Christi Moore: Finding Your Life’s Work

The early learning field struck a chord in Christi’s heart 20 years ago when she worked as a pre-K teacher in Burke County, Georgia. At the time, she had recently returned to her home state after earning a bachelor’s degree in music education and teaching music at a public school in Alabama. “When I decided I wanted to come back to Georgia, I looked for another teaching job, and the one I found was in early childhood education,” Christi recalls. “The field was completely new to me, and I didn’t think of it as a step in my career. But I fell in love with the children and was fascinated to see how fast they advance in a short space of time. Since then, building a foundation for them to succeed in school has become my life’s work.”

Christi now serves as Director of Workforce Supports and Learning at the Georgia Department of Early Care and Learning (DECAL). “We focus on providing educators with access to high- quality training, coaching and technical assistance,” Christi says. “We also oversee Georgia’s workforce registry and provide scholarships for educators to earn a degree, Montessori credential or Child Development Associate® (CDA) Credential™, a big component of our program.” The DECAL Scholars program, as it’s called, also has a personal meaning for Christi. “My sister is a teacher, my mother is a retired teacher, and I used to be a teacher,” she says, “so I’m very passionate about helping teachers get the support they need.”

Christi also remembers how much she needed support when she made the transition from being a music teacher to a teacher in Georgia’s Pre-K Program. “Fortunately, I had access to strong training and mentors who helped me find my way in a Pre-K classroom,” Christi says. “They helped fill in the gaps in my knowledge and made me want to open opportunities for other teachers, too.” And Christi’s ambition to make a broader impact on the early learning field led her to make another transition in her career to teaching college students.

“I instructed early childhood education students at Georgia State University while I was there earning my PhD,” Christi says. Her dissertation, Allow the Music to Speak, was a study of rising educators’ experiences in a music-integrated literacy methods course. “I wanted to explore the connection between music and literacy, two domains based on formulas and structures,” Christi explains. And her syllabus for the college students also integrated music, along with other performing and creative arts like storytelling and dance. “My first assignment for the class was for each student to portray an important interest, passion or life experience through some sort of art form,” Christi recalls. “It was a challenge at first for the students, who were accustomed to a more structured and traditional approach in their studies, but it brought a rich learning experience to the time the college students and I spent together.”

Christi helped her students think outside the box as they explored the topic of literacy in early learning, and she continued to take an innovative approach after earning her PhD. “I made another shift in my career,” she recalls, “by becoming Assistant Director at the Rollins Center for Language and Literacy, which is part of the Atlanta Speech School. In this new role, my goal was to guide the development of online and remote methods for helping teachers learn and use evidence-based language and literacy practices,” Christi says. And she learned a lot, too, while managing the program. “I did not know much about online learning when I started at that position,” she admits, “so I had to develop a broad knowledge base of what online learning can be, what it can look like and what it should achieve.”

The experience at Rollins also deepened Christi’s commitment to teachers since it showed her what a strong impact a program like this could have. “I wanted to make that impact on the state level,” she says, “so 10 years ago I took on my current position as Director of Workforce Supports and Learning at the Department of Early Care and Learning.” In the time Christi has been there, the department has increasingly focused on helping educators earn a CDA® and invested more funding in the credential. DECAL Scholars has also benefited from support from Care Solutions, a consulting firm that helps administer the program, and from the Council for Professional Recognition. “The Council has helped us refine our thinking about the CDA and the importance of child care for working families in Georgia,” Christi says.

“For many people in our workforce,” as Christi points out, “the CDA is also the preferred pathway to a career in early learning, especially since the COVID pandemic. We began hearing from child care directors and owners that it was hard to hire people who had the right training, so we changed the DECAL Scholars program to provide more targeted support for the CDA. We pay for CDA training, and we pay the CDA application fee for all candidates, including the high school students enrolled in our state’s Career, Technical, and Agricultural Education (CTAE) programs. We also pay for CDA renewals—all as part of our efforts to rebuild a strong early learning workforce after COVID.”

The response to these steps has been positive in Georgia’s early learning community, as Christi goes on to explain. “Child care directors and owners tell me that the CDA provides a strong foundation for educators to understand how to work with children and support families. They like the structure of CDA training and the ability of educators to take the CDA coursework online,” Christi says. “Another popular option is having a trainer come to a child care program, since educators can support each other as they take the coursework and that builds a sense of community in the program.”

In partnership with the Technical College System of Georgia, DECAL’s efforts also make communities stronger statewide by providing a bilingual CDA, as Christi explains. “We think it’s important for children and families to have teachers who speak their language and share their cultural background. So, we support bilingual educators in not only taking the CDA coursework but also in navigating the red tape it takes to open their own program.” Many of the CDA graduates are immigrants who want to start a family child care, a setting that appeals to many members of the immigrant communities in the state, Christi explains. So, the families can choose the learning environment they prefer for their children while educators can fulfill their goals. “Everyone wins.”

Seeing the benefits of the CDA for both educators and communities across the state has helped Christi realize that she’s made the right choices in her career. “At every step in my professional life, I’ve wondered about the future,” she says. “What would happen if I switched from teaching music to pre-K, shifted from teaching children to adults, and moved from the private sector to working for the state?” Christi saw the results of her choices last year when she invited an early childhood educator and mom named Roberta to speak at DECAL’s board meeting and put a face on the program. Roberta came to the meeting with her entire family and talked about her experience earning her credential.

“Roberta was managing a fast-food restaurant when she learned from someone in her community that the state was helping people earn ECE credentials,” Christi says. “She wanted a new career, so she applied for one of our scholarships. Since then, Roberta has continued to advance her education and now she’s a lead teacher at an Atlanta school that mainly serves children with disabilities, as she told the board. Roberta said she never expected to achieve such success. Yet she had done it with funding from DECAL. And it was an eye-opening moment for me when Roberta said that participating in the program changed her life and changed her family’s life too,” Christi recalls.

“Roberta deserves all the credit for doing the coursework, taking the exam and going through the classroom assessment. Still, it’s rewarding for me to think the Workforce Supports and Learning team played a small part in opening a new door for her to step through,” Christi says. And listening to Roberta speak made Christi glad she had decided to make early learning her life’s work by boosting the ranks of highly qualified teachers in her state. Roberta’s story of change and success was music to Christi’s ears.