Page 81 - Gateways for Early Educators

Gateways for Early Educators
into the Registry and to self-activate their profile. However, given the percent of early childhood educators still reticent to share their information with the Registry through the Gateways Program, it will be important to continue to make educational efforts in assuaging participants’ fears in making and activating a Registry account.
Conclusions, Recommendations, and Future Plans
The Gateways for Early Educators program had a very successful program year, surpassing many targets and goals and has served a diverse population of early childhood educators as part of the Los Angeles County Early Care and Education Workforce Consortium from 2011 to 2016. Program data reflect successful collaborations between Gateways and other entities such as the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, entities within the Consortium such as ASPIRE, Vistas, LACOCC-RTT and the California Early Care and Education Workforce Registry.
Training session evaluations showed that participants felt their knowledge of the training topic was improved. Furthermore, for coaching participants, training hours were related to participant knowledge or practice change possibly due to more intentionality in connecting coaching participants to trainings based on professional development and coaching goals and using coaching to extend knowledge participants gleaned from the trainings. As CCALA becomes a more integral partner in Quality Start Los Angeles (QSLA) and if resources are available, it is recommended that participant goals be reviewed and training topics developed based on those goals.
Computer literacy assessments were conducted and training sessions were designed based on the assessment results. Given that one of the greatest successes of these sessions was in helping participants create and activate their ECE Workforce Registry account, this is evidence that this can be a successful method for registry account creation and activation. Given that Spanish-speaking participants score lower on knowledge, this should be considered in future training session development. It is recommended that a more advanced computer and technology training module also be developed to benefit early childhood educators with a greater range of computer and technology skills given the potential role technology can play in program management, recording and management of child observations and connecting with families.
Coaching activities resulted in many successes. During 2015-2016, the Gateways Program coached 1,015 participants. Before a program can make an impact on its participants, the important activities must be in place. According to the literature there are many elements that are required for a coaching program to be successful. These were measured in a survey distributed to participants and include: building a relationship with the Coach, setting goals, modeling of positive behaviors and practices, assistance with finding professionals like the participant, assistance in meeting goals, and overall satisfaction with the Coach. Participants reported high levels of agreement that each of these key elements were true for them. However, LACOCC-RTT provided lower ratings in these aspects of coaching than participants not
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