A typical career path in early care and education might look like this: start as an assistant teacher in a classroom, eventually gain the experience to advance to lead teacher, and, if ambitious and capable, one day become an assistant principal. director or even owner of a program.
On paper, it seems reasonable. Each role, over time, prepares the educator to take on the next, right?
Not necessarily. Because while a classroom teacher's primary responsibilities involve educating and caring for young children, that job often changes dramatically at the next level (the leadership level) to managing staff and operating a small business.
“You train to be an early childhood educator,” says Anne Banks, learning programs manager for the Community College System of New Hampshire, which oversees three learning pathways in early childhood education. “Just because you know how to work with kids doesn't mean you know how to run a business to work with kids.”
That creates a huge gap between classroom-level roles in early childhood education and leadership roles. It is often so discouraging that many educators don't bother moving up. And those who do, many find themselves ill-prepared; some will leave, creating “this churn, this constant turnover of principals,” explains Jen Legere, owner and principal of A Place to Grow, an early learning program franchise, and architect of the new apprenticeship program at director level for early childhood educators in New Hampshire.
In recent years, registered apprenticeship programs have seen a boom in early care and education, as EdSurge reported last year, and most states now offer a version of this long-standing workforce development pathway. data. Those programs primarily serve people who lack knowledge and experience working with young children and want to improve their skills quickly, qualifying them for higher-status, better-paying classroom teaching positions.
However, within that growing trend, there is another smaller movement that is gaining traction: three states so far (Kentucky, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire) now also offer apprenticeship programs tailored to emerging leaders in early care and education.
These director-level apprenticeship programs reflect the recognition that many aspiring early childhood leaders (and, frankly, several existing ones) feel unprepared to manage the myriad responsibilities of the job and need additional skills and training to close the gap.
Binal Patel, program director at Neighborhood Villages, a Boston-based nonprofit that operates two learning tracks for early childhood educators in Massachusetts, including one for entry-level educators and another for principals and other future leaders in the field, says her own experience as a director of early childhood programs would have benefited from the type of hands-on training this new type of learning provides.
“Even if you can take the course, even if you think you have theoretical and theoretical knowledge, man, it's a lot different when you have that first staff meeting or that first difficult conversation with a staff member, or that first difficult conversation with a staff member. conversation with a family, or you're balancing budgets and your auditor comes and asks you very specific questions about finances,” Patel says. “So we really wanted to create a lot of training to support principals or any administrator in that role.”
The business side of early education
Kentucky was the first state to launch a director-level apprenticeship program, back in the spring of 2022. Today it is one of four levels of learning available to early childhood educators there.
In 2019, Brenda Hagan, then a preschool program owner who had been hired as a learning coordinator for the Kentucky Governor's Office of Early Childhood, sent a survey to early childhood program leaders to gauge their interest in learning.
About 70 percent, Hagan recalls, expressed interest in a learning path for principals and other leaders in the field.
What currently exists in most states is a director-level certification that many consider to be lacking. In Massachusetts, for example, eligibility Principal certification includes lead teacher certification, plus an additional six months of work experience and completion of a child care administration course.
What those certifications typically miss, state leaders say, and what early childhood educators want and need, is business training.
“If I only had a director's credential, I wouldn't know how to run a program,” admits Hagan, the chief architect of Kentucky's early childhood education learning programs. Over time, the stress of that skills gap leads many early childhood education directors to burn out and quit, she adds, destabilizing programs as they struggle to fill vacant leadership positions. “It's not enough to have another director around.”
The principal-level apprenticeship program in Kentucky sought to include what was missing from that credential, Hagan notes. This includes business training, but also compliance (such as licensing ratios for each age group), participation in state and federal government programs (such as federal food program and the state subsidy program), employee commitment and family commitment. The program takes an average of two years to complete, with 288 hours required”related technical instruction”and 4,000 hours of on-the-job learning.
The learning path in Massachusetts, which launched in early 2023 after leaders there were inspired by what Kentucky was creating, has a similar goal.
In addition to the child care management course required for the state director credential, Neighborhood Villages added leadership development training focused on, among other things, staff relations, instructional leadership training focused on curriculum and instruction, business training covering budgeting. , financial and pension systems, and training on family participation. Apprentices typically take 15 to 18 months to graduate, Patel says, based on the 150 hours of technical training and 2,000 hours of on-the-job learning required.
Since the apprenticeship first launched in Massachusetts, Neighborhood Villages leaders have adapted programming based on feedback from graduates. Recently, trainees have requested more training on human resources policies and support for educators managing children's mental and behavioral health needs, Patel shares. They are exploring whether and how to incorporate those topics into the learning experience.
In addition to the practical knowledge that trainees gain, many also highly value the mentorship that comes with participating in the program.
That was the most helpful part of the experience for Jess Jarvis, who graduated from the first cohort of the Early Childhood Emerging Leaders apprenticeship with Neighborhood Villages in February 2024. (That cohort, with 32 eventual graduates, was largely made up of measured by current early childhood students). program directors, Patel notes, who felt they needed more training and mentoring to be successful in the roles they already held).
Jarvis entered the program as a lead teacher in a preschool classroom at a Boston-based early childhood center. During her apprenticeship, she was promoted to Head of Teaching and Learning at her school, where she now spends most of her time supporting teachers and children.
The apprenticeship, and later the promotion it led to, came with multiple pay increases for Jarvis, which was very attractive to her. She also appreciated meeting other early childhood educators in her city and state; The trainees in his cohort met regularly over Zoom and then met in person at graduation, he says. But her biggest learnings came from her mentor, who helped her, for example, understand the role of trust in effective communication with staff.
“That piece,” he says of the mentorship, “helped maintain sanity and momentum.”
A new path for advancement
Kentucky and Massachusetts are now in various cohorts in their principal-level learning pathways. In New Hampshire, the work is just beginning.
The first two states were able to obtain approval for their programs through state learning agencies. In New Hampshire, where apprenticeship programs receive federal funding, they must be approved through the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Apprenticeship.
That created some additional obstacles for people in New Hampshire who wanted this path to come to fruition in the Granite State, particularly Legere, the program director and landowner who spearheaded the effort.
Legere wanted to create opportunities for his own staff to grow and advance their careers, eventually preparing them to own and operate their own early learning programs. She was interested in bringing a director-level apprenticeship program to New Hampshire.
Working alongside a team at Apprenticeship NH, a job training program at the Community College System of New Hampshire, she applied for a new position (early childhood operations manager) approved by the U.S. Department of Labor as an apprentice occupation. . Last summer, it passed, paving the way for not only New Hampshire but all other states to create early childhood learning programs at the director level.
It's still early, but Massachusetts leaders have already seen the impact to offer this leadership path to early childhood educators.
Some graduates of the Emerging Leaders Apprenticeship have become principals, while others have taken on other administrative roles or taken on more responsibilities in their teaching positions, Patel says.
“We're really interested in not only what happens after they graduate, but also what happens six months later,” he says. “We've seen really high retention numbers in the field, continued increases in their salaries. …The response has been very positive.”
