Professional Opportunities and Organizations

As I have researched a community of practice to support professional development opportunties for the early childhood workforce, I have been introduced to many new national and local organizations that advocate on behalf of teachers and the children and families they serve. One organization that has a very recent publication from 2018 about improving the workforce is called the Early Childhood Workforce Initative. This is an international organization dedicated to promoting quality care for children and for supporting teachers, supervisors, and other professionals that work with children birth through age 8. One interesting aspect of this organization is that they offer competencies and standards-- I have found these documents, like those similar ones from NAEYC and the DEC to be very helpful to my practice, so I think this is a worthwhile organization to look into.
Their website can be found at http://www.earlychildhoodworkforce.org/

Another organization I found useful in my studies over the past several weeks has been the Center on Enhancing Early Learning Outcomes. There are 22 of these offices accross the nation and are federally funded to improve quality in early childhood programs. Their mission is to strenghten state-led initiatives and offices to form more cohesive and successful policies. They publish a lot of research summaries that are easily accesable and written in plain English, so their resources are both helpful and understandable. I chose this organization because they have one mission which is to improve the existing system of education through research and evidence and they have a lot of power and jurisdiction in terms of making positive change happen. Their website can be found here http://ceelo.org/

The final organization I chose is the National Research Council. Though research is often easily accessible, the National Research Council publishes and conducts studies that are relevant to the trends and issues in our field, and even summarizes these studies so that they are more accesible to professionals. Their mission is to inform government decision-making and policy improvement by asking and answering questions that are posed by current frameworks of practice. Their role is important because they investigate ways to improve our systems in very hands-on ways. Their research has the capacity to pave new pathways for policies in the early childhood field. Their website can be found here http://www.nationalacademies.org/nasem/

The jobs that I am most interested in involve teaching adults in the early childhood field in university or college contexts. I found many job opportunities that fit well with my expectations, and I am learning that many of these jobs request similar skills and experience in order to apply.  One job for a position at Mayville State University requests applicants have served in supervisory roles, have a research statement, and experience with educational assessment. Similarly, North Carolina State University has a professor of early childhood position opening, which requests experience on state or national levels engaging in policy work and work leading research teams. Conversely, an assistant professor of education position in Missouri has little prerequisites listed in their advertisement, asking only for a Master's degree, expereince teaching, and knowledge of the professional development system. Each of these jobs has a wide variety of expectations, and has left me recognizing my need to become more involved in our field and with policies and leadership in order to pursue my career moving forward.