Rhiannon Shook: Moving Early Learning Ahead in Montana

Rhiannon opens opportunities for educators by advancing registered apprenticeships in Montana. That’s been her goal since 2023, when she began working for the Montana Department of Labor and Industry as a child care workforce specialist. “My role,” she says, “gives me the chance to be an innovative partner in developing programs that can allow people to get an education at low- or no-cost, which is important for people who work in the early learning field. They’re barely making enough to afford the cost of living, so we can’t expect them to pay for a college education. We give them that chance through an apprenticeship model that’s based on the CDA® and helps them achieve success in their careers.”

Rhiannon knows firsthand how registered apprenticeships can advance your career since a registered apprenticeship program helped her earn an associate degree in early childhood education. “At the time, I was a single mom working in a child care center, and I never expected to be where I am today,” Rhiannon recalls. And she attributes much of her success to the people who inspired her along the way. They included the college instructors who urged Rhiannon to continue learning and the director of the first center where she worked. “She challenged me and gave me the confidence to do more,” Rhiannon recalls, “as opportunities opened for me to move ahead.”

In the 25 years since Rhiannon entered the early childhood field, she has earned a master’s degree and taken on increasingly important roles that include being assistant director of a child care center and operating her own child care program for 15 years. She also took on leadership roles by becoming the executive director of the Montana Association for the Education of Young Children and a coach for early childhood education students at the University of Montana Western, where she served as an instructor of early childhood education for nearly four years.

“I really enjoyed having the opportunity to teach the important aspects of child development to those that are working with young children, while also sharing what I’ve learned firsthand in the field,” Rhiannon says. “I still remember what it was like to be a student and having the chance to apply what I was picking up in class to my daily practice with children. So, it’s now rewarding to apply my experience and expertise in the CDA registered apprenticeship program.”

Rhiannon’s role as a child care workforce specialist was developed and funded through Child Care Development Fund (CCDF) American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act funds at the beginning. After the sunset of those funds, the Preschool Development Grant Birth through Five (PDG B-5) covered the costs of her position until it was fully funded by the Montana Department of Labor and Industry. So, it took two to three years of cross-agency collaboration to highlight the importance of early childhood apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships by having a full-time employee to support the programs.

When Rhiannon took on her role as child care workforce specialist, she researched what other states were doing to advance the early childhood workforce and reached out to people across the country to come up with a plan for Montana. She decided the CDA would be a great foundation and came up with a curriculum for the program. Rhiannon based it on the curriculum of the EarlyEdU Alliance, one of her program’s partners. Then she also partnered with ChildCare Training.org, home of Montana’s early childhood distance learning, to get the program content transferred into the state’s learning management system. Most importantly, she collaborated with the Montana Early Childhood Project and Montana Early Childhood Services Bureau to fund the coursework, books and CDA credentialing fees, as well as make key decisions on how to develop and implement the program “So, it took a lot of work,” as Rhiannon recalls, “to get everyone on the same page before we could even start the apprenticeship program.”

Since then, Rhiannon’s role has mainly been in the background, as she explains. “I’m the one who was making the connections, digesting information, and forming plans for the new CDA registered apprenticeship program to succeed. So far, the program has trained two cohorts of apprentices with a third now in the works, and they’ve had a wide range of participants from across the state. “We’ve had people from urban and rural communities,” Rhiannon explains. “We’ve had people who’ve been in the child care field for 20 years. We’ve had others who recently entered the profession because they had their own children. And we’ve had people who thought they wanted to teach in K-12 but realized they worked better with younger children.”

The apprentices also range widely in their abilities and Rhiannon has been collecting data to learn more about what they need to succeed in the program. She also has firsthand experience of the challenges they might face since she taught the program’s first cohort. “It gave me the opportunity to have conversations with the apprentices to see if they were learning and whether they were able to apply the CDA courses in their daily work with young children,” she says. “Then I used the comments I received to try and tailor the content so the participants could succeed.”

The apprentices have also received guidance from mentors, as Rhiannon explains. “We wanted to make sure the apprentices were getting similar mentoring experiences, so we began providing resources and training for the mentors, who are usually directors or lead teachers in the program where an apprentice works. The training is mainly about leadership skills and how to collaborate with apprentices when they’re struggling as many do when they start the program.”

The apprenticeship program can be demanding, as Rhiannon points out. “The participants take college-level courses and have to do a fair amount of homework while they’re working in child care 40 hours a week.” This takes commitment, so Rhiannon wants people to know what they’re getting into when they register for the apprenticeship program. “Fortunately, most of them do,” she says, “so we’ve had a high completion rate for the program.”

Rhiannon wants to increase that rate even further so she’s still making tweaks to the registered apprenticeship program. “For example, we want to ensure better communication between the program and CDA instructors,” she says. “We also want to find ways to clarify the requirements of the program to educators before they sign up, and we’re always coming up with ideas for breaking down the barriers some apprentices face,” Rhiannon says. “We want the program to be successful because if it’s not it will be hard to get the funding to support it moving ahead.”

Fortunately, in August 2025, Montana Governor Greg Gianforte announced the 406 JOBS initiative, a dramatic modernization of the state’s workforce system that focuses on reducing barriers to work and closing chronic labor shortages in six high-demand sectors. Education and child care was identified as a high-demand sector in Montana, with a particular focus on expanding the number of child care apprentices across the state. In addition, child care access and affordability in Montana is targeted under the 406 JOBS initiative as a cross-cutting barrier to work since more than 64,000 Montanans are unable to fully participate in the workforce due to child care constraints. The combined focus on expanding registered apprenticeship programs and the urgency of improving access to child care creates a significant opportunity for Rhiannon’s ongoing work.

Her future plans include launching a certified pre-apprenticeship program for high school students to take their CDA coursework and then transition into the registered apprenticeship program to complete all the experience hours they need to earn a CDA. Rhiannon is also having discussions with tribal Head Start programs about how she can better meet their needs by making the registered apprenticeship program more inclusive and respectful of a tribe’s language and culture.

The program is designed to be responsive because it is employer driven, as Rhiannon points out. “We developed the program through the lens of what child care directors and owners need to meet the needs of the children they serve. For example, we might require an apprentice to take additional hours of training in social-emotional learning if that’s what a child care employer needs. So, this year, we’ll be adding another 20 hours of training to the 120 hours of training that apprentices need to earn a CDA. It will be up to the owner or director to decide what training an apprentice needs and what else they need to learn.”

Adding this extra component to the registered apprenticeship program should only increase the satisfaction that child care employers have expressed in the feedback Rhiannon has received. “One employer said that families had seen major improvements in how the apprentices engaged with the children and the activities they provided in class,” Rhiannon says. “Another employer said the apprentices were communicating more with families, and still another said that she wished all her educators would participate in a CDA apprenticeship because she saw so much value in the program.”

The apprentices also acknowledge the program’s value in the comments Rhiannon has received. “I learned a lot in this program about new teaching techniques and ideas for all ages of children,” one apprentice told Rhiannon. Another said, “I have learned many ways to support children’s learning through modeling, scaffolding and designing different learning environments.” Still, another said, “I learned many new strategies, and I will use them when creating lessons, activities and learning opportunities within the classroom.”

Hearing comments like this makes Rhiannon feel fortunate for the opportunity to work in Montana’s registered CDA apprenticeship program. “I’m really grateful to be able to support the early childhood workforce because I believe all young learners deserve to have high-quality care and education. This is a way for me to be an advocate for children and make some changes in the world,” Rhiannon says. She knows the CDA registered apprenticeship program is a great way to lift up the members of the early childhood field by giving them the opportunities they need to succeed.