Inspiring Professional Growth

Empowering Strategies to Lead, Motivate, and Engage Early Childhood Teachers

Susan MacDonald

• Publisher: Gryphon House Inc.
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780876598221
• eBook ISBN: 9780876598238
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

You’ve probably seen it: frustration builds, teacher turnover rises, staff meetings become insufferable, indifference breeds throughout the school. The solution? Exploring new ways to engage and motivate teachers. 

When your staff feels supported and empowered to grow and develop their skills, your program and the children will thrive. Implementing key concepts—collaboration, individualized professional-development plans, and team goals—can completely revolutionize your program. 

In this follow-up to her book Inspiring Early Childhood Leadership, author Susan MacDonald, MEd, addresses the need for offering nurturing, encouraging, and empowering professional development. Featuring easy-to-use tips, research-based strategies, leadership vignettes, and interactive and reflective exercises, Inspiring Professional Growth provides leaders with a framework to create a system that supports teachers throughout their careers.

Learn how to: 

• Acquire new leadership skills
• Gain confidence in your leadership role
• Establish a growth culture
• Work with and nurture even challenging staff members
• Cultivate collaboration and collective goal setting
• Facilitate meaningful professional development

Inspiring Professional Growth will guide you to experience firsthand the many benefits, from better child outcomes to increased teacher retention, of creating a nurturing and empowering workplace. 

Chapter One: Defining Professional Accountability as a Fundamental Value

Professional accountability is a good thing. Without it, excellence is merely a pipe dream and even average performance isn’t a realistic expectation.

—Leon Ellis, retired U.S. Air Force colonel, author, and consultant

Creating a school culture that is committed to the ongoing professional growth of every individual requires leaders to fully embrace the importance of professional accountability. A clear understanding of professional accountability that is shared by all members of the school community is an essential starting point. A simple definition of professional accountability is the ability and willingness of each individual to take full ownership of achieving desired outcomes. Leaders own the responsibility for establishing norms and protocols that hold every individual accountable for his attitude, behavior, and choice of actions related to his own professional growth.

Developing a school culture based on professional accountability can be challenging because it typically requires giving up certain behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes. Defense mechanisms, such as blaming others, making excuses, ignoring difficult situations, or playing the victim, often need to be shifted for accountability to exist.

Key Components of Professional Accountability

In the early childhood field, a lack of systemic accountability contributes to ineffective teaching practices, barriers to achieving quality, loss of employees, and inconsistent leadership behaviors. The following ten components form the foundation of a school culture where the expectation of professional accountability can thrive.

Professional Relationships Built on Trust

Gaining and maintaining a teacher’s trust is vital for establishing professional accountability. When trust is low, you see dissent, blame, and passing the buck. Everyone hides personal weaknesses and information that could highlight the strengths of others. Building trust takes time, and leaders need to be intentional about taking the time to build trust with every member of their staff. An essential first step is for leaders to create a safe space for open and honest dialogues to occur. Consistently modeling and encouraging respectful engagement will help to develop trusting relationships. Trust will be established only when teachers have confidence that the leader has the skills, knowledge, and integrity necessary to lead.

Clear Vision

A compelling vision statement is essential for providing a direction for your program. For teachers to be accountable, they need one hundred percent clarity on where the program is headed and what is expected of them. The vision should paint a vibrant picture of the program operating at its highest level of success. Every individual needs goals that help him to obtain the skills and disposition needed to bring the vision to life. When goals are fully aligned with the vision, the transformative journey of growth can begin. The power and importance of having a vision statement cannot be overstated. It is a critical step in building a growth culture.

Specific Goals

Once the vision is clear, specific measurable goals can be developed for every member of the organization. The goals need to reflect each staff member’s individual areas of growth as well as areas of growth related to achieving the program-wide vision. When goals are linked to the vision, they provide a direct connection between the individual’s professional growth and the quality of the program. Engaging staff in meaningful discussions about their individual strengths and areas for improvement will build trust and open communication that is necessary for powerful and meaningful growth to occur. staff in meaningful discussions about their individual strengths and areas for improvement will build trust and open communication that is necessary for powerful and meaningful growth to occur.

Timelines

Developing a specific timeline for each goal supports goal achievement. Goals that lack timelines are often rewritten year after year without any significant progress being made, and staff soon lose motivation to make changes. It is the leader’s role to work with teachers to establish timelines that are both relevant and realistic. Scheduling regular check-in meetings to discuss the status of each goal helps to keep the momentum needed to fully achieve those goals.

Observation and Feedback

Using the goals to focus observation and feedback is another significant way to increase professional accountability. It is important for teachers to see that you are intentionally using your time and resources to support them in making consistent progress. Offering strengths-based feedback on the positive changes you observe will build confidence and help teachers to continue the work necessary to fully achieve their goals.

Reliable Data

When possible, use tools that help you measure what needs to change. For example, if a teacher is struggling to create a positive emotional climate in his classroom, have a Classroom Assessment
and Scoring System (CLASS) assessment done to obtain reliable data on the climate, and then repeat the CLASS after a specified time frame to see what growth and change has occurred. The early childhood field has many assessment tools that will provide reliable data to tra...

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Defining Professional Accountability as a Fundamental Value
• Chapter Two: Leadership Skills to Maximize Potential
• Chapter Three: Establishing a Growth Culture
• Chapter Four: Building Accountability into Goal Setting
• Chapter Five: Observation and Feedback Essentials for Facilitating Professional Growth
• Chapter Six: Understanding Adults as Learners in the Workplace
• Chapter Seven:Facilitating Meaningful Professional Development
• Chapter Eight: Cultivating Professional Collaboration