Exploring Roles in the ECE Community at the National Level

This week, I am shifting my focus toward exploring national organizations that support my passion for the early childhood field. The first organization that I am focusing on is the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). NAEYC is an organization that sets the standard for quality early childhood services and promotes an understanding of the development of young children. An ideal employment opportunity at NAEYC would be becoming the Senior Director for the NAEYC Academy for Early Childhood Program Accreditation (http://www.naeyc.org/about/jobs). This position features an inclusive list of requirements and credentials for an educator to achieve, but the rewards would be tremendous. As a young educator, I strive to learn all that I can in the early childhood field so that I can take a leadership position and share my knowledge with other young professionals to inspire them to take initiative and advocate for high quality early childhood practices. Ultimately, I would love to achieve a top leadership role with NAEYC or similar national early childhood organization because I believe I have the passion and need to improve educational experiences for all children.

The next national organization that I am exploring is Zero to Three, which is a national non-profit organization that provides professional development, resources, and information to educators and families interested in learning more about early development in children. Zero to Three believes that play is the a child's work, allowing them to develop a sense of the world around them and make significant gains in all areas of their development ( http://www.zerotothree.org/child-development/play/). As an early childhood educator, I am passionate about spreading the word about the importance of play in fostering a young child's development. An employment position with Zero to Three that I would be interested in pursuing is an Assistant Director that specializes in coordinating technical assistance for the home visiting aspect of the organization. My experience working with Early Head Start has enabled me to understand the importance of promoting the idea that parents are a child's first teacher and providing families with the knowledge and training to understand their child's development. In the Assistant Director position, I would be responsible for coordinating training staff to provide services to meet the training needs of the home visiting grantees. While I currently do not have professional experience coordinating training opportunities for other trainers, it is definitely an aspect of my career that I would like to develop.

The other national organization that I am focusing on is the United States Department of Education. The U.S. Department of Education is responsible for monitoring funding to support state and local educational initiatives to improve student achievement. Federal research provides the foundation for the initiation of key educational issues in the United States and around the world. The underlying purpose of the U.S. Department of Education is to retrieve data about state and local school performance and education-based trends to identify areas for improvement. As an early childhood educator, I understand that even though schools are mainly funded at the state and local level, supportive funds and national programmatic changes begin at the federal level. The Supervisory Education Program Specialist position, offered by the U.S. Department of Education, features the opportunity to serve in a new role that looks to improve communications between the state and federal levels of education (https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/381519000). Goals for this position are to monitor the State Support Teams to ensure they are effectively serving the needs of federally funded state-level agencies and work with educational agencies at the local, state, and federal level to share education data to improve student achievement.

The process of reviewing national early childhood organizations has truly been informative. It has enabled me to gain a better understanding of the missions driving some of the organizations that I often turn to for resource information and professional support. The description of qualifications for the employment opportunities that I have listed have also educated me in showing me the potential that I have for serving our country and early childhood industry as a key leader in the early childhood field.