Council Letter

April 23, 2025

Dear Colleagues,

We, as members of the early learning community, know the power of collaboration and cooperation to move our profession ahead. We also know it’s important to pass on these values to children when they are young. And that was the point of Work Together Wednesday, part of this month’s Week of the Young Child (WOYC). “When children work together, they experience teamwork, improve their abilities to work toward a common goal and develop their social skills,” according to the National Association for the Education of Young Children, which sponsors WOYC. Working together also “builds a sense of community,” as NAEYC points out. And it urges our early childhood teachers to draw on their own sense of community by working together to advocate for their field and the families who they serve.

Advocacy has become a focus for the Council, and it played a prominent role at our Early Educators Leadership Conference last year, where our speakers included NAEYC CEO Michelle Kang. She noted that “NAEYC and the Council are powerful forces for positive change. Arm in arm, we can stand up on behalf of ECE.” So, we should unite to do right, as Council CEO Dr. Calvin Moore agreed. “Together we can create a world in which all children have the quality early childhood education they deserve.” And this month, we feature two members of our community, who’ve already answered this call to arms.

Educators have the power to make change, insists Laura McCarty, president of the Northern Virginia Association for the Education of Young Children (NVAEYC). She’s also a former special education teacher, who once thought she couldn’t make an impact beyond her school walls. But she changed her mind after attending NVAEYC’s Advocacy Leadership Training Program, where she found a community of people who emboldened her to find her voice. And now she guides other educators on how to convince their elected officials to make policies that meet the real needs of the early learning field. “When you walk into a lawmaker’s office, you have to be concise, cohesive and coherent,” Laura advises them. “And one of the best ways for educators to get their points across is to tell their personal stories.”

So, Lindsey Ramsey  must cause quite a stir when she tells lawmakers how she rose from a single mom at 16 to become executive director of the Shady Lane School, a Pittsburgh program founded by Mr. Rogers. She attributes much of her success to the sense of sisterhood she found while earning her CDA® with other young early childhood teachers, whom she now supports by serving on Pennsylvania’s Early Learning Commission where she joins in the search for new ways to support our profession.

Our educators deserve more credit because “they’re the workforce behind the workforce,” Lindsey explains. And when she speaks on their behalf, she likes to quote something Mr. Rogers once said: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” And educators can be a source of help to the many scared children who are victims of neglect and abuse, Vilma Williams writes as she marks National Child Abuse Prevention Month by showing how educators can promote children’s safety, resilience and healing.

But victims of child abuse are hardly the only young children who need emotional healing in the wake of the pandemic. Years of preschool closures, lockdowns and cancelled playdates have led to a crisis in social skills, Dr. Moore writes in his new blog. Many young children don’t know how to manage their emotions and make friends, as the research has shown. The unprecedented public health crisis has led to unprecedented levels of disruptive behavior in the classroom, with long-term implications. Social and emotional learning is crucial for success in school and life, so Dr. Moore urges us to keep looking for ways to ramp up our children’s social skills. Sure, it will take resources and time, but our children can learn to connect better with others. And we, as educators, can help. We must encourage children to work together on Wednesday and every other day of the week.

 

Looking ahead to working more with you,

The Council for Professional Recognition

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