Know

Though you likely became an early-childhood or school-age care professional because you enjoy caring for children, as a coach you spend most of your time helping your adult coworkers meet professional goals and provide high-quality care. Research has shown that when you attend to and support adult caregivers, you directly invest in children’s development and help them grow to become healthy adults who give back to society. While the influence of children’s families cannot be undervalued, some of the children in your program may spend as much time in out-of-home care as they do with their families at home. For this reason, as a coach and program leader, you have the important responsibility of making sure that direct care staff in your program fulfill their duty to support all parts of children’s development and well-being.

The Importance of Professional Development for Child Care Staff

育儿工作人员有不同程度的经验，教育和技能。您是否与教学或儿童开发有关的学位或凭证或私人​​教育领域的职位，他们将需要在其职业生涯的过程中维护和发展他们的专业实践和知识。持续专业发展的重要原因包括：

Advances in Child Development Research

通过儿童开发研究，我们每天学习新事物，了解儿童需要达到全力的潜力。尽管如此，神话仍然坚持孩子如何学习和发展。考虑我们对儿童发展研究所带来的学习过程的理解的最新变化。狗万app怎么下载

Unfortunately, many parents and even some of the staff working in your program may not be aware that these myths have been supassed by new research. Lack of information and limited opportunities to learn affect the beliefs and practices of program staff. As child development research has expanded, we no longer believe children are sponges who learn by passively receiving information, and we expect caregivers to do more than they did in the past. We now know that meeting children’s basic needs is much more than making sure they are clean, fed, and supervised. Children must also have responsive caregivers who have the knowledge and skills to provide enriching learning experiences that support all parts of child development, including emotional and physical safety. Without this support, some children who are biologically more vulnerable to the effects of stress and adverse experiences are more likely to have poor health and learning outcomes. Fortunately, supportive relationships and high-quality learning experiences can act as protective factors to help counteract this vulnerability and benefit all children.

Diverse Children and Families

虽然老师扮演着重要的角色,家庭基于“增大化现实”技术e the most influential people in children’s lives. To provide the highest quality of care, child care programs must collaborate and co-care with children’s families. Your program should be more than a place that children are dropped off at while their parents go to work. Instead, think of the role of your program and your relationships with families as a shared partnership in caring for their children. In this partnership, you will work with families to more fully understand how their children learn best and how you can help all children feel a sense of belonging. As the United States population grows more diverse and the dynamics of families change, child care staff need to be culturally competent—able to work cross-culturally with those who have different languages, sexual orientations, religions, racial and ethnic backgrounds, disabilities, and beliefs. For both individual staff members and program-wide, cultural competence develops over time with support and a defined set of values, practices, and policies. Awareness and reflection, both components of coaching, are essential to evolve the cultural competence of a community of learners.

Increased Standards of Care

正如我们更多地了解投资高素质的幼儿，国家和系统都会创造了最低标准的保健标准，共同称为质量评级和改进系统（QRIS）。QRIS标准允许早期儿童和学龄龄计划根据其计划质量接收评级。评级为育儿计划提供反馈，以便他们可以针对所需的改进领域，并提供具有可靠信息的家庭，以帮助他们选择一个程序。旨在保护儿童健康和安全的许可法规，通常与QRIS结合使用。在许多质量评级和改进系统中，许可法规授权基准，其中包括支持儿童学习和建立在更高评级水平的额外实践的额外做法。狗万app怎么下载虽然室外护理的标准增加了对儿童和家庭的更多保证，但可能没有准备一些直接护理人员和计划以满足所有标准。

不同的知识和技能水平

As a教练，教练或管理员, it is your role to support staff in carrying out the increasing, complex demands placed on professional caregivers. This is challenging because direct care staff members have a wide range of job experiences, formal education, and skills. Some staff members may have an associate or bachelor’s degree but limited on-the-job experience. Others may have a high school diploma but have worked in child care programs for many years. Some staff are quick learners who easily pick up on practices and procedures, while others may need repeated and targeted support. There may be more seasoned staff in your program who, despite their proven high-quality caregiving practices, need a lot of support in collaborating with families with diverse beliefs on child-rearing. For some, especially those who have not spent most of their lives using computers, using the internet to access information and complete professional development tasks may be a challenge. Because the needs of program staff vary, you will need to be flexible and patient and have the ability to cater your support to adults with a wide range of learning needs.

An Introduction to the Virtual Lab School

一个支持成人学习者的可访问系统

You may remember when most people went to the library to research a topic. And you may have had the frustrating experience of needing the newest edition of a costly textbook that reprints every year. Difficulty accessing information, whether due to location, cost, or some other barrier, can affect the quality of an individual’s caregiving practices and entire child care programs. Because of tight budgets, most administrators are unable to invest significant program funds into books or other professional development resources for all staff or to send their entire staff to in-person workshops every year. Despite these challenges, child care programs must have ways to ensure that staff members have access to ongoing professional development so they can meet the expectations of licensing bodies, professional standards, and families.

The Virtual Lab School (VLS) is an online professional development system initially created to provide the U.S. military child care system with a unified framework of information, resources, and tools. Accessibility was at the forefront when the original creators began to think about what a comprehensive system should look like. The VLS is available to anyone with a computer or device and the internet, and it is continually updated to reflect new research and practice guidelines. The VLS is not meant to be a stand-alone textbook of information; rather, VLS website content is complemented and strengthened by on-the-ground coaching provided by教练,教练,和管理员. You will learn more about using the VLS website to support coaching implementation in Lesson Two.

Reliably Sourced and Centralized Information

Advances in technology have made it easier to access information, but with these advances comes the challenge of making sure program staff use factual resources guided by standards in the field of child and youth development. It can be difficult, especially when searching internet resources, to find reliably sourced information versus a personal opinion or anecdote, and most child care staff have limited on-the-job time to search and discern such information. Also, there are differences in care and educational practices for different age groups, and national organizations such as the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), ZERO TO THREE, the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), and the National Afterschool Association (NAA) cater their information to specific audiences. It is most efficient for all program staff, regardless of role, to have a centralized platform with a consistent structure. The VLS team reviews relevant organizational recommendations, peer-reviewed journals, policy briefs, and user feedback and interprets this information, integrating it into the VLS system so that it most effectively, and efficiently, speaks to child care professionals’ specific roles.

Streamlining Staff Mobility

鉴于为童营行业的工作人员在年龄组之间转移，一些工作人员可能需要熟悉多种信息来源，以支持来自出生12岁的儿童。该VLS人行横道, which you will learn more about in later lessons, is a reference guide to support staff members who change age-based program placements, helping them build on existing knowledge and gain relevant new information based on all the children they care for. A centralized system of professional development allows for this shift to be a more seamless transition.

Consistent Structure

熟悉的结构VLS帮助哟u maximize its helpfulness. The VLS broadly serves child care professionals working with children ages birth to 12 in early-childhood, school-age, and family child care programs. It offers six tracks, including three for center-based professionals caring for infants and toddlers, preschoolers, and school-age children.Coaches and program administratorseach have a track, and there is also a track for family child care providers who typically care for mixed-age groups.

在每个跟踪15的基础课程include the 13 functional areas of the Child Development Associate competency standards and two additional courses on Child Abuse Prevention and Child Abuse Identification and Reporting. There are also several Focused Topics courses that are not track-specific and are meant for a variety of audiences—center-based, family child care, support staff, and program leadership. Focused Topics courses complement the information in the Foundational Courses and provide knowledge and strategies relevant to specialized content areas.

就像孩子一样，当存在一致的期望和常规时，成年人学到最佳。在每个课程中，VLS课程遵循主角框架：学习，探索，申请和演示。

1. Learn

   The main lesson content exists within this section and provides information about child development, caregiving and teaching strategies, and other practical knowledge. The Learn section contains Know, See, and Do subheadings within the direct care and family child care tracks. In the Training & Curriculum Specialist track, these subheadings are titled: Teach, Model, and Observe. Finally, the Management track labels these subheadings Know and Supervise & Support. Most lessons throughout the VLS contain short videos that coincide with the lesson content and include footage from child care programs or interviews of experts, staff, and families. Some lessons have a Learn activity at the end of the section that provides additional information.

2. Explore

   The Explore section of the lesson provides you with the opportunity to use and reflect on the lesson content by completing an activity that may include reflection on your own experiences relative to the lesson content, case studies, scenarios responses, observation and reflection activities, opportunities to create something relative to the lesson content, or reviewing other sources of information related to the lesson.

3. Apply

   The Apply section provides tools to support the continued implementation of the key ideas within the lesson content to your work. Apply activities may include key resources to share with families, checklists or program tools that support the continued use of key practices, or essential resources related to essential content or practices within the lesson.

4. Demonstrate

   Just above the Glossary, you will find the Demonstrate section which contains a short multiple-choice quiz to reinforce your understanding of the lesson’s main concepts.

Some of the Explore and Apply activities will have a star，表明他们需要完成课程。您必须登录到VLS以查看是否需要活动。其他不重新要求的活动是有额外的支持，一些计划教练可能要求直接护理人员完成不重新要求的活动，以加强某些概念。在每节课结束时，有一个引用和资源部分，您将找到引用的课程内容来源，并链接到与该主题相关的其他信息。

The Virtual Lab School website also contains two other helpful resources that can enhance your success at using the professional development system:

• 搜索

  搜索功能可用于快速查找有关一系列主题的目标信息。当您为员工提供个性化的目标支持时，此功能可能特别有助于教练。

• 支持

  The Support link can be used to access a number of Support articles

See

Listen as key leaders at Virtual Lab School describe the overarching goals and core principles of the Virtual Lab School professional development system.

做

当您第一次开始使用虚拟实验室学校时，很容易混淆本课程中提到的一些万博体育下载手机版组件，例如track相对courseorFoundational Courses相对万博体育下载手机版. Take some time to familiarize yourself with these components on the VLS website by doing the following:

1. 找出Menu button to discover how to navigate to the six VLS tracks: Infant & Toddler, Preschool, School Age, Family Child Care, Training & Curriculum Specialist, and Management.
2. Choose any one of the six tracks and navigate to that track’s Foundational Course page. Do you see all 15 Foundational Courses?
3. Choose a Foundational Course to examine the LEAD framework. Select the first lesson of the course and skim the Learn section. Does this lesson have a Learn activity? If so, it will appear at the end of the Learn section, but not all lessons have a Learn activity.
4. 继续检查课程以找到探索和应用部分。请注意，他们有简短的介绍性段落，以至于将您定向到计划活动。查看一些探索并申请活动，以查看他们的工作方式。
5. 找到词汇表，演示测验和参考和资源部分到课程结束。
6. Use the Menu button again and navigate to the Focused Topics page. What course titles do you see there?
7. Choose any Focused Topics course and navigate to any lesson within it. Find all of the components of the LEAD (Learn, Explore, Apply, Demonstrate) framework in the lesson.
8. Use the Search feature to find targeted information on various topics.
9. 找出支持按钮访问许多支持文章。

Completing this Course

这篇介绍性课程朝向你的结构ure and use of the Virtual Lab School. The Using the VLS: Coaching to Enhance Practice course primarily supports program coaches; however, it is recommended that you use the materials within this course with direct care staff who are new to your program or have not used the VLS before to introduce them to the VLS structure, professional development expectations, and what to expect from their coach. Please refer to the Using the VLS: Coaching to Enhance Practice课程指南to preview the rest of the lessons and activities for this Focused Topics course.