Preparing for the New School Year
SPONSORED BLOG Excitement. Jitters. Uncertainty. The new school year comes with a multitude of emotions and challenges — but thankfully there are things you can do ahead of time to prepare and ensure it’s the...
Dear Colleagues,
Immigrant children who don’t speak English are scared and struggle to cope after recently being placed at a New York City school. The lack of enough bilingual teachers who speak Spanish puts severe limits on what the children are able to learn in their classes. “They’re only in English. I don’t understand it, and it’s hard and scary for me,” explains Fernanda, a first grader at PS 33 Chelsea Prep. “I don’t talk to not one friend, so I stay quiet,” as does Lida, her mom. She, too, finds communicating with the school to be a huge challenge and frets that her daughter can’t understand what’s happening in class.
The struggles of children like Fernanda are making the news because of the ongoing flow of Hispanic families to the U.S. But our population of immigrant children is much more diverse. Far from New York, in Santa Fe, NM, the public school system is trying to welcome an influx of new arrivals. The schools are offering English language classes and bonding activities to better serve children, many of them refugees, who come from Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Russia, plus several Central American nations.
Meanwhile in Washington, DC, there’s a large Ethiopian population, as we discuss when we profile Desta Wendirade, an educator at a DC public school and a Professional Development Specialist for the Council. She earned her Child Development Associate® (CDA) Credential™ at CentroNía, a bilingual child care center that provides CDA® training in Amharic, the Ethiopian native language. And Desta now works with them to help Amharic speakers in also earning the credential. “The number of Amharic-speaking children keeps growing,” she says, “so we need more qualified bilingual teachers to serve them. The Amharic CDA program is good for the children and it’s good for the teachers, too.”
Earning a CDA, as you will read, launched Ines Ben Cheikh on a successful career path that has convinced her she can do anything through hard work. “I could barely speak English when I came to the U.S. from Tunisia in 2010. I was a stay-at-home mom and had never been out of my homeland before. Now, 12 years later, I have a master’s degree and I’m the site manager for Wayne Metro ACCESS Head Start in Dearborn, MI, where I empower other immigrant moms to enter the ECE field by earning their CDA, too. I mainly work with Arab American women, who remind me of myself, and I’m happy to do this since it’s a way to give back to the people and programs that helped me.”
Ines and Desta both have a strong sense of community, and not just because of their immigrant roots. A commitment to others is a hallmark of our profession and that was clear at our Early Educators Leadership Conference this month. The theme was equity for children and the teachers who serve them, an ideal that crosses continents and cultures to bring educators together. Over the years, our conferences have drawn educators from Jordan and Egypt, China and the UAE, along with states across the U.S. They come for information, inspiration—and fun—as you’ll see when you read about this year’s EELC.
Conferences like ours are a great place for educators to explore common goals, concerns and solutions, as Dr. Calvin Moore says in his blog. The chats that take place there can spark creative thinking and serious questioning of the status quo, as he points out. So, conferences build the community’s greater good by being catalysts for needed change.
As a profession, we’re committed to changing a system that fails to ensure equity in early learning. And that’s also the Council’s goal. All children deserve skilled, credentialed teachers, like those who earn a CDA. And that includes our immigrant children. They have a moral and legal right to high-quality education, regardless of where they come from or what language they speak. No child should ever struggle and be scared, like little Fernanda, because they just can’t understand what’s going on in school.
Saludos cordiales,
The Council for Professional Recognition
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Chief Operations Officer
Andrew Davis serves as Chief Operating Officer at the Council. In this role, Andrew oversees the Programs Division, which includes the following operational functions: credentialing, growth and business development, marketing and communications, public policy and advocacy, research, innovation, and customer relations.
Andrew has over 20 years of experience in the early care and education field. Most recently, Andrew served as Senior Vice President of Partnership and Engagement with Acelero Learning and Shine Early Learning, where he led the expansion of state and community-based partnerships to produce more equitable systems of service delivery, improved programmatic quality, and greater outcomes for communities, children and families. Prior to that, he served as Director of Early Learning at Follett School Solutions.
Andrew earned his MBA from the University of Baltimore and Towson University and his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland – University College.
Chief Financial Officer
Jan Bigelow serves as Chief Financial Officer at the Council and has been with the organization since February of 2022.
Jan has more than 30 years in accounting and finance experience, including public accounting, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. She has held management-level positions with BDO Seidman, Kiplinger Washington Editors, Pew Center for Global Climate Change, Communities In Schools, B’nai B’rith Youth Organization and American Humane. Since 2003, Jan has worked exclusively in the non-profit sector where she has been a passionate advocate in improving business operations in order to further the mission of her employers.
Jan holds a CPA from the State of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Lycoming College. She resides in Alexandria VA with her husband and dog.
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