Page 39 - Gateways for Early Educators

Gateways for Early Educators
Feedback provided by participants during focus group sessions corroborated early childhood educators’ responses on the Coaching Experience Survey. The CCRC Research Department contracted with Laura Valles and Associates, Inc. (LVA) to co-design the discussion group process, conduct the discussion groups, and prepare the final report. Focus groups were conducted with participant from each of the R&R agencies between October 2015 and February 2016. In summary, Gateways coaching participants indicated a high level of satisfaction with the program, saw transformational effects in themselves and saw benefits in the children they serve. Participants described program design as effective and invaluable and identified barriers and challenges (outside of the Gateways Program) they face as early childhood educators. Successes in the program included:
 Transformational effect: Participants experienced change at the personal level, including shifts in their world view, changes at the professional level, including educational and business development.
 Benefits to the children: Participants described assistance they received in improving the learning environment and the benefits those changes had on the children they served. The participating early childhood educators saw improvement in language abilities resulting from the providers’ increased capacity to identify children’s needs and offer enriched adult-child interactions, increased knowledge about physical and developmental milestones as a result of coaching support they received, being more in tune with children’s emotional well-being as a result of learning to use screening and diagnostic tools, and an increased capacity to create calmer environments for children as a result of structures, routines, and behavior management techniques introduced by the coaches.
 Positive experience in coaching: Coaching built relationships with the participants and had strong interpersonal skills vital to the role of effective coaches. Coaches implemented successful strategies including modeling, direct instruction and guidance, hands-on assistance and provision of information and tailored the service to participants’ needs.
The greatest challenge ECE professionals reported in meeting their goals was time. See Table 13. This has been corroborated year after year by both the coaches and the participants. Out of participants who provided responses to a question about challenges they faced in meeting their goals in the Coaching Experience Survey, the most frequently cited barrier was lack of time. Participants indicated that other obligations such as work or school made it difficult to schedule coaching sessions or attend trainings. Other participants indicated that the goal itself was the challenge. That is, some of the barriers they experienced included having insufficient skills to complete a certain goal (such as English or computer skills) or not yet having the units to achieve a permit. Results from a closed ended question that asked participants to indicate why they left the Gateways program if they exited before the sun setting of the program also indicated that work or school interfered with participants’ ability to continue receiving
2016
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