Early Childhood Educators Enter the Workforce
Last fall, the BDCC sponsored an Early Childhood Educators training for New Vermonters, in partnership with Building Bright Futures, Winston Prouty, CCV Northern Lights and our regions English-Language Learning educators.
Sixteen students enrolled in the initial preparatory course for the VECF-funded BDCC pilot program in spring 2023. BDCC brought on an English Language Learner (ELL) teacher, Julie Dolan from World Learning in Brattleboro, to deliver a six-week language intensive focused specifically on the vocabulary used in the Fundamentals for Early Childhood Professionals course. The class met twice a week at the Multicultural Community Center of Southern Vermont, a branch office of the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC). Two translators attended each class, one for Pashto and Dari and another for French, in order to facilitate communication with students from Afghanistan, Eritrea, and the Central African Republic.
All of the enrollees were women, most of them with multiple young children at home, many of whom with experience in the classroom and working with youth in their home countries. The 16 participants had 19 young children who required care during classes. It was essential for the program to incorporate no-cost, on-site child minding.
At the end of the six-week ELL course, eight of the 16 participants were prepared to move on to the next phase, which was held at The Winston Prouty Center for Child and Family Development. The location gave class members the opportunity to visit Winston Prouty’s early childhood classrooms during the course of the training. For this portion of the training, BDCC brought Julie Dolan, the ELL teacher, back on board to co-teach with Rachel Hunter, the Fundamentals teacher, and Jeryl Julian-Cisse of Vermont Adult Learning, to ensure everyone’s language needs were met.
After lots of hard work, training, and perseverance, 5 individuals graduated the Fundamentals of Early Childhood Education training, which allows them to work as assistant teachers in childcare classrooms across Vermont.
Currently, the BDCC and our partners at Vermont Department of Labor are working to connect graduates with paid work experiences, internships, and both full- and part-time employment. Some graduates plan to continue their education; some hope to open their own, home-based centers. Three are in or preparing to enter work experiences within childcare centers, taking the next step towards a career in child development and edcuation.
About Welcoming Communities
Welcoming Communities is a series of initiatives and collaborative partnerships that seeks to make the region more equitable and inclusive for current and future BIPOC community members, and for foreign-born workers, and non-citizen residents. It seeks to improve the ways in which all BDCC programs serve diverse stakeholders, and launches new targeted activities through partnerships with employers and community-based organizations. The long-term goal of Welcoming Communities is to build a community and economy that supports diversity, immigration and in-migration to southern Vermont to increase the vitality of our communities and strength of our workforce. For more information please visit www.brattleborodevelopment.com
