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Person-Centered work is not just about getting services in place for a person.  People can have services and still have a very poor quality of life.   Person-Centered work should develop rich opportunities for the person to have five valued life experiences, as developed by John O’Brien and Connie Lyle O’Brien. 

Click the first topic below to start learning more about the Five Valued Life Experiences.  

The approach also identifies the person’s preferences in areas such as:

• recreation,
• transportation,
• friendships, 
• therapies and treatments, 
• housing, 
• vocational training and employment,
• family relationships, and
• social activities.

Unique factors such as culture and language are also addressed.

The National Center for Advancing Person-Centered Practices and Systems (NCAPPS) takes the Person-Centered approach and divides it into 3 different components:

• Person-Centered Thinking – a foundational principle – requiring consistency in language, values, and actions – that reveals respect, views the person and their loved ones as experts in their own lives and equally emphasizes quality of life, well-being, and informed choice.
• Person-Centered Planning – a methodology that identifies and addresses the preferences and interests that make up the desired life and the supports (paid and unpaid) needed to achieve it.  It is directed by the person and is supported by others selected by the person.
• Person-Centered Practices – the alignment of services and systems to ensure the person has access to the full benefits of community living and to deliver services in a way that facilitates the achievement of the person’s desired outcome.

Want more information on ACL and NCAPPS, click the boxes below for more information.

Now that we know a bit about Person-Centered Planning, let’s explore a more traditional approach commonly used. 

Click on the topic below to get started.

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As always, your best resource for finding or asking questions about Professional Development programs and opportunities is your local Professional Development coach. If you are unsure about who that person is, visit the Kentucky Child Care Aware Professional Development Coaches directory.

Bowen, R. (2013). Sample SMART professional development goals. Retrieved from http://www.brighthub.com/office/home/articles/72258.aspx 

Goble, C. B., & Horm, D. M. (2010). Take Charge of Your Personal and Professional Development. YC Young Children, 65(6), 86-91.

Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood. (2011). The Kentucky Early Childhood Professional Development Framework. https://kyecac.ky.gov/families/Documents/pd-framework-2011.pdf 

NAEYC. (2020). Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Educators. https://www.naeyc.org/resources/position-statements/professional-standards-competencies 

Child Care Aware of Kentucky. (2022). Annual Professional Development Plan. https://www.childcareawareky.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Revised-PD-Plan-full_2022.pdf

Council for Professional Recognition. (2021). Apply for a CDA. https://www.cdacouncil.org/credentials/apply-for-cda 

Eastern Kentucky University, ECE-TRIS. (2021).  ECE-TRIS: Approved Trainings Course Search. https://tris.eku.edu/ece/content.php?CID=23 

IECE Associates Degrees in early Childhood Education in Kentucky.  Choose the program nearest you. https://www.google.com/search?q=KCTCS+Early+Childhood 

NAEYC Degree Finder. Find early childhood professional degree programs nationwide. https://degreefinder.naeyc.org/

In this lesson, you’ll apply what you’ve learned to create a customized Professional Development Plan. Refer to your previous assignments for this course, the grading rubric, and the completed example. Contact your Professional Development Coach with any questions.

Use your self assessment data to help you consider your strengths and weaknesses as you create your plan. Consider your interest areas, any recent performance reviews, and the needs of the children in your current classroom.

In addition, make sure to consult with your center Director, if you have one, regarding the activities and resources that are needed to complete your plan. There may be specific types of trainings required for KY AllSTARS points, areas for improvement from surveyor visits, or center-wide goals that you would want to factor into your planned educational activities. Your director could also let you know how center finances to pay for trainings may impact your training selections.

Video Transcript

Welcome back. In this lesson, we’re going to talk about SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time based. We’re going to dive into each one of those a little more in depth. So specific a specific goal is right on target. It’s hitting that specific need that you have. So what exactly do you want to learn?

For example, if you had a smart goal of “I want to learn more activities for children”, that’s too general, that’s too broad and that’s not specific. How about “I want to learn gross motor activities for children?” That’s a little bit better. What age Children? “I want to learn gross motor activities for toddlers.” That’s more specific. So when you set goals, make them specific.

What do you need? What would help you as you work in your classroom right now? What exactly do you want to learn?

All right. Our next quality is measurable. The M in smart stands for measurable. So what does measurable mean? Let’s go back to that last goal that we had. So if you wanted to learn gross motor activities for children, how would you measure that? The easiest way when you’re setting goals is “I want to learn THREE gross motor activities for toddlers.” Then you can measure it. Did you meet it? Did you get there? I want to learn “everything about…” is not realistic because you can’t measure if you know everything. If you say, “I want to learn gross motor activities for children”, did you get there when you learned one? Did it get there when you learned three? Did you get there when you learned five? Did you learn any? You want to make your goals measurable. The easiest way to do that is to add a quantity of knowledge that you want to gain.

Achievable. Is it something that you can realistically finish? Is it something you’re able to complete. An achievable goal. Let’s see, “I want to get my CDA in a week.” No, it’s not achievable. Set something that is that you can complete. Keep in mind that you have a life outside of work. Keep in mind that I know a lot of you are working in centers that are understaffed, so you may be working extra hours. Set a goal that is realistic. You don’t want to set huge goals and then not be able to meet them.

What’s something you realistically can complete within a year as these annual PD plans will be your final project [in this course]? What’s something that you want to complete in a year? Maybe your long term goal is to get a master’s degree, but your short term goal is to research three programs where you could get the master’s degree at or to register for your first course. So break your larger goals down into small chunks and make sure that your goal is achievable for you and for your life. Right now.

Relevant Your goals R, should be relevant. So will the goal help you in your current position or prepare you for future positions? So you want to learn how to bake a cake. That’s cool, but that doesn’t really apply to your early childhood career. So for the professional development plan, you want to set goals that either help you in your current position, or prepare you for future positions that you might take.

The T in Smart stands for Time based. When will the goal be completed? So we’ll go back to our earlier example. “I want to learn three gross motor activities for toddlers by the end of the summer” or “by the end of December”. Or tie it to a date or tie it to a month. So set a time and a deadline for your goal. I don’t know about you, but when I don’t set deadlines, things end up at the bottom of my to do list and then I never get to them. And then they sit, and sit, and sit. That’s not what you want for your professional development. You want to set a time so that you are holding yourself accountable to moving forward and getting the required training and clock hours that you need as an early childhood professional.

So that is an overview of smart goals. You will have an exercise to rewrite some not so specific or measurable or achievable or time based goals. And then you’ll get a chance to set your own goals.

Do feel free to look back on that self-assessment data to see maybe what content area you might want to set a goal in? Look at where you are in the career lattice and where you said you wanted to get to. And do you do keep a copy of that for yourself, because the next assignment in the next section of the course will be your PD plan and you can use that smart goal as one of your goals on that plan.

Video Transcript

Welcome to Kentucky Professional Standards and Competencies for Early Childhood Teachers. In this section of the course, we’re going to talk about two main standards and competencies that are relevant to you as an early childhood professional. They often get confused. So I’m going to mention both, although we’re going to focus on the core competencies today.

The early childhood standards are what I’m going to start by mentioning. Those standards are “a framework designed to assist parents early care, intervention, and education professionals to understand what children are able to know and do from birth through four years of age.”

In addition to the standards for children, though, there are a set of Kentucky core content competencies and these are actually standards for what teachers should know. These standards have five levels and seven subject areas, and the five levels are very similar to what you saw in the Kentucky career lattice, except you can take any level [training], regardless of your education and background. Really what’s most important is that you take content that is helping you grow as an educator and to serve your students better.

For example, you might be a brand new teacher, but you were super active and you could take an advanced gross motor training because you have a lot of experience and education, as far as gross motor. You might be a teacher with a master’s who has no experience in Montessori and your center is switching to Montessori. And so you take a level one training in Montessori, even though your education might be level five.

So what’s most important with trainings is that you take things again that will help you grow as a teacher and to serve your students better. So you can take trainings of any level. And side note, if you get bored in trainings [because they are boring/too easy], look for more difficult trainings.

All right, there are seven subject areas in the core competencies for teachers:

1. child growth and development
2. health, safety and nutrition
3. professional development
4. learning environments and curriculum
5. child assessment
6. Family and community partnerships, and
7. program management and evaluation

You are going to be taking core competency self assessments in each area. These are not graded. It’s not a pass fail. We’re not looking for a certain amount of things that you know, and a certain amount of things that you don’t know. This is a self assessment meant to help you just take stock of where you are and what you know and maybe expose you to some things that you don’t know and you didn’t know you didn’t know them.

So as you move forward and complete your professional development plan later in the course, you set two goals in different competency areas. You might choose to set a goal in the area that you find out you’re strongest in, to continue to grow your knowledge in that area and then maybe pick an area that you’re not as strong in and pick something that you’re interested in in that area that you can apply in your classroom.

So the goal of these is to help you really assess where you are at as personally and to help you set goals that are relevant to you because we like taking trainings that are relevant, that mean something, that can help you serve your students better.

So my advice to you with these assessments, don’t try to do them all in one sitting.

There are many competencies, some some of these competency self assessments are short, some of them are very long. It’s all based on the number of core competencies that are in the standards, the learning environments and curriculum. If you looked at the framework, there are lots of core competencies. So that is a long self assessment. Some of the other ones are very short, so don’t try to do it all in one sitting.

Give yourself breaks in between. And again, it’s not for a score, it’s just for you to assess where you are at and to help you pick things [Professional Development goals] that are relevant and interesting for you.

Video Transcript

Let’s talk about the Kentucky Career Lattice. As you see, the Career Lattice has five levels: one, two, three, four and five. There’s also an additional Directors and Administrators credential that you could choose to apply for.

We’re going to start with level one. If you have a high school diploma or the Commonwealth Child Care Credential, that would put you at a level one on the Career Lattice. If you’re not familiar with it, the Commonwealth Child Care Credential is a credential that is 60 clock hours and issued by the Department of Child Care, and it is specific to Kentucky. So other states would not necessarily recognize this credential, but in Kentucky it would show that you have at least 60 clock hours of education in early childhood.

Moving on to level two. Level two on the Career Lattice is for those who have a Child Development Associate’s credential; you’ll hear it called the CDA. With the CDA, you actually do 120 clock hours of education. You also create a professional portfolio. A professional development specialist will come and watch you teach and debrief with you using a Reflective Dialog Worksheet that’s found in the CDA Competencies and Standards book. There’s also a multiple-choice test that you have to go to a Pearson Vue testing center to take.

There are a number of online programs that you can utilize to obtain your CDA coursework, and there are opportunities to obtain scholarships towards courses taken from specific training organizations and college based programs in Kentucky. Contact the PD Coach in your region for more information.

The CDA, Child Development Associate Credential, is a nationally recognized credential. So if you’re in Kentucky and you’re not sure you’re going to stay here long term, that national credential would be a great thing for you to have, because when you move to another state, you could say, hey, I have the CDA. Visit the CDA Council’s website for more information about CDA requirements and programs.

Moving on, Level three in the Kentucky Career Lattice is for those who have an Associate’s specifically in early childhood, a Bachelor’s in a related field and 1 year full time experience, or a Bachelor’s in an unrelated field and 10 years experience. So, for example, a related field would be maybe you have a bachelor’s in social work or elementary education, and you’ve spent time in an early childhood classroom. Or maybe for that unrelated field, you have a music degree, but you ended up working in child care centers for ten years. That would put you at that level three. So the level you qualify for on the career lattice, it really has to do with both your education and your experience.

Our next level, Level four, is for those who have a Bachelor’s degree, specifically in early childhood or a Bachelor’s in a related field with 3 hours in child development and one year in the classroom, or a Bachelor’s in an unrelated field, at least the equivalent of 3 hours in child development and ten years of full time experience. So those are the three different ways you can qualify for that level four.

The bachelor’s in early childhood automatically qualifies you. If you have [a degree in] a related field, again, like psychology or social work or elementary education, and you have the equivalent of a three hour course in child development in one year of experience, then you qualify for level four. Or, like we mentioned earlier, our example from earlier was if you had a bachelor’s in music, you did 3 hours [of coursework] in child development and had ten years of experience, that would let you qualify for level four. So what moves you from level three to level four is that 3 hours in child development, level five.

To qualify for level five, there is you have to have a master’s in early childhood or a master’s in a related field with 3 hours of child development and a year of experience, or a master’s in an unrelated field, plus 3 hours in child development and ten years of full time experience. So to move up to a level five, you have to have a master’s degree. That’s the main difference between levels four and five.

Now, why does all of this matter? Why do these levels matter? The more education you have as a teacher, we talked about the importance of professional development, the more you have to offer your students. If your center participates in the quality system, then having staff at higher levels helps centers qualify for a higher quality rating.

The more education you have, you may also open up more opportunities for yourself as a teacher. As you have more education, you’re able to move, say, from a level one just starting out. Maybe as an assistant teacher, you might get an associate’s or a bachelor’s and move up to a lead teacher position. You could become an assistant director or a curriculum specialist as you have more education or do technical assistance with a bachelor’s or a master’s degree.

So the more education you have A) the better experience you can offer to the children you work with in whatever your context and B), the more opportunities you open up for yourself as an early childhood professional.

There’s one more thing on the career lattice, and that is the director and administrator certificate that is separate from the levels but part of the career lattice. This is a specific Director’s Credential that you can obtain. Normally, there are courses you take through the community college system. In Kentucky, it’s four courses and two are waived if you have the CDA.

There’s also an apprenticeship program that’s a path to a Director Certificate. You can go to the governor’s Office of Early Childhood to check that out.

Or there’s an administrator certificate with 3 hours in child development and five years of full time experience.

And just because I’m a training coach, I have to mention it’s not on the overall career lattice here, but if you are interested in offering professional development to your peers, if you’re an expert in an area and want to help them get their required hours, then you might want to look into getting a Trainers Credential.

If you are interested in doing that, then do contact the Training Coach in your region and they can talk to you about that whole process. The Trainers credential has a separate but similar leveling system for the levels of training you might offer based on your education and experience.

Next, you’re going to read about some of the scholarship opportunities that are available if you would like to move up the Career Lattice.

As an early childhood educator, your knowledge and the combination of personal and professional skills impact the children in your classroom as well as their families and communities.  The goal of professional development isn’t to get annual training hours and check boxes – the goal of professional development is to improve outcomes for the children in your care.  Research tells us that your knowledge has a huge impact on the quality of the program you are part of as well as your students and community.

The quality of an early childhood program is directly related to an individual teacher’s professional development.

Goble & Horm, 2010

Teachers’ qualifications (based on measures of knowledge, education, and experience) account for a larger share of the variance in students’ achievement than any other single factor.

Darling-Hammond et al., 1999:228

The first 3 years of a child’s life have significant and lasting effects. By age 3, children acquire the abilities to speak, learn, and reason. During this uniquely sensitive time, young children’s interactions and experiences combine with genetic influences to shape the architecture of their brains in enduring ways that lay the foundation for lifelong health, well-being, and success.

Zero to Three, 2020

Professional development, or PD, is defined by the Kentucky PD Framework as structured learning to help you, as an early childhood professional, to gain knowledge and skills and then implement them in the workplace. This helps you to improve your teaching and the outcomes for your students (Kentucky Governor’s Office of Early Childhood, 2011). PD can take many forms, from informal individual activities, like reading professional articles, to participation in large-scale projects facilitated by organizations and academic institutions (Borg, 2018).

Early childhood teachers are required to complete 15 clock hours of professional development each year.  [922 KAR 2:090 Child-care center licensure – Section 11, (16)(c)].

Professional development opportunities help you stay current in the field, continually improve your teaching practices, and work toward becoming a better educator.

Washington, 2017

Increased education and experience may also open up more opportunities for you. The early childhood field is growing. Here’s the professional outlook from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, November 2022.

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High quality professional development and education of teachers, enables high quality childcare.  The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has reported that “young children thrive when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning.” As such, early care and education (ECE) professionals must be well-qualified for their positions (NASEM, 2018).  However, based on data from the Early Childhood Workforce Qualifications Calculator, only thirty-one percent (31%) of all early childhood teachers in Kentucky have a Bachelor’s degree; twenty-five percent (25%) of all teachers have no more than a high school education (Childtrends, 2020).

If your center participates in the Kentucky All STARS Quality Rating System, your educational level contributes to your center’s STAR rating. Centers receive Staff Qualifications and Professional Development points based on the educational levels of their teachers.

You are more than your knowledge and skills. Your personal background and experiences will also impact your interaction with your students. Taking care of yourself and knowing your own identities, strengths, and challenges will make you a better teacher.  Your personal skills will not be the focus of this course, but resources you may choose to explore include:

• Via Strengths Survey – What are your strengths?
• Self Care for Child Care Professionals – Are you taking care of yourself?
• Preventing Compassion Fatigue – How are you dealilng with stress and secondary trauma?
• Starburst Identity Chart – How do your identities inform how you interact with your students and coworkers?
• Harvard Implicit Bias Tests – How do your identities inform how you interact with your students and coworkers?

You have completed the content for Authentic Assessment for Early Childhood: An Introduction!!! A few final steps before you are able to access your certificate.

Next Up

This course is the first in a series of assessment courses designed to help early care and education professionals understand how to observe, what to do with that information, and how to implement observation data in daily classroom practices.

COMING SOON! – Authentic Assessment for Early Childhood: Working with Families

ECE-TRIS

An application activity is an opportunity to practice what has been learned during a training.

Instructions

In this application activity you will need to observe a child. You have 2 choices on how to complete this assignment: 

1. You can use our video https://youtu.be/HG6wvPBW0D8
2. Choose a child in your program to observe.  To do this, you must have the permission of the child’s parent/guardian to share the video, and you must be able to upload the video with your assignment.

After choosing an option you will document and write out 5 objective observations. Need some help with practicing documenting observation notes? Refer back to your observation practice.

Regardless of whether you use our video or yours, you must write out 5 objective observations to get credit for this assignment.

Once you’ve completed your observation notes and video (if required) you will upload the assignment to be reviewed.

In your handout you will also answer these three questions:

1. Why did you choose this child?
2. What are you hoping to learn?
3. What do you think you might see?

Grading

As a reminder, it can take up to 3 working days for an application activity to be reviewed. Once reviewed the course facilitator will provide you with feedback and information about your next steps.

The following rubric will be used for grading; a minimum score of 5 is required to progress.

Requirement	0 Points	1 Point	2 Points
Observations are objective	Observations are not objective	Observations are somewhat objective	Observations are objective.
There are five observations	There are three or fewer observations listed.	There are 4 observations.	There are 5 observations.
Observations provide enough detail to understand the child’s skills or behaviors.	No details are provided to understand the child’s skills or behaviors	There are some details provided to understand the child’s skills or behaviors.	Clear articulation of the details provided to understand the child’s skills and behaviors.

Questions

Reach out to the course facilitator if you have any questions about the assignment.

Early education professionals first gather information by observing and organizing their observations.  They also look at standards like the Kentucky Early Childhood Standard to compare what they are learning about each child to standards of what would typically be expected from a child of a particular age.  Our goal for this module is to give you introductory information so that you can look at your own observation process and see what works best for you and the families that you work with.

“Educators can be intentional about helping children to progress when they know where each child is with respect to learning goals. Educators embed assessment-related activities in the curriculum and in daily routines to facilitate authentic assessment and to make assessment an integral part of professional practice. They create and take advantage of unplanned opportunities to observe young children in play and in spontaneous conversations and interactions, in adult-structured assessment contexts as well as when children are participating in a group activity and doing an individual activity. Observations, documentations, and the results of other formal and informal assessments are used to inform the planning and implementing of daily curriculum and experiences, to communicate with the child’s family, and to evaluate and improve educators’ and the program’s effectiveness.

In summary, we also need to remember, that decisions that have a major impact on children, such as enrollment or placement, are made in consultation with families. Such decisions should be based on multiple sources of relevant information, including that obtained from observations of and interactions with children by educators, family members, and specialists as needed.”
From (NAEYC, 2009)

You may think collecting and organizing observations for a children’s classroom is hard work.  You are probably already observing children daily, but you may not be writing it down or using it for your assessment system.  We will share some tips and tricks to make it easier for you.

Click on the arrows next to each strategy for additional information and to see examples.

Planned Observation Can Be Helpful

• It is an opportunity to learn about each child’s skills, interests, and needs.
  What activities does a child enjoy and how do they engage him in learning?  What is the child’s temperament – how is this affecting their behavior and that of the group?

• It is an opportunity to evaluate your program and make changes to your environment.
  Do I need to change my routine because I am seeing challenging behaviors at certain times of the day?  Is my classroom space arranged so there is space for both active and quiet play?

• It allows you to notice a child’s progress as they learn new skills.
  Have the motor skills of my children improved to where I can start challenging them to try new things? Are the social-emotional skills they are learning decreasing the challenging behaviors we were seeing before?

• It allows you to determine how best to handle problem situations and behaviors.
  From watching my toddlers, I now can prevent some of the biting.  With my preschoolers, I now know that having too many children in one center at a time can cause aggressive behaviors.

Observations will help you step back, make informed decisions, and give you knowledge that can be communicated to the child’s family as well. (North Dakota Early Childhood Training Center, 1999)

Click on the first topic below to learn more about how to observe children.

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There are a variety of classroom and instructional assessments that can be used to assess children in your classroom.

Looking for some suggestions?

There is a list of recommended assessments within the Building a Strong Foundation for School Success: Kentucky’s Early Childhood Continuous Assessment Guide.  All of the assessment instruments on this list have also been crosswalked with Kentucky’s Early Childhood Standards to help programs make decisions as they revise and/or construct their early childhood continuous assessment system.  Each assessment has varying costs, and some may not be the best fit for your classroom.  As always, do your research before purchasing an assessment.

Did you know you can create your own?

Sometimes pre-made assessments are not the best fit for your classroom.  You can also create your own assessment for use within your program; however, it must support all domains of the Kentucky Early Childhood Standards. Curriculum-based assessments used for Kentucky All STARS must also support a curriculum that has been aligned (crosswalked) with the Kentucky Early Childhood Standards. This is a job that can take time and in-depth knowledge of early childhood development. 

Your Quality Coach can help you with this process. 

If you don’t know who your Quality Coach is, you can search for them on the Child Care Aware website.

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Throughout the course, we will use several terms and it is important to have an understanding of the definition of each.  Look over these definitions and write them in your handout for future reference.

Watch this Results Matter video on Authentic Assessment from the Colorado Department of Education.  Several definitions we mention will be used.  Take notes on words and phrases that stand out to you in the video.  Your responses will also be shared in the Think Spot.

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Colorado Department of Education, n.d.

Three specific assessment types are useful for three specific purposes: Screening, Diagnostic, and Classroom/ Instructional. 

Most screenings and assessments require specific training to conduct. Also remember, early care and education teachers cannot diagnose children.

This training is modeled on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) concepts that address multiple ways of knowing, learning, supporting learners, and assessment.   This training is written knowing that each of us comes to it with a wide range of understanding, attitudes, and practical use of assessment.   This first module is designed to build a common knowledge for everyone participating in this and all future assessment modules. 

In early childhood classrooms, early childhood professionals should consider the needs of all the children, including their different learning styles, different social and economic backgrounds, those who speak minority languages, have different religions, or sexual orientations. When implementing UDL children should be able to engage with learning opportunities in all areas that the children have access to – classrooms, playgrounds, gross motor rooms, etc.  Teachers can gather information about the strengths, preferences, and interests of the children by observing, and documenting their observation of children in all areas of their development.  We will dig deeper into UDL as we look at using assessment results to assist with planning in a future module of assessment training.