FALL PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY

We had a great day on Friday, August 31, when all EFC employees gathered together for training. The kickoff was recognizing long term employees. This year there were 56 employees honored who have worked at EFC for 5 years or more. 36 of those people have worked for 10 years or more. We are so grateful for their commitment to early childhood education and the stability they create in our centers. Pictured below are 8 of the 11 employees who have worked at EFC between 26 and 38 years!!

The training topics of our day included a session on Strengthening Families led by Samantha Baker, the co-director of our Edinborough center. Samantha has her Master of Arts Degree in Early Childhood Education and has qualified as a Master Trainer for the Minnesota Early Childhood staff training system. Her presentation was thought-provoking as it gave us many opportunities to look at our own families of origin and reflect on how those experiences and values shape how we interact with the families we serve. It also gave us insight into the different ways families develop their unique family dynamics. Using a strength-based perspective, our job as teachers is to listen and try to understand your needs and support your child’s growth through the lens of your family’s values. We want to respond with a two-generational approach, taking into consideration the needs of parents and children at the same time rather than supporting parents and children in isolation from one another.

The second session employees attended was led by Nancy Hafner, an early childhood specialist. The infant and toddler staff explored a relationship-based approach to challenging behavior. After observing to try to understand the child’s behavior, Nancy gave us many concrete ideas for responding and specific ways to soothe infants and toddlers.

Nancy’s session for preschool staff was titled Understanding and Preventing Challenging Behaviors in Preschool Children. She emphasized the importance of reframing the way we look at challenging behaviors. She said to put aside any beliefs about the child trying to make adults angry. Instead, ask what it is that the child wants or needs that is resulting in this challenging behavior. An image she gave us was an iceberg where most of the iceberg is under the surface. After trying to understand the reason for the behavior, or what is beneath the surface, the challenge is to help the child obtain what he wants using acceptable behavior. Again, Nancy gave many practical suggestions that we can use in our classrooms as well as excellent resources for obtaining even more information as we encounter specific challenges in the future. One of our goals as an organization is to continuously provide evidenced-based resources and tools to our teaching staff on these and other topics to help them, and the children in their classrooms, thrive.

If you would like to check out some of the resources we learned about yourself, see the websites below: