Beyond The Pod: S5E2: What Defines High-Quality Early Childhood Education?
In the second episode of Season 5 of our hit podcast, “No One is Coming to Save Us,” host and veteran reporter Gloria Riviera is joined by Dr. Junlei Li, Saul Zaentz Lecturer in Early Childhood Education and Faculty Co-Chair of The Human Development and Education Program, to explore what is truly at the foundation of high-quality early learning and to spotlight the many places where children can experience it.
As you’ll hear, the reality is that high-quality child care isn’t about fancy buildings or high-tech classrooms—it’s about fostering meaningful relationships between caregivers and children and building a strong foundation for early learning and childhood development.
“Anyone who's ever dropped off their children for the very first time at a preschool and at child care understands how important it is for that child to learn to trust that adult there,” says Li.
Quality care and education are found in environments where children feel welcome, safe, and valued, and where children can be active participants, fully engaged in their learning. More than anything, it requires equipping educators with the skills—and, importantly, the supports—to deeply know a child and to understand their needs and how to meet them. Every interaction, no matter how small, is an opportunity to support both learning and relationship-building.
To ensure that all children have access to high-quality care, we need an early education and care system that properly values and supports early educators. Unfortunately, society has historically treated early educators more like babysitters and less like professionals, and more needs to be done to invest in them as valued teachers and caregivers, which includes paying them professional wages, ensuring that they have access to benefits, and providing ongoing professional development and career advancement opportunities.
Neighborhood Villages understands that early educators are the foundation of high-quality education, which is why we invest in their career advancement and ongoing professional learning while fighting for the investment of public dollars needed to raise their wages and ensure that they are treated as the teachers that they are.
Here’s how:
In 2023, we launched our Registered Apprenticeship Program to address the early educator workforce crisis in Massachusetts and provide career advancement opportunities for educators. The program combines onsite job coaching and mentoring with skills training and incremental wage increases as competency and knowledge progress, working to ensure that each apprentice is supported through their professional development journey.
Through this program, we’ve already supported more than 150 educators working toward their Child Development Associate (CDA) or Director certification and more than 50 educators in our Early Childhood Emerging Leaders (ECEL) program. Our program is now the largest early childhood Registered Apprenticeship Program in the state and the first in the country to graduate educators seeking to become program directors upon completing their apprenticeship year.
In May 2024, we also proudly launched the toddler component of Learning Through Exploration, our free, play-based learning curriculum. Created in partnership with the LEGO Foundation and Boston Public Schools Department of Early Childhood, this open-ended curriculum fosters emergent, play-based learning, and allows children to explore topics in-depth at a developmentally appropriate pace.
Additionally, for the last three years, we’ve hosted professional development days for educators and providers. Join us for our upcoming one, Playtopia, on Saturday, May 31st! Get tickets here!
Neighborhood Villages invests in early educators because they are the bedrock of high-quality early education—which is what all of our children deserve.