Workforce Solutions Alamo offers Aim4Excellence cohorts in greater San Antonio. Participants receive scholarships to participate in face-to-face and online training, and receive support to revitalize their programs.

Mississippi Child Care Resource & Referral Network offers scholarships to eligible Mississippi residents. Participants complete the Mississippi Director’s Credential program and receive 20 hours of technical assistance as an extension of their participation in Aim4Excellence.

Child Care Aware provides partial funding for eligible directors to attain their Aim4Excellence Online National Director Credential. Participants complete modules independently and Child Care Aware receives a report once three modules are completed.

The frenetic pace that characterizes the professional lives of most early childhood directors leaves little time for reflection. Yet it is through reflection that educators often gain insight into the issues and problems that confront them. This session provides a focused opportunity for participants to reflect on their administrative roles. Key to this reflective journey will be the use of metaphoric imagery.

True leaders come in all shapes and sizes. Some are outgoing and charismatic; others are quietly influential. This session explores the concept of leadership in the context of early childhood education. It looks at the multifaceted role of the center director and the skills and competencies needed to nurture leadership at all levels of an organization.

Directors often have a global impression that things are going well or not so well at their centers, but they lack specific information on just what areas of the program’s operation contribute to these impressions. This session provides an overview of the dimensions of organizational climate and how directors can improve the quality of work life at their centers.

Well-trained and experienced staff are the key to early childhood program quality and healthy child development. Skills in recruitment, interviewing, screening, selecting, and orienting new teachers are ones that every director needs. This session breaks down the recruitment, selection, and orientation process into manageable components and suggests practical and effective techniques to help directors find competent and capable teachers for their program.

This session provides a comprehensive, integrated model for creating a professional learning community. Through the lens of continuous quality improvement, participants learn how developmental supervision, teacher induction, individual learning plans, peer learning teams, and 360-degree feedback can help them achieve their vision of program excellence.

Building trust and a spirit of collaboration in early childhood programs is central to achieving high-performing work teams. Meaningful involvement in decision making is one way that trust and commitment to organizational goals can be achieved. This session presents a framework for analyzing different types of decisions in program management and how directors can move to a more participatory process in achieving organizational goals.

This session looks at the importance of staff meetings as the primary vehicle for staff development and community building. Topics include an analysis of social interaction in groups and how interpersonal orientation among group members affects group functioning. A key focus is applying methods for managing meetings that achieve maximum participant satisfaction and productivity in a minimum amount of time.