, both when it’s cold and hot outside.
• How can I find heat-related health information specific to my community?
  • Type your ZIP code into the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Heat and Health Index (HHI) tool. This tool helps you prepare for hot weather, prevent heat-related illnesses, and learn about the effects of heat on health.
• How do I know when extreme heat is coming to my community?
  • The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) HeatRisk Forecast color-coded map shows a seven-day heat forecast and health risks. CDC also has a HeatRisk Dashboard with resources for high-heat days, local air quality details, and actions to stay safe. The CDC has guidance for heat health, focused on children with asthma, people who are pregnant, and people with cardiovascular disease.
  • Looking for heat updates in your inbox? Check out the Monthly Climate Outlook Reports by the HSS Office of Climate Change and Health Equity (OCCHE) with forecasts for heat, drought, wildfire, hurricanes, and more for your region. Use this link (the “OCCHE” subscription option) to sign up for the monthly reports via email. See this link for the August report.
• What heat-related emergencies are happening in my community?
  • The OCCHE and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) NEMSIS Heat-Related EMS Activation Surveillance Dashboard has a map and graph with Emergency Medical Services (EMS) data about heat-related emergencies. The information is useful for knowing heat-related risks in your area.

We encourage child care providers and those supporting networks of providers to share these resources broadly. Climate change is an early childhood issue and programs supporting young children and their families need tools to be responsive and climate-resilient. These resources can be helpful not only during the summer, but year-round, as communities around the globe face an increasing number of extreme weather events.

Interested in other resources supporting early childhood professionals? Sign-up for our newsletter here.

Looking for helpful resources about air quality? Find them here.

Summer is in full swing! Along with the fun the season brings, young children, expectant parents, and those who care for them face many decisions about how to safely navigate heat, poor air quality, extreme weather, and more. Compared to the general population, infants, young children, and pregnant people are more susceptible to the effects of poor air quality.

It is important for child care providers to know how to manage these environmental risks as they plan to keep children and staff safe. Child care providers are also in a unique position to support families by providing resources and guidance to keep children safe while at home.

Below are some common questions caregivers might have about how to protect young children and families if the air quality is poor, and resources that will help answer them:

• How can I monitor my local air quality to ensure that it is safe outside for infants, young children, and pregnant people?
  • The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) AirNow Air Quality Index (AQI) Map displays the air quality in your local area and recommends precautions to take when needed. The AirNow Fire and Smoke Map also provides real-time information about where wildfires are happening across the U.S. and Canada and how they might affect your local air quality.
  • As you’re planning the day ahead for yourself or those in your care, access the map on the go and sign up for notifications about local air quality alerts using the AirNow smartphone app.
  • AirNow also has easy guidance for when and how outdoor physical activity should be modified for young children and pregnant people based on air quality: if the air quality is at orange level or above (Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups or 101–150) these groups should reduce prolonged and heavy exertion outdoors. EPA also offers educational activities and materials on air quality (recommended for children ages 4 to 7).
• What steps can I take to protect infants, young children, and staff on days with poor air quality or extreme heat?
  • This resource from the Connecticut Office of Early Childhood includes information about protecting the health of children and staff on days with extreme heat or compromised air quality.
• Where can I find programmatic guidance about poor air quality and other disasters- before and after they happen?
  • Visit the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) Office of Community Services (OCS) Disaster Flexibilities Hub. This resource has live weather updates and tools from Ready.gov and Ready.gov/es (en español) to prepare for wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, drought, extreme heat, and more. Resources for Head Start providers and early childhood caregivers include ACF Emergency and Disaster Waivers and Flexibilities, Head Start ECLKC Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Recovery Guidance, and Child Care Resources for Disasters and Emergencies. Programs that receive OCS funding can also visit the Disaster Flexibilities Hub for guidance on what types of flexibilities their programs have following climate emergencies.
• Where can SNAP and WIC be used when poor air quality and other disasters cause families to evacuate?
  • When poor air quality impacts communities, families sometimes face the difficult decision of evacuating their homes. For families who rely on nutrition assistance programs, relocating can cause confusion about how to transfer SNAP and WIC benefits across state lines. EBT can be used across state lines for SNAP and CalFresh. Families who have WIC can continue to use their benefits until their certification expires. Families must have proof that they received WIC benefits in another area or state and should contact their WIC office with any questions.
• How do I talk with young children and families about wildfires and other climate change issues?
  • Trinka and Sam: The Big Fire is both a coloring book and story, with a parents’ guide at the end of the book with prompts for how to talk about wildfires and their aftermath with families. The book is available in Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek. See a similar story about hurricanes by the same authors.

We encourage child care providers and those supporting networks of providers to share these resources broadly. Climate change is an early childhood issue and programs supporting young children and their families need tools to be responsive and climate-resilient. These resources can be helpful not only during the summer, but year-round as communities around the globe face an increasing number of extreme weather events.

Interested in other resources supporting early childhood professionals? Sign-up for our newsletter here.

Looking for helpful resources to protect yourself and the children and families in your care from extreme heat this summer? Find them here.

Child care remains inaccessible and unaffordable for too many families across the country. As a result of not having access to quality child care, families may lose their jobs, or be unable to complete school or training programs.

States have submitted three year plans for implementing the Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) to the Office of Child Care (OCC) by July 1, 2024, and will be finalized by the end of September 2024. These plans address how states will meet the new rules that became effective April 30th (details are available here). The rule changes are designed to improve access, affordability and the stability of providers who accept vouchers. Below are highlights and considerations for state child care leaders and advocates to simplify CCDF eligibility and application processes.

• Making eligibility determination and application process easier and faster for families. States are required to design their eligibility policies to minimize disruptions for families, and are encouraged to consider presumptive eligibility, use documentation from other programs (i.e., SNAP, Medicaid) to enroll families, and to provide online enrollment options. Significantly, if a state does not provide online enrollment opportunities, they must describe why it is impractical to provide this option.
• Leveraging application guide for best practices in benefits application design and processes. The guide includes a sample online child care assistance application and provides examples of how states are already implementing recommended best practices. The intent behind the guide is to support states as they consider how to reduce long wait times for application approval and allow families to apply online at any time and from anywhere. The guide recommends reducing unnecessary documentation, which can reduce inequity in the child care subsidy program by improving access for families who most need services.
• Clarifying how states can implement presumptive eligibility. These policies allow families to access child care subsidy while their eligibility is being determined, so they do not lose their child care slot or end up turning down a job or school opportunity. States are expected to approve applications for child care assistance within 30 days, but it can take much longer for some families. States can apply presumptive eligibility to families that present circumstances that strongly suggest they will be eligible, such as enrollment in other income support programs (SNAP, Medicaid, WIC, etc.), enrollment in Head Start programs, as well as those families who are part of a priority group such as families experiencing homelessness, or children with disabilities.

Authentically and meaningfully engaging families in systems design and improvement work requires careful attention to how we value the expertise and lived experiences of these critical partners. Oftentimes, there is a contrast in our espoused beliefs and actual behaviors (explicitly or implicitly). How conscious are we of the disconnect? What tools and frameworks exist to help us as systems leaders on our journeys to be more genuine in our beliefs and equitable and liberatory in our practice? Here are some key insights from Start Early Consulting’s work focused on centering family and provider voice.

Systems leaders aiming to engage families more equitably and effectively in systems design and improvement efforts need to assess their progress towards meeting these goals. Start Early has developed a self-assessment tool focused on cultivating family leadership in systems building work through the establishment of Family Councils. Framed as a continuum for developing capacities, the tool incorporates tenets of the Spectrum of Community Engagement to Ownership framework.

On January 19, 2024, Start Early and the Educare Network submitted comments to the Office of Head Start (OHS) in response to its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) related to changes to the Head Start Program Performance Standards. The proposed changes reflect important potential changes centered around improving workforce compensation and benefits, integrating mental services more broadly in programs, and enhancing program quality initiatives focused on engaging families, health and safety, and better meeting community needs.

The submitted comments represent feedback from over 150 staff and parent leaders across Start Early and Educare schools. Overall, both Start Early and Educare Network organizations applaud these efforts to promote quality through support for the workforce and recommend OHS provide additional guidance to programs on the implementation of the proposed changes. As one staff member noted, “These changes seem to be a big step in creating equitable and inclusive educational programs for students, families and staff. It supports teaching staff’s wellbeing and keeping them from burnout, while also creating more opportunities for families furthest from educational justice.”

Additionally, in order to fully realize the benefits of the proposed updates to the performance standards, Start Early and the Educare Network encouraged OHS to consider the significant resources that programs will need to successfully enact these changes and also to address the need for a more urgent timeline for these changes given the current workforce crisis. Download the full text of the letter below.

Focusing on the Needs of Early Childhood Professionals

The word “innovation” can be perceived as a buzz word. We see it everywhere – in job descriptions, in resumes, organizational websites, etc. and people almost instinctively pay attention to it. And rightfully so… it’s desirable to think of new ways of doing something, especially if it saves time, human effort, and money.

And yet, I often wonder if designing relevant and engaging professional learning for today’s early childhood educators is a matter of innovation, or rather a matter of focusing on the learner and what matters most to them.

The field of adult learning has provided some principles about how adults learn…and there have been research studies to confirm these. I like to think of these as conditions that we can create to center the needs of adult learners. Here’s a few of them:

• Give learners choice
• Respect learners and meet them where they are
• Show, don’t tell them
• Let learners practice
• Make it relevant

These conditions that support adult learning help us shift our focus from what we want (learning designers, subject matter experts, etc.), to what learners need. In my work at Start Early, we’re focusing on learner needs through centering equity using inclusive facilitation and offering microlearning.

The 2024 National Home Visiting Summit brought together advocates, home visitors, program leaders, funders, and researchers, alongside federal, state, and local level public sector system leaders for three days of learning, reflection, and action, both in person in Washington, D.C. and virtually with attendees joining from across the globe.

This year’s gathering spotlighted the tremendous progress public sector early childhood system leaders, particularly at the state level, have made to advance home visiting as part of an equitable, comprehensive early childhood system.

In breakout session presentations, small group discussions, and networking opportunities throughout the Summit, the four points below emerged as the key themes from system leaders regarding progress toward equitable early childhood systems:

1. Consolidation is not enough. There was energy and excitement about the lessons states are learning as they move towards consolidation of early childhood programs and funding streams into single, state agencies focused solely on early childhood. For example, state home visiting leaders shared promising practices around single statewide referral lines, and increasingly integrated funding streams. As more states consider consolidation, system leaders at the Summit asked attendees to consider how consolidation and integration are actually experienced by families and providers when they interact with public systems, and challenged leaders not to stop with integration at the top.
2. Look for “catalyst” funding opportunities. In a session about the Preschool Development Grants for Birth-Five (PDGB5) , state leaders reflected on approaching the funding opportunity with the question of “what can PDGB5 do for us, versus ‘how do we meet the requirements?” The Summit offered numerous examples of system leaders looking at federal, state, and increasingly philanthropic funding sources as catalysts – not carrying the full weight of system infrastructure but inspiring progress.
3. Communities are key. State system leaders are increasingly operationalizing infrastructure at a state level with reverence, respect, and leadership from the unique needs of individual communities. Home visiting programs, with their connection to community infrastructure, offer a unique opportunity for child care, preschool, and other early childhood programs and funding streams to leverage the existing relationships and networks of home visitors.
4. The Home Visiting Work Force is a part of the Early Childhood Education Workforce. Chronic staffing shortages, low wages, high turnover rates, and a feeling of lack of respect for the child care workforce have been well publicized in the media, but these issues are also being felt across the home visiting workforce. While it might sound obvious to those in the field, system leaders are increasingly implementing cross sector approaches to recruit, support, and retain the early childhood workforce, inclusive of those in the home visiting sector. These comprehensive strategies to lift all the professionals who support young children and their families send a message of value to all those in the field, while also attacking the structural impediments to an effective workforce.

How can you bring these takeaways into your state’s system? Mark your calendars for February 12-14, 2025, for the 2025 National Home Visiting Summit! We hope you will join us in person at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, D.C. for more peer learning on these topics.

The month of December is often referenced as the most wonderful time of year, and I have always taken advantage of this time to personally reflect and think about the successes and challenges over the past 12 months. 2023 has been a tumultuous year for me as I personally experienced the best and worst that our profession has to offer, getting caught in the crossfires of a book ban aimed at dismantling the foundation of the early learning profession. My experience has strengthened my resolve that we must invest in young children and the workforce that serves them by providing holistic, high quality early learning environments.

I am frequently asked how the so-called “culture wars” impact early childhood education. I begin these conversations praising our early childhood workforce for their resilience and commitment to early learning. We show up every day to serve children and families despite what’s happening around us. We hug babies and toddlers and offer support for families when our own world is crumbling due to the lack of infrastructure to fund our profession and support our work to create inclusive early childhood systems.

We cannot continue to ask more and more of our workforce while our country continues to devalue and disrespect our early educators.

• Early childhood workforce turnover is as high as 40% ¹
• Average wages are $11-15/hour, with early educator poverty rates 8X that of K-12 educators. The federal poverty line for a family of 4 is $30,000. A typical early educator earning the average hourly wage would come in around $26,000 annually ²
• Professionals are deeply stressed, with depression rates 13% higher than the national average ³

These statistics are compounded when we consider that our workforce is comprised primarily of women – particularly women of color.

Recently, we have seen yet another wave of oppressive legislation and public attacks, including doing away with loan forgiveness and affirmative action, striking the right to abortion, and demonizing and limiting the use of words and practices around diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.

All of these efforts silence, scare and limit our efforts to foster a diverse and effective workforce that provides high quality early learning experiences for children and families. How can we be okay with policies and practices that discriminate against children and families while disregarding their culture and diversity?

Attacking Early Childhood Quality

On a personal note, for 5 years I led in a state where we heralded pre-k as a bi-partisan policy effort and as a result we had a pre-k program that was number 1 in reaching NIEER (National Institute for Early Education Research) quality for 17 years in a row. For DAP (Developmentally Appropriate Practice) to be under attack now is unconscionable as DAP was always the foundation for quality in our classrooms.

Terms including “culturally responsive,” “social-emotional learning,” “implicit bias,” and “diversity” are being censured. When states change competencies, dismantle standards and professional learning to remove these words, it prevents our workforce from receiving the support they need to employ best practices that are critical for children’s development. An urgent example is the crisis we are experiencing around harsh discipline practices that disproportionately affect black children. We must teach culturally responsive, anti-racist, and anti-bias pedagogy to address this.

Silencing and Restricting Workforce Rights

We have a staffing crisis and desperately need qualified, prepared teachers and staff. Striking down Affirmative Action and Loan Forgiveness programs shuts down essential educational support for staff.

When our professionals can’t access the healthcare they need for themselves and their families because of losing Reproductive Rights, it jeopardizes well-being.

“Color Blind” lawsuits threaten specific programs and interventions for Black, LatinX, and indigenous children and families who make up both our workforce and classroom populations. We see gaps in rights, quality of life, and wealth growing even bigger from this discrimination and racism. The workforce, and the children and families we serve, are from diverse backgrounds and we cannot serve them effectively when we employ strategies that force us to ignore the complexities of race, culture and ethnicity.

A question I keep hearing is, “How can we remain hopeful and enable a brighter future for our professionals, families and children?” My response is that there is no living and no better tomorrow without hope. Hope allows us to return each day knowing that we are making a difference and putting the needs of others first.

At Start Early our mission is to eliminate the opportunity gap so that all children can thrive and learn. We are focused on four areas of action:

1. Career Pathways. We must create accessible and affordable pathways to support our workforce in getting the credentials and knowledge they need to earn higher wages.
2. Professional Learning. We need powerful, rich onboarding to support new staff. We must improve workplace culture and climate to be inclusive and supportive. And we need to foster ongoing learning to increase educator effectiveness and confidence – and improve retention.
3. Engage Congress & Lawmakers. We must raise awareness about the science behind early childhood and demand support for early learning as the economic plan for improving our country and preparing tomorrow’s leaders.
4. Support Each Other. And equally important, we can create space to slow down and be intentional about supportive environments in our programs and classrooms. We can embrace rest, joy, relationships, and connections. This is what will help us cultivate resiliency and hope as we face these historic challenges to our workforce.

“Culture Wars” are a call to action for us all. As we prepare to end one year and start a new one, we must ensure that the early learning workforce has the support necessary to build strong relationships with children and families that last a lifetime. Our educators must not be forced to work in fear of retaliation for using strategies that optimize early learning spaces. It is up to each of us to do our part to tackle these issues with those in power. We must arm ourselves with knowledge and engage our communities and local coalitions to spread the word about why the work we are doing for our youngest citizens matters. We must demand for every child what we expect for our own young children.

Sources
¹Turnover: Ed Surge; OPRE; Yale Medicine 
² Hourly Wage Average & Rate of Poverty: 2020 Early Educator Workforce Index; Alabama 
³Depression: Children’s Equity Project, Mental Health Report

Overview of Head Start

Head Start is a federally funded program founded in 1965 with the mission of promoting the school readiness of young children from low-income families by enhancing their cognitive, social, and emotional development. This blog focuses primarily on Head Start programs, which provide preschool services and support to children ages three through five and their families, rather than Early Head Start, which supports pregnant people and families with children under age three. However, the challenges outlined here are applicable to Early Head Start as well. The focus on Head Start here is because that is where the majority of resources are currently dedicated.

Head Start programs are free for families who are eligible, which include:

• Families who are at or below 100 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL)
• Families receiving public assistance such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)
• Families experiencing homelessness
• Children in foster care
• Children with disabilities

With the child at the center of their approach, Head Start programs provide services in three key areas: early learning and development, family engagement and wellbeing, and health and wellness. There are also Head Start programs that provide services tailored to specific populations. American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) Head Start programs serve children of AIAN heritage and offer traditional language and cultural practices that honor their rich heritage. Migrant and Seasonal Head Start programs provide services to families who are in agricultural labor and have changed their residence within two years or who are engaged in seasonal agricultural labor.

Head Start operates using a federal-to-local funding model. Head Start grantees include local school districts, nonprofit and for-profit groups, faith-based organizations, and tribal councils. Thus, Head Start can be provided in a variety of settings, including child care and development centers, schools, and family child care homes (Office of Head Start, 2022).

Access to Head Start

Close to one million children access Head Start and Early Head Start each year, yet many families cannot access the program due to a range of systemic and programmatic barriers. In 2021, the National Head Start Association conducted a survey, focus groups and key informant interviews that identified key issues that make participating in the program difficult for families – access to transportation, outdated locations, the instability of poverty, low income eligibility limits, inadequate hours of service for families, the workforce crisis, lack of awareness of the program’s comprehensive services, and a possible bias for school-based services.

Perhaps the greatest systemic barrier to accessing Head Start is the income eligibility limits. Income eligibility is based on the federal poverty guidelines. The United States’ method for determining the poverty level is incredibly outdated. The calculation does not consider housing, transportation, child care, or medical costs. Geographical differences are also not considered, even though costs of living vary significantly across the country. Another systemic barrier is transportation, with low income families disproportionately having limited or no access to personal or public transportation.

Head Start programs are required to conduct annual family and five-year community assessments to determine whether slots are distributed in the most appropriate locations, whether the hours of service are meeting families’ needs, and a variety of other topics. These assessments are then used by the program staff and the Policy Council to determine how best to implement the program. However, making significant changes such as changing the location of a center or increasing the hours of service can be costly, require a great deal of time, and be difficult to implement.

Conclusion

Head Start has a deep history providing two generational programming for very low income families. The standards have been reviewed and revised over the 60 years of implementation, based on research as well as parent, community, and grantee feedback. The power of Head Start is not only in its comprehensiveness but also in the inclusion of family leaders in governance and implementation of the program. In addition to being a child development program, Head Start is also an economic empowerment program, providing training and jobs for parents.

The funding per child for Head Start grantees, though significantly more than the average per child reimbursement for state pre-k, is directly related to the depth of the standards. It is important to note that as a national program, many of the regulations, funding and eligibility principles are averaged across all the states and territories. This can create significant implementation challenges for states and communities with high costs of living particularly regarding staff compensation, facilities, and enrolling income-eligible families. These challenges can lead to under enrollment and missed opportunities for collaboration in mixed delivery pre-k, leaving many families without the opportunity and supports needed as they strive to provide their children with a foundation for future social and academic success.

Federal policy solutions to these problems included allowing grantees to convert Head Start slots to Early Head Start slots with supports for the cost increases and allowing for automatic eligibility for families that already quality for SNAP and housing assistance. States can consider providing funding for Head Start and Early Head Start programming with higher income eligibility requirements that are more fitting for their state and community context.

Children have many big emotions! Preschoolers are learning to name and manage them. They are also learning friendship and other social skills. And sometimes, their behaviors are challenging. Many behaviors are appropriate for a child’s stage of development yet are found challenging by adults. This may be one of the biggest pain points for educators in early childhood. We’re taking a new approach to support educators who want to build positive social skills and decrease challenging behaviors in their classroom – Reflectable SEL.

In early childhood, we have always focused on social and emotional learning. We know that high quality social and emotional skills are linked to all other areas of children’s learning and critical to their success; skills like empathy, regulating behaviors and emotions, and problem solving. It can be challenging to supply the support preschoolers need to develop these important skills.

Every Pre-K teacher that I have met is deeply invested in the growth of their students. They want to send children to kindergarten ready to succeed in school and in life.

How Early Childhood Teachers are Feeling Today

At this moment, teachers are worried about the state of children’s social and emotional growth. There is an increasing number of challenging behaviors in the classroom that they must deal with, like emotional dysregulation, difficulty building relationships, or coping with change in routine. These challenges affect the mental health of both teachers and children in ways we haven’t seen before.

The recent pandemic highlighted the vital role early childhood teachers play in families’ success and how under supported they are. We know educators experience high levels of stress—and when they are stressed, children show more challenging behaviors. And the cycle of worry, frustration, anger, and dysregulation repeats.

In a recent visit to a child development center, I asked teachers, “What do you need to help children grow and learn skills like empathy, sharing, friendship skills and regulating their emotions?” Their answers:

1. We need support that is focused and specific to the work we are doing.
2. We need support that helps us respond to challenging behaviors in the moment during our daily work.

There are many valuable frameworks, curricula, and learning models for promoting growth and preventing challenging behaviors. Their use creates lasting and positive effects on children. But it is hard to apply frameworks, curricula, and special resources to guide a teacher’s practice day to day in real time.

Applying a Human-Centered Approach to Problems of Practice

At the Early Learning Lab – where we combine human-centered design and early childhood expertise with data and technology – we asked: How might we help practitioners quickly recall the strategies they learn in training to make it easier to use them with children? How might we provide easy mindfulness supports?

To answer these questions, we used a discovery process to create a new tool and bring it to teachers to get their ideas and input. These pilot teachers helped us make the experience one that would be helpful to them. With guidance from these educators, we built the first Reflectable tool to supply focused and specific bite sized actions in simple and easy to apply language. This put the power in the teachers’ hands. They were able to reflect on the topics that mattered most to them. This made it easier for teachers to practice the skills they learned during training in a way that made sense for their unique needs. In turn, this helped educators make quick choices for how to best care for children when challenging behaviors appear.

“I didn’t realize I had the power to really change things!” – Pilot Pre-k Teacher

After using this simple, new tool to reflect on practice and set weekly goals, teachers said they:

• felt valued as experts for the work they were doing
• could thoughtfully make choices that help children’s growth
• made meaningful mindset shifts for themselves
• experienced less stress themselves and saw fewer challenging behaviors among children

A New Tool to Support Reflective Practice

The result of testing and refining this tool is Reflectable® and its Social Emotional Learning content module. Reflectable’s online, guided 10-minute weekly reflection, helps educators see the power of taking small, intentional steps. These steps improve their social emotional learning practice in the areas they decide matter most and positively impact children.

Reflectable is a helpful pause for educators to take time for themselves and give children the attention and support they deserve. In turn, this boosts outcomes, morale, self-efficacy, and job satisfaction.

It’s time to rethink support tools for the early learning workforce. They are a precious resource, and their job is tough. The early learning workforce deserve to be heard and valued so they can listen to and value the children in their care.