The Dream.

This is it, I am ready. My first day as a child care center director. I have so many plans! I can’t wait to “fix” things and make it my center.

The Reality.

I get to the center and six people have quit. I have one staff member and myself. My eight years as an assistant director at a stable center did not prepare me for this situation, neither did my years spent in the classroom. When I reached out to the district manager she told me to “figure it out” and “by the way don’t forget the financials are due to corporate office on Friday.” I had never interviewed anyone, much less knew my role as a director because there was not any training or professional development before taking the role – there wasn’t even a manual to guide me.

Sadly, this is the reality of many directors. They are great in the classroom and so they are moved to a leadership position, but they haven’t been taught the skills or been given the resources needed to be successful. A director should have skills in human resources, customer service, financial requirements, state requirements, educational experience and much more. Teachers are given professional development as a requirement for hours they need by the state and have many choices. Directors also need these continuing education hours, but it can be challenging to find options that really meet the director’s needs.

Camp Fire has made sure that in our professional development classes, directors have a wide variety of topics to choose from.

Directors also have a great resource tool in McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership. The institute developed a tool called Program Administrator Scale (PAS) to assess where the director needs support. It is very helpful to a new director who is in survival mode and doesn’t know what they need to improve on. There was a research study done in 2006 by the Metropolitan Council on Early Learning (MCEL), that documented that directors who had professional development training had a higher score on the PAS.

Camp Fire has a School Readiness program that not only provides professional development for the teacher, but has intensive professional development for the directors as well. In fact, even experienced directors are learning new strategies in working with their staff.

Professional development is crucial at every turn in the field of early childhood education, but even more so to be an effective director and avoid burn out. In those first months of being a director I worked 70 hours a week. Going to professional development helped revive me and let me have discussions with other directors about some of their challenges as well. This is a comment we hear many times at Camp Fire, that the component of networking is wanted in professional development classes.

In the end, a trained director will help make a center run smoother for the children and that’s why we are really here.

Jan Katchmazenski is the School Readiness Program Director at Camp Fire First Texas. Jan brings extensive child care experience to Camp Fire as she has previously worked as a parent educator, childcare director and special needs aide. Jan holds an associate degree in mental health from Tarrant County Community College, a bachelor’s degree in child development from Texas Woman’s University and a master’s degree in child development from Texas Woman’s University.