Bridging the Birth to 3rd Grade Workforce: Early Care and Education at the Crossroads of Transformation, by Jacqueline Jones

This session is sponsored by Nemours Bright Start!

We’ve done it! We’ve raised awareness about the importance of high quality early care and education. But, there is continued discussion regarding who should be implementing programs for children from birth through 3rd grade. Who is an early childhood professional? What entity should decide individual and institutional certification? Who owns the profession? This session, presented by Dr. Jaqueline Jones, former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Early Learning in the US Department of Education, and now CEO of the Foundation for Child Development, will focus on the current status of the early care and education workforce across the birth to 3rd grade continuum and the challenges the field faces to develop a unified system of professional preparation and ongoing professional learning.

Emphasizing the findings of the recent National Academies report Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8: A Unifying Foundation, the webinar will discuss new information on early development that formed the basis of the committee’s recommendations for the competencies needed by lead teachers for children birth to age 8. There will also be discussion of the challenge to the early childhood field to come together to carefully review the report’s recommendations and define a nationally agreed upon set of competences that define what lead teachers of children from birth to age 8 should know and be able to do. The presenter will argue that this is a task that should be owned by the field rather than by local, state or federal government.

All sessions are 1.5 hours long, and include a brief announcement from our sponsor. 2:oo PM – 3:30 PM Eastern Time. Can’t participate in our webinars at the appointed time? Never fear! All of the webinars are recorded. To view the recording, simply register now and you will receive an email with a link to the recording when it is ready to be viewed. You can still download the certificate by watching the recording to the end when the certificate link is announced and displayed on the screen. *Please be advised that you will only be eligible for the great door prizes if you participate in the live session. See the schedule of upcoming webinars.