Summary of Family and Community Partnership Engagement Efforts

Professional Development for All

The Institute and its partners were able to provide a series of timely, relevant, and engaging learning opportunities for early childhood professionals through two online webinar series during the 2021–2022 academic year. In May 2020, the Institute sent out an online survey to learn more about the interests and preferences of early childhood professionals. Themes and topics for the webinar series were identified and refined based on their input, with the fall series focused on Workforce Well-Being and the spring series focused on Bringing Children’s Backgrounds to the Foreground in Their Learning. These webinars offered participants the opportunity to learn from a wide range of local and national experts.

Upon registering for the webinar and at the conclusion of each webinar, participants received a link via email to an online pre/post survey. Participants rated their pre/post understanding of key learnings, their ability to apply the key learnings to their work with students, and their satisfaction with the presentations. Survey findings are summarized below for each webinar.

In addition, PD for All efforts supported the three domains of the Birth Through Grade 3 framework, as outlined below.

LEADERSHIP EFFECTIVENESS

To support the Leadership Effectiveness domain, Institute staff facilitated the Professional Development for All webinar series, “Workforce Well-Being” (webinar 1.1: 66 attendees, webinar 1.2: 52 attendees). This series included two webinars, as described below.

Webinar 1.1: “Happy Teachers, Happy Kids”

In this webinar, participants learned about the essential connection between educator well-being and child well-being and explored the multiple factors that impact educators’ wellness. Dr. Kathleen Gallagher of the Buffett Early Childhood Institute shared the Institute’s newly developed workforce well-being framework, and Drs. Kyong-Ah Kwon, Ken Randall, and Adrien Malek-Lasater from the University of Oklahoma shared findings from the Happy Teacher Project. These experts shared insights on how to establish workplace conditions that support educators’ physical, psychological, and professional well-being. Early childhood leaders from a variety of settings participated in a panel discussion about how they have taken action to create environments that support educator and child well-being.

Findings Where Participants Work

The webinar format allows for much broader geographic participation. Nearly half of survey respondents (47%) who attended the first webinar lived in Douglas/Sarpy