Professional Development Plan

Alaska SEED’s Three-Year Professional Development Plan (2018-2021)

Updated: July 2018

Mission:

To provide leadership and stewardship for a comprehensive, collaborative early childhood system of professional development that integrates,
unites and advances the needs of a diverse workforce, including all sectors that serve children from prenatal through age 12 and their
families.

Scope:

Alaska’s System for Early Education Development is a professional development system for early childhood educators in Alaska. SEED’s goals
are to create an infrastructure for professional development, provide direct assistance to early childhood educators to pursue their
educational goals, build workforce capacity, and advance the profession.

Celebration of Successes from 2015 PD Plan: Sharing those items that we have accomplished recently that we are proud of. By sharing, we motivate and inspire future work!

  1. ROOTS Awards Celebration ($741,000 awarded)
  2. 2017 SEED Career Ladder update
  3. February 2018: Roll-out of SEED Trainer and Training Approval System (62 approved trainings, 20 basic Trainers, 5 other Trainers)
  4. April 2018: SEED Core Knowledge and Competencies 2nd Edition
  5. May 2018: King Tech Early Childhood Education Program advocacy efforts

Lessons Learned from 2015 PD Plan: Experience that is instructive to our future – what works well and what should not be repeated. These will serve as operating principles that guide our journey into the future:

  1. Align with national requirements and movement when possible. There is power in the profession nationally. Learn from what other states
    have done. Make it feasible with where Alaska is truly at and be willing to grow.
  2. Advocate for SEED regardless of what hat you’re wearing and where you are – keep promoting ALL the programs that you are involved in.
  3. Align and integrate with other key stakeholders in the state. Partnership and collaboration is POWERFUL! Leverage those partnerships
    and collaborations.
  4. Perseverance is sometimes necessary – especially with the best of intent!
  5. Create a better feedback loop to/from the consumer (the population that we are serving). Get current and valid data from where the
    field is at currently and the real-world impact of the decision (financial, time, and resource bottom-line). 
  6. Clarity on the decision-making process and who needs to be at the table to make the decision is important in advance. (Governance structure)

Foundational Focus Items: A paradigm that will be included at every level of our strategic progress!

  1. Culturally and linguistically responsive
  2. Addressing all ages (prenatal through 12)
  3. All program types
  4. Inclusive care and education
  5. Inclusive pathways to support a diverse workforce
  6. Trauma-informed

Focus Area 1: Multiple Pathways on the Career Ladder

  1. Description: Explore alternative pathways to advance early childhood (EC) and school-age (SA) professionals on the Career Ladder.
  2. Goal(s): (1) Inclusive of all individuals from all program types; (2) Create credentials and certificate program for Administrator,
    Child Care Associate, Infant/Toddler, and School-Age tracks.

Focus Area 2: Workforce Data and Evaluation

  1. Description: Using data for internal and external accountability, decision making, and an indication of the value of the services that
    SEED delivers across all program types.
  2. Goal(s): (1) Collect data for advocacy and outreach, outcome statements to measure the impact of SEED; (2) Strengthen efforts to capture
    consistent, clean data on the early education and school age workforce.

Focus Area 3: Update Core Knowledge and Competencies (CKC)

  1. Description: Update CKC to incorporate foundation focus areas.
  2. Goal: Updated CKCs within 3 years to incorporate foundation focus areas.

Focus Area 4: Marketing and Outreach

  1. Description: Outreach to community members, early educations, and families to share the importance of what SEED is doing.
  2. Goal(s): (1) Create a public awareness and advocacy campaign; (2) Survey Early Educators; (3) Explore providing CKCs at the IMH Conference
    in April as a pilot; (4) Enhance information and education to programs regarding the services available to families with infants
    and young children with disabilities.

Focus Area 5: Early Educator Supports

  1. Description: Develop robust early education support system.
  2. Goal(s): (1) Funding for EC is sustainable and adequate; (2) Early educators are aware of the array of supports and resources; financial,
    education, coaching, mentoring, technical assistance, and training; (3) Increase number and quality of EC educators who work with
    infant and toddlers; (4) Build creative partnerships to support the EC workforce

Focus Area 6: Compensation

  1. Description: Identify and develop wage incentive programs to lower teacher turnover.
  2. Goal(s): (1) Increase early educators’ wages through leveraging multiple financial paths; (2) Align financial incentives and resources
    with SEED Career Ladder; (3) Workforce initiatives align with national and/or statewide initiatives.

Key Element I (from 2015): Quality Assurance

  1. Description: Continuously improving the approval, evaluation, and monitoring processes, and accreditation.
  2. Goal(s): (1) Implement Phase II of the Trainer Training Approval System by 2021; (2) Implement new Database System

Key Element II (from 2015): Governance

  1. Description: Alaska SEED Governance structure
  2. Goal(s): (1) Governance charter for SEED completed with system operations, decision-making process, and roles and responsibilities,
    public feedback; (2) Greater engagement from non-Anchorage based agencies and individuals.

Alaska SEED Committees of the SEED Steering Committee:

  • Governance
  • Career Ladder
  • Trainer & Training Approval
  • Registry & Workforce Data
  • Fund Development (includes wage compensation)
  • Professional Development/PDTR (w/ thread)
  • CKC (Hold)
  • Coaching
  • Marketing & Outreach