NEWSLETTER
It is that time of the year that apparently everyone has the summary, and many people are accustomed with a cold, the flu or some other unpleasant affliction.
While the absences of staff are rarely perfect in any environment, in K-12 schools, there is at least one system designed to support such occurrences. Public school districts have a reserve of substitute teachers that can take advantage of when diseases extend and the staff begins to call.
In early care and education, on the other hand, there is no such infrastructure. And that reality affects program operations throughout the year, not only during the cold and flu season.
As teachers' shortage has become more severe In early learning The configuration from the pandemic, the previous solutions for personnel holes have become less reliable. The programs, for the most part, simply do not have the type of personnel shock absorber they once had, and as a result, there is little margin of error if someone gets sick or injured, much less wants to take a vacation.
Most professionals have access to illness and another paid free time; They are also trained to take that license when they need it. It is not so in early care and education, says Lauren Hogan, strategic advisor of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), a non -profit organization that advocates on behalf of the teachers and the staff of the staff of the staff of the Early childhood.
“We do not allow that kind of support to educators who, frankly, spend all their time with small germs factories that are constantly putting themselves to all other patients,” says Hogan.
“It is a physical, emotionally and psychologically demanding work, and we do not provide respite, from a system or level of policy, for this,” he adds. Early childhood educators “present what they can see another day.”
CAMPLING WITHOUT SUB
In the absence of a better support plan when the staff fails to work, many early learning programs are forced to be “intelligent and heartless” about their solutions, says Jason Moss, head of new government initiatives in Wonderschool, a solution provider of child care that I have been operating a substitute education group in Mississippi for more than a year.
“It's a fight,” he says, “and it's painful.”
Numerous educators and early childhood suppliers have personal stories that color this dynamic.
Kelly Dawn Jones, a child care provider in the home in Indian Program for the moment is or hires someone to replace it. Neither of them was financially feasible to Jones, who barely earned enough business money to pay.
Nancy Sylvester, executive director of an Early Childhood program at the center in Jackson, Mississippi, has had the members of the Board of the Center, colleagues congregants of the Church and her own relatives, including her husband and her adult son, they receive footprints digital and submit to background verifications so that they are able to replace absent staff when they were in a attec.
“It's very sad,” says Sylvester. “You see a point where you only need a warm body to make sure the children are safe.”
Nicole Lazarte, now a specialist in Naeyc policy and defense communications, recently worked as a child teacher in a center of early childhood in northern Virginia. She says that, during her time as a classroom teacher there, she underwent surgery and returned to work in a few days, without wanting to leave her colleagues in the stake.
“You don't even expect someone to complete,” she says. Every day he did not appear, he knew he was asking the staff already overcome to assume more than they could handle.
Before the pandemic, says Lazarte, his program had 10 to 15 teachers in staff who were “floats”, which means that they moved among children's, small and preschool classes, as necessary, to help maintain the proportions of adults / children required by the state regulations of licenses. These teachers also isolated the program of interruption of the absences of the staff. If someone in a preschool classroom had to miss a work day, a float could replace them in that classroom all day.
However, from the pandemic, and the shortage of personnel that has affected the field since then, those floats were hired to fill the vacancies of class teachers. And there were not enough people interested in the work in early childhood to replace the floats.
“That is why we are seeing the shortage (of personnel). That is why we are seeing such a high level of exhaustion, ”he says. Eventually, “you have to go for your own personal well -being. Not because you want, but because your body is affecting. Your mental health is affecting. “
The three women mentioned the “warm body” problem. Without qualified and trained teachers to intervene and work with children, many programs will reach any adult who has approved a background verification, just so they can maintain proportions and maintain open classrooms.
“I don't want to hire a warm body,” says Jones in Indiana. “I want someone who can talk to (children), interact with them, joke with them, build relationships with them.”
That feeling is shared by almost all in the field, so many educators are appearing to work even on days that should probably have stayed at home.
“It connects to the lack of general respect we see for early childhood educators,” says Hogan de Naeyc. “As yes, a warm body is everything a child really needs to make their parents go to work.”
Solving the submontor
Of all the intractable challenges that face the field of early care and education, this is not one.
“I think it can be solved,” says Erica Phillips, executive director of the National Family Child Care Association (NAFCC). “Yeah.”
But the question is not just about creating a group of substitute teachers as the K-12 school districts do, he adds. The real challenge is to find and examine teachers to fill that pool.
In an environment in which full -time early childhood teachers are already a scarce resource, it would be equally or more difficult to find people with appropriate training and experience to make unique teaching changes with inconsistent salaries, he says.
Even so, some efforts are being made.
A series of Subprodes They have arisen from the suppliers that come together to try to solve the problem by themselves. Phillips knows about Subpols in Arkansas and Indiana, where this is the case.
In the rural areas of New Hampshire and Vermont, a new professional development program for early childhood educators in the region is trying to solve the twin demands of short -term submarines and long -term teachers at the same time.
The Association of Early Care and Education of the region (ECE) had heard of teachers in some of the 130 early learning programs in their network that they desperately needed submarine. They said, according to Amy Brooks, executive director of the group, “we cannot do more meditation and full attention. We do not need a workshop. We need a day off. ”
“They have pto that they can't use,” says Brooks, “because it would close a classroom.”
ECEA launched the race racing program to help build a pipe of future early childhood educators. In the course of 10 weeks (which will soon be 12), participants go through all the required health and safety training and research research, take university courses and then register for the subgroup, where they must work at least one shift of Eight hours per shifts. Before completing the program.
Many professional cultivators participants work many more shifts than that.
In the last year and a half, they have filled 325 jobs, says Katie Hopps, who manages the program and software for the Sub pool of ECE. That is only around a quarter of the works that have been listed requesting help, he acknowledges: “We could definitely use more subs”, but it is still an achievement, since the program has only graduated 35 people to date.
The Sub pool of EVESA, by design, sees the subs cycling outside the program, since they are finally hired full time in early childhood environments. But that pipe is routinely replaced, says Brooks, which she knew it was essential.
“Just creating a pool does nothing,” says Brooks. “You have to feed it.”
One of the characteristics that has made the program successful, he says, is to ensure that programs in the ECEA network agree an established salary ($ 15.50 per hour) to pay the subs. That allows the “great corporate programs,” as Brooks said, compete with the “small church base programs.”
Wonderschool, the provider of child care solutions, launched Submachine In the autumn of 2023, after listening to the leaders of Mississippi, that the more than 1,000 suppliers of the early childhood of the State faced a sharp shortage of substitute teachers.
It has become one of the largest early childhood subcolds in the country, says Moss de Wonderschool. Since the initiative began, Wonderschool has had more than 10,000 people who request to be substitutes in Mississippi; Around 450 people are active submarines in the system today. In the first 14 months, they had seen 5,800 jobs worked, equivalent to approximately 40,000 hours.
Sylvester, Jackson's supplier, has been using the Wonderschool subpool since it was launched.
“As soon as I heard about that, I was ready,” she says. “I knew how desperately I needed help.”
From the pandemic, says Sylvester, the staff had been difficult to find and the substitutes were almost “impossible” to find. “It was a real problem.”
There are times when Sylvester needs three or four subs in a single day. Subpool has satisfied that need, she says.
When Sylvester needs an underwater, he publishes a list of work on the platform, providing details such as what age group the submarine will work and how many days are needed.
“As soon as I publish it,” says Sylvester, “I can listen to my phone: 'Bó, whistle, beep, beep, whistle'. I have 10 people immediately.”
(The subs, meanwhile, establish a geographical radio in their account, indicating how far they are willing to travel through jobs).
Sylvester can opt for the automatic acceptance of the first person to claim the work, or can happen and see who has said they are available. Usually, he does the latter, and if he recognizes the name of someone with whom he already worked and had a good experience, he will choose them.
Moss explains that any submarine used by the platform has already been selected and full of Wonders Chool schooling. Wonderschool follows the requirements of the State for the substitute qualifications of the teachers.
Moss adds people who use Subpool tend to fall into one of the four categories. They are university students or recent university graduates interested in early care and education. They are educaters removed from early childhood with flexibility to collect odd shifts here and there. They are mothers who stay at home whose children are at school. Or they are someone looking for a second job with a schedule that I can choose.
The Mississippi pilot has gone so well, says Moss, that Wonderschool is now talking with a “number of states” who want to take the program to their early childhood programs.
“I think we will be quite busy,” he says.
