Making your child care center a great place to work is key to educators’ well-being and success, as well as to the happiness and success of the children your center educates!
Happy workplaces make happy teachers! Building a positive culture means employees feel valued, respected and heard and will help with child care staff retention.
Let’s look at ways to build a positive work environment by boosting morale and creating a feeling of connection among colleagues on a personal level!
Be a Servant Leader
Offer to help your teachers with anything at any time. Always have a smile on your face. Model the behavior and body language you want to see in your staff.
Greet each member of your team by name, every day.
Get to know each member of your team. Ask them about their career goals and where they see themselves in five years – and make sure they know it’s ok if it’s not with your organization!
Also ask how they prefer to receive praise as well as feedback on ways to improve.
You’re the boss but finding ways to meet an employee’s individual needs makes you a true leader.
Schedule 15-Minute Meetings With Team Members
Keep this meeting very informal. The focus of this meeting should be to check in on your staff member. These kinds of conversations build trust and a strong connection between you and your employee.
Make sure this meeting is about your staff member. Ask about his or her family or about an employee’s interests outside of work, such as hobbies. Try to avoid talk about work, if you can.
Let the employee guide the conversation but ask if there is anything troubling the employee or that the employee wished could be different at work.
Offer coffee or another drink, and it never hurts to have chocolate or sweets on hand!
Encourage Staff Development
Start with celebrating accomplishments (in addition special events and birthdays). Did a parent mention to you how much his or child is learning? Make sure the staff member knows! Be sure to tell the staff member, but also highlight it on a bulletin board or in a staff meeting!
And at staff meetings, ask teachers to lead portions. This shows you trust them. You also can show how much you value them by delegating leadership duties to them.
Professional development is key as well. Employee retention rates rise by 30-50% when companies prioritize staff learning.
Attend courses with your employees. And consider hosting your own professional development day at your child care center or daycare!
Help Teachers With an ECE Curriculum
As a child care center leader, you must find ways to lower the risk of burnout for your staff members. One way to do that is to offer a simple, digital curriculum tailored to young learners.
The 2023 Child Care Management Software Industry Trends Report from Procare Solutions found that 20% of those who responded to the survey used to compile the report cited issues with creating curriculum.
The average time spent preparing curriculum is 3.5 hours a week and 37% of the programs surveyed are creating their own curriculum. This is time that teachers are not in the classroom.
Also, one-third of respondents still rely on paper-based curriculum, which becomes outdated quickly and often is cumbersome to understand — especially for teachers with little experience.
Finding a good daycare curriculum can be hard, yet it’s important. A strong digital curriculum that’s easy to use supports your teachers and can ease some of the stress they encounter each day.
Procare Early Learning powered by Learning Beyond Paper is an all-digital curriculum specifically designed to meet the unique needs of educating children from infancy through pre-kindergarten.
It embeds Learning Beyond Paper’s early childhood curriculum, which was designed by educators with decades of combined experience, into Procare, making it easier and less time-consuming for busy teachers and administrators to provide high-quality education.
With Procare Early Learning by Learning Beyond Paper, child care centers can:
- Equip teachers with state-of-the-art online curriculum at their fingertips
- Dramatically reduce the amount of time spent on lesson planning each week
- Offer children a high-quality, developmentally appropriate curriculum
- Save money with this cost-efficient solution that’s integrated with Procare
This curriculum can be used in ALL child care center classrooms, with 52 weeks of lesson plans and more than 4,000 daily activities for infants, toddlers, preschoolers and pre-kindergarteners. Learning areas include STEAM, language and literacy, physical development, cognitive, music and movement as well as interactive reading. Plus, teachers get tips and tools they can use in real time.
Request a demo today to learn more about how an all-digital curriculum can support your staff!
