Piloting Teaching and Learning Supports that are Critical to a Functioning Child Care System

It’s well-established that the first three years of a child’s life are a time of rapid and critical development in all domains. During this time, young children develop neurologically and physically, and establish patterns of attachment that set the stage for life-long relationships. Early childhood programs can play a powerful role in supporting infants and toddlers as they develop physically, emotionally, socially, and cognitively. 

But despite the critical role it plays, early childhood education (ECE) has long been undervalued in the United States and, as a result, the sector has been starved of the resources it needs to provide quality programming at affordable rates to families. In addition to lack of funding, lack of public infrastructure and opportunities for cross-sector coordination is a pervasive challenge for ECE providers, essentially requiring most providers to operate as independent entities rather than as part of one comprehensive delivery system. The absence of systems infrastructure further exacerbates inefficiencies and inequities in the teaching and learning supports and standards available to providers across the ECE landscape.

Through our work at Neighborhood Villages, we’ve heard from many ECE providers that there is a major gap when it comes to professional development opportunities for educators, access to coaching or technical assistance to inform classroom quality, and access to high-quality, developmentally appropriate curricula for children 0-5.

To fill this unmet need, Neighborhood Villages set out to create a comprehensive menu of ECE teaching and learning supports, including a strengths-based, educator focused coaching model, professional development workshops and webinars, and a monthly newsletter highlighting best practices and wonderful work already happening. In partnership with Boston Public Schools and the LEGO Foundation, our team is also developing a new toddler curriculum resource and accompanying coaching model to support high-quality teaching practices.

We provide these supports to The Neighborhood, a network of five early learning centers in Boston with which we pilot and test innovative programs designed to transform the ECE delivery system.

“What Neighborhood Villages is doing with our Teaching and Learning team is creating a model of what high quality instructional support would and should look like when wrapped around a program and what they already offer,” says Binal Patel, Chief Program Officer at Neighborhood Villages. “It's not meant to replace the amazing work that programs already do, but rather to enhance and support it with capacity and a systems level approach. It is a menu of supports for programs and educators to choose from customized to their needs. Those supports are always responsive and iterative as the needs of educators and children change and evolve.”

Our menu of teaching and learning supports includes:

Monthly Webinars

Neighborhood Villages offers monthly professional learning sessions for early educators, free and open to the public. These interactive webinars focus on topics relevant to teaching young children ages 0-5, chosen directly from feedback and ideas from participants and educators with whom we interact consistently.

Reflective Practice Workshops

This series of free monthly workshops is designed to provide new perspectives for early childhood educators, with topics that include Supporting Young Children’s Well-Being; Classroom Environments and Materials; Facilitating Play; Collaboration and Teamwork; Observing and Documenting Learning; and Curriculum for Young Children. As the ECE sector struggles with an acute workforce crisis, many first-time teachers are entering classrooms with limited experience or knowledge of the field. We use these workshops to help pool resources and expertise across programs, enabling us to better support new and experienced educators alike.

Responsive Supports

In addition, throughout the year, Neighborhood Villages provides workshops and other supports to meet the specific, immediate needs of individual programs. For example, one program may need something on “Challenging Behaviors” in October and another may request something on “Observation and Assessment” in February. Our Teaching and Learning team has the capacity to meet those needs and provide such trainings on demand and at no cost to the program. To further understand the needs of the programs we serve, each month we also hold a “Community of Practice” discussion with the leaders of all five Neighborhood partners. This provides space and time to discuss challenges and successes, and allows for partners to support each other and problem solve together.  

Voluntary Coaching

The Neighborhood Villages team offers coaching for ECE teachers, both one-on-one and with teams of educators. Coaches visit participating classrooms bi-weekly to observe and model interactions with children, then collaborate with educators to design action plans to build on their strengths and address areas for growth. Coaches support programs by identifying what is working well in classrooms to support the growth and development of both children and educators, and by co-constructing strategies to meet challenges. Coaches also provide consultation regarding other aspects of teaching, such as curriculum, room arrangement, and engaging families. The goal of coaching is to assist educators in seeing the amazing impact they have on young children every day through their intentional teaching practices and interactions. This work is grounded in the relationship forged between the coach and educators.  

Karen Peterkin, a Toddler Curriculum Coach at Neighborhood Villages, describes this process and the importance of building a strong relationship with educators: “First, I go in and observe. I play with children, talk with the teachers, and make a connection with them so they are comfortable and see me as part of the team. This really is a collaborative process because I am not in the classroom every day to see their needs, so we make sure that we are really listening to educators about how we can best support them.”

New Early Education Curriculum

Lastly, Neighborhood Villages is partnering with the LEGO Foundation and Boston Public Schools (BPS) Department of Early Childhood to develop a first-of-its-kind play-based, vertically aligned curriculum for ECE settings.  The new curriculum will create continuity with the BPS “Focus on Early Learning” curricula and result in a new groundbreaking and integrated curriculum available to all children between 1-8 years old. Learn more about the curriculum here, and stay tuned for a new blog to follow along!

Through these teaching and learning supports, Neighborhood Villages recognizes the critical importance of supporting ECE educators and leaders within the field to promote positive outcomes for children and families.

“The supports we are offering to programs are so incredibly important because supervisors, directors, and other leaders have so much to manage that they often are not able to provide individualized, tailored support to individual, or teams of, educators to the extent they would like to, as they are pulled in a million directions,” says Pamela Thompson, Teaching and Learning Manager at Neighborhood Villages. “We are able to do that. We have the opportunity to just be focused on what we are hearing and provide responsive and iterative support in alignment with both what the educator has expressed as a need and what leadership has communicated as priorities for the entire program.”

For more information or to access these resources, click here.