Diane Larsen: Making a Difference with the CDA®

Diane Larsen works hard to make an impact as a CDA® instructor in Ohio. “I work for Collins Career Center, which has a satellite program at Rock Hill High School in Lawrence County,” Diane says. And she wishes everyone could see her school’s beautiful campus. It’s across from a state park and has buildings with striking red roofs. Down the road is Rock Hill Elementary School which serves children from pre-K age to fifth grade, and it’s where Diane’s students go to gain the experience hours required to earn a CDA, the steppingstone for Diane’s career.

She earned her credential over 20 years ago as a teacher’s aide for Lawrence Early Childhood Academy, where she served Head Start children and families. She went on to earn an associate degree and become the Academy’s manager, but she continued to renew her CDA several times. She also helped her staff earn a CDA and made it a point to hire people who held the credential.

“When I did interviews,” Diane recalls, “I would see the difference between people who had a CDA and those who held degrees. I found that people who had earned a CDA had more concrete knowledge of child care than those with an associate or bachelor’s degree. When we did hire people who only had a college degree, they’d often go into the classroom and seem taken aback,” she says. Their book knowledge, Diane explains, hadn’t prepared them for the realities of serving young children.

The fact is that it’s hard, whether you’re an educator or center manager, as Diane knows firsthand. “There was a lot of staff turnover at the center, and I had to fill in on the floor when an educator became sick,” she recalls. “Though I loved serving children, I needed a break. So, I began working as a coordinator for Appalachian Family and Children First Council. We would meet with all the agencies in Lawrence County that served children and youth, so we could address their needs, whether for mental health counseling, health care or clothes,” Diane explains. “It was a good program, and I loved working with people, hearing about their experiences and assisting them with the challenges they faced,” she says. “Still, I found myself missing teaching.’’

An opportunity to return to the field presented itself at one of her meetings with a group that Diane helped write family plans for students who faced challenges at Rock Hill High School. “One of the teachers who worked at the school told me there was an opening for a CDA instructor,” she recalls, “and thought I would be perfect for the job since I had taught preschool students, as well as guided educators in earning their CDA and reaching their goals. So, I applied for the job in 2010 and found that I loved training young people to work with children. It gives me the best of both worlds since I get to teach courses and spend a lot of time with preschoolers while my high school students are getting their experience hours at our lab school.”

Only three students have failed to earn their CDA in the nearly 16 years that Diane has been working at Rock Hill High School, as she’s proud to say. Helping them succeed took a lot of work since Diane began guiding Rock Hill students to earn a CDA before it became a popular option for high schoolers nationwide. “There was no CDA Handbook for High School, as there is now,” she recalls, “so I put together my own handbook and learned the best way to work with the students, which wasn’t easy for me since working with high school students is different from working with adults, as I was used to doing. The CDA process for our high school students also required more time from staff since we administered the CDA exam to them at school, instead of sending them to a testing center to take an online exam as CDA candidates do now.”

The CDA process has progressed since Diane’s early days at Rock Hill High, and in those years, many of her students have also made progress in their careers. “I have a lot of students who work for Head Start in Lawrence County, like I once did. Others went to college to earn a teaching degree and work in a public school. Some have jobs at Rock Hill Elementary School, and I beam with pride when I see them in the hall,” Diane says. She’s had high achievers in her classes, along with others who faced challenges in earning a CDA.

“I teach students at all different levels in the same classroom,” Diane says, “so I need to respond to their unique needs. The students work at their own pace, but we also do some group activities, like writing lesson plans and finding resources for the CDA portfolio, which take some students a little more time than the others,” Diane says. So, she goes the extra mile to give students the support they need.

“A couple of years ago, I had a student named Paige with a learning disability who had trouble reading on a screen,” Diane recalls. “Paige wanted her CDA so much but needed a waiver to have someone read the questions to her when she took the CDA exam online. So, I requested a waiver for her as part of her individualized instruction plan. Despite the challenges she faced, Paige was bright and did well with her verification visit before school let out for the summer. Then, I met with her for a couple of months to help her prepare for the CDA exam. I made up questions like those that would be on the exam, and I prayed that Paige would pass,” Diane recalls. “She did, and Paige is now working on her bachelor’s degree, thanks to the confidence she gained from earning a CDA.”

Paige is proud of her CDA, and so is another student named Bailey, who was the valedictorian of her high school class this year. “Bailey has received a scholarship for college and plans on becoming a speech pathologist,” Diane says. “She wants to work with children, though she isn’t interested in being a teacher, and believes that holding a CDA will be an advantage in her future profession.”

Bailey is a high achiever, and she knows that part of success is helping others, like the many students who belong to the Family, Careers, and Community Leaders of America club at Rock Hill High. Diane leads them in raising funds for different charities, reading books to ill children at Ronald McDonald house, holding musical festivals for children in area preschools and setting up a food pantry at the high school for families in need. “I want my students to know that teaching is about more than being in a classroom,” Diane says. “It’s also about serving the whole child, assisting their families and making an impact on the community where you live. I want my students to know they’ve made a difference.”

Many of the students have kept in touch with Diane, including a girl she never expected to hear from following graduation. “The girl had emotional challenges and was prone to outbursts, so I hesitated to let her into the CDA program,” Diane recalls. “But after she begged, I decided to give her a chance. It turned out that she was wonderful with the children and her face would light up whenever she walked into a preschool classroom. Still, she was curt with me, so I was apprehensive when I received a long letter from her. In it, the girl explained that she was difficult because she had been abused at home. Now she wanted to apologize for the way she acted and thanked me for treating her with so much kindness and respect,” Diane says. “Her words touched me and taught me the most valuable lesson of my long career as a teacher. Sometimes you’ve made the greatest impact on the students you didn’t think you could reach.”