Setting Early Childhood Education Career Goals
SPONSORED BLOG The task of sitting down and writing out all of your early childhood education career goals can feel daunting. Where should you start? How far in the future should you plan? And, once...
Published by CounciLINK on November 21, 2019
Children in Egypt have much in common with their counterparts in the U.S. They’re required to go to school and follow family rules. They like to eat at McDonald’s, watch TV and follow fashion trends. They also fare better in life when they get quality early childhood education. Children in Egypt who attend preschool are less likely to repeat a grade and drop out of school. They have higher test scores, as well as higher incomes as adults. And in 2018, the benefits of ECE inspired Dr. Hasan El Kalla, chancellor of Badr University Cairo (BUC), to partner with the Council for Professional Recognition to bring the Child Development Associate (CDA) credential to Egypt.
The credential plays a vital role in bringing equity to education in Egypt, where the number of children from birth to five years old is expected to grow by nearly a million per year over the next 10 years. As it looks ahead to this demographic boom, the government knows it must meet the need for more ECE, especially among families that are poor or live outside the cities. At the current time, there’s a serious shortage, as the data shows. Sixty-two percent of children who live in urban areas go to preschool while only 32 percent of their rural counterparts do. And 74 percent of wealthy children go to preschool compared to 20 percent of the poor.
An important part of expanding ECE is improving educators’ skills, and the partnership between the Council and BUC has provided a good start. Under the leadership of Dr. Muriel Baskerville, a former Professional Development Specialist™ from the U.S., a pilot program began in the summer of 2018 by training 28 teachers who completed the 10-week CDA course on the BUC campus. Since then the program has continued to grow throughout Egypt and expanded into Ghana in the summer of 2019. The program has now trained nearly 100 teachers, 11 of whom are credentialed. And this month Dr. Valora Washington and other Council executives will visit Cairo to join the El Kalla Foundation in marking the achievements of these first CDAs.
The program has also trained 14 PD Specialists, seven of whom are now active, and their services will be in growing demand because the CDA program is still expanding. In 2020, the program accepted 30 applicants in Egypt, and recruitment is already underway for winter 2020 training in Ghana. As CDA materials are translated into Arabic and put into digital form, the program should expand even faster and attract applicants who aren’t fluent in English. In short, the program has gone way past the goals Baskerville set out to meet when she first brought the CDA to Egypt.
“When I was hired,” she recalls, “one of my tasks was to improve ECE in the 26 schools Dr. Kalla has in Egypt. I could think of no better way than to equip teachers with the skills and competencies to work with young children. From my experience in the U.S., I knew the value of the CDA in professionalizing the early childhood field, so I suggested we partner with the Council in bringing the CDA to Egypt.”
There were challenges at first, Baskerville admits as she thinks back to the first group that received CDA training. “During the first two weeks, there were a lot of questions and genuine concerns by participants about their ability to go back to their classrooms and implement the skills and competencies they were gaining during the training. None of them had any background or training in early education prior to being employed as teachers of young children. Consequently, most, if not all, of the content of the classes was new to them.”
But Baskerville did everything she could to increase their comfort by adapting the credential to their country. “We’re contextualizing the CDA to the Egyptian culture and way of life,” she says. “It’s mostly Islamic and this has to be considered. So, for example, there are normally issues around gender and gender roles that we don’t introduce in Egypt. It’s hard to convince parents that boys should play with dolls and girls should play with trains. So, we expose CDA applicants to U.S. training, but we don’t try to promote it because of a lack of cultural or religious acceptance.”
Still, the stress on quality stays the same, and it helps that all the PD Specialists in the program receive CDA training. The purpose of the training, Baskerville explains, is to strengthen their ability to support candidates who are pursuing their CDA, better assess candidates’ skills in early childhood settings and explain the value of the CDA to educators and parents. The training has also helped PD Specialists feel more confident and competent, according to Nevin El-Sharkawi, a PD Specialist at Futures Nasr City, KG Girls, who has often conducted verification visits in Egypt.
“Working as a PD Specialist,” she explains, “has enhanced my coaching skills and expanded my experience in the child development field. I’ve become better at helping teachers manage their classrooms, apply daily routines and rules, and keep children healthy and safe. I’m also more adept at dealing with parents and getting them involved in their children’s education through open house meetings.”
El-Sharkawi has also seen early childhood settings in Egypt become “safer and friendlier places for children,” she says. “Our educators have improved the children’s literacy skills by having reading corners and show and tell projects. They have integrated different subjects in their lesson plans to expand the children’s knowledge. And most important of all, they’ve moved from teacher-centered learning to learning that centers on children.”
Child-centered learning is now the gold standard of early childhood education in the United States. It’s an approach that focuses on children’s needs and a foundation of the CDA program. It also appeals to educators in Egypt, as candidates say when they talk about the CDA. “I learned more about preschoolers and their social and emotional needs. I recognized many things I didn’t work on before,” one said. Another loved the program so much that she thought “there should be more opportunities for every teacher to take this course.”
And yet another explained exactly why the course worked so well: “It’s amazing; no exams only continuous assessments, teaching children to be creative problem solvers and masters in their native language so they can easily learn a second language. The lessons are based on children’s seven domains of development and emphasize understanding and having fun.”
The CDA gives teachers the competence to bring out children’s best, as these testimonials show. The value of the credential crosses countries and cultures because children do have much in common whether they live in Egypt or the U.S. They learn best through quality early childhood education based on problem solving and play. To learn more the CDA program in Egypt, visit BUC.
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Vice President of People and Culture
Janie Payne is the Vice President of People and Culture for the Council for Professional Recognition. Janie is responsible for envisioning, developing, and executing initiatives that strategically manage talent and culture to align people strategies with the overarching business vision of the Council. Janie is responsible for driving organizational excellence through strategic talent practices, orchestrating workforce planning, talent acquisition, performance management as well as a myriad of other Human Resources Programs. She is accountable for driving effectiveness by shaping organizational structure for optimal efficiency. Janie oversees strategies that foster a healthy culture to include embedding diversity, equity, and inclusion into all aspects of the organization.
In Janie’s prior role, she was the Vice President of Administration at Equal Justice Works, where she was responsible for leading human resources, financial operations, facilities management, and information technology. She was also accountable for developing and implementing Equal Justice Works Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion strategy focused on attracting diverse, mission-oriented talent and creating an inclusive and equitable workplace environment. With more than fifteen years of private, federal, and not-for-profit experience, Janie is known for her intuitive skill in administration management, human resources management, designing and leading complex system change, diversity and inclusion, and social justice reform efforts.
Before joining Equal Justice Works, Janie was the Vice President of Human Resources and Chief Diversity Officer for Global Communities, where she was responsible for the design, implementation, and management of integrated HR and diversity strategies. Her work impacted employees in over twenty-two countries. She was responsible for the effective management of different cultural, legal, regulatory, and economic systems for both domestic and international employees. Prior to Global Communities, Janie enjoyed a ten-year career with the federal government. As a member of the Senior Executive Service, she held key strategic human resources positions with multiple cabinet-level agencies and served as an advisor and senior coach to leaders across the federal sector. In these roles, she received recognition from management, industry publications, peers, and staff for driving the creation and execution of programs that created an engaged and productive workforce.
Janie began her career with Verizon Communications (formerly Bell Atlantic), where she held numerous roles of increasing responsibility, where she directed a diversity program that resulted in significant improvement in diversity profile measures. Janie was also a faculty member for the company’s Black Managers Workshop, a training program designed to provide managers of color with the skills needed to overcome barriers to their success that were encountered because of race. She initiated a company-wide effort to establish team-based systems and structures to impact corporate bottom line results which was recognized by the Department of Labor. Janie was one of the first African American women to be featured on the cover of Human Resources Executive magazine.
Janie received her M.A. in Organization Development from American University. She holds numerous professional development certificates in Human Capital Management and Change Management, including a Diversity and Inclusion in Human Resources certificate from Cornell University. She completed the year-long Maryland Equity and Inclusion Leadership Program sponsored by The Schaefer Center for Public Policy and The Maryland Commission on Civil Rights. She is a trained mediator and Certified Professional Coach. She is a graduate of Leadership America, former board chair of the NTL Institute and currently co-steward of the organization’s social justice community of practice, and a member of The Society for Human Resource Management. Additionally, Janie is the Board Chairperson for the Special Education Citizens Advisory Council for Prince Georges County where she is active in developing partnerships that facilitate discussion between parents, families, educators, community leaders, and the PG County school administration to enhance services for students with disabilities which is her passion. She and her husband Randolph reside in Fort Washington Maryland.
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Andrew Davis serves as Chief Operating Officer at the Council. In this role, Andrew oversees the Programs Division, which includes the following operational functions: credentialing, growth and business development, marketing and communications, public policy and advocacy, research, innovation, and customer relations.
Andrew has over 20 years of experience in the early care and education field. Most recently, Andrew served as Senior Vice President of Partnership and Engagement with Acelero Learning and Shine Early Learning, where he led the expansion of state and community-based partnerships to produce more equitable systems of service delivery, improved programmatic quality, and greater outcomes for communities, children and families. Prior to that, he served as Director of Early Learning at Follett School Solutions.
Andrew earned his MBA from the University of Baltimore and Towson University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland – University College.
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Jan Bigelow serves as Chief Financial Officer at the Council and has been with the organization since February of 2022.
Jan has more than 30 years in accounting and finance experience, including public accounting, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She has held management-level positions with BDO Seidman, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Communities In Schools, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and American Humane. Since 2003, Jan has worked exclusively in the non-profit sector where she has been a passionate advocate in improving business operations in order to further the mission of her employers.
Jan holds a CPA from the State of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lycoming College. She resides in Alexandria VA with her husband and dog.
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