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A third set of Person-Centered Planning tools are the Life Course Tools. These were developed primarily by family members and people with disabilities to chart a vision for a good life in relation to six domain areas that are shared in the materials that follow.  All of the templates are free and available from the Life Course Tools website.  

Life Course tools were developed by the Charting the LifeCourse Nexus – LifeCourseTools.com © 2020 Curators of the University of Missouri | UMKC IHD

Watch this short video about Crystal and how she used Life Course tools to help her son. 

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Click on the first topic below to learn more about Life Course Tools.

A second set of Person-Centered Planning Tools have been developed and utilized by Dr. Michael Smull and Associates.  These tools embrace the concept of “person-centered thinking” which begins with learning both what is important to a person and what is important for a person, the balance between them, and discussing trade-offs.  A tool that could be helpful for a guardian is a One Page Profile. 

Take a look at Elizabeth Kate’s One Page Profile below. Click the image to open in a new window to view in more detail.

Watch this short video of Courtney on how a One Page Profile can be used with Person Person-Centered Thinking.

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Click on the first topic below to start learning more about Person-Centered Thinking

Your role as a guardian is to set high, but achievable, expectations based on what is both positive and possible and not based on the limited life experiences the person may have had.  Many people who come under State Guardianship have experienced significant trauma and thus may have low self-esteem, a lack of willingness to trust others, and a dearth of real-life experiences which would lead to a positive identity for the person.

Click on the topic below to learn more about Linda, an individual with a guardian.

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.

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?