EarlyEdU Alliance: Transforming Early Childhood Teacher Development

EarlyEdU Alliance: Transforming Early Childhood Teacher Development

Janie Koslowski: Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the webinar. My name is Janie Koslowski.  I'm the State Childcare Professional Development Coordinator with the National Center  on Early Childhood Development Teaching and Learning. We have over 1,000 participants  on the webinar today from all across the country. Thank you for putting in your  city and state in the chat box. We're so glad to have you all with us.

All of your phone lines are  muted during the webinar, and so please use the chat box at the top right corner of your screen if you have questions or if you'd like to make comments during the webinar. Today's webinar is being recorded, and that recording will be posted to the ECLKC in several weeks. There will be closed captioning  on today's webinar, and so if you look down at the lower part of your screen, you'll see where the closed  captioning is being typed in.

Today, NCECDTL is pleased to host the second webinar in our series of Innovative  Practices Webinars. For the webinar today, Katie Emerson-Hoss and Randy Shapiro from the University of Washington will be presenting on the EarlyEdU Alliance and its possibilities for transforming early childhood teacher development. Katie Emerson-Hoss has a PhD. She is the Outreach and Implementation Manager for the EarlyEdU Alliance. Katie is responsible for outreach to the stakeholders at the state level as well as faculty and administrators at higher education institutions. As a regional field specialist with NCQTL, Katie worked with federal staff in region two to design, pilot, and implement a regional grantee support and development process, and she also helped launch the Practice-Based Coaching Initiative.

Randy Shapiro is the executive director of the EarlyEdU Alliance within the College of Education at the University of Washington. She oversees the program and works locally and nationally to forge partnerships that support its mission to help teachers earn meaningful Bachelor's degrees in Early Childhood Education. Previously, Randy was the executive director of NCQTL, which stands for the National Center on Quality Teaching and Learning. Randy, unfortunately, is getting over a cold right now, so she has a little bit of a scratchy voice. She'll primarily be listening, but she is on the call. And she will be monitoring the chat box for us, and she's available to answer your questions. Thanks so much to both Katie and Randy for joining us today. So now I'm going to turn it over to Katie.

Katie Emerson-Hoss: Thank you so much, Janie, and to all of the staff at NCECDTL who invited us and set up this webinar for us. We're really looking forward to sharing what we're up to out in the field and to hear your questions. And it's thrilling to see  all of these names and places scrolling through the chat window. The EarlyEdU Alliance's effort is to transform the early childhood teacher development, and that is a big task.

And we'll start to break it down as we go along. EarlyEdU Alliance was developed to help teachers in early care and education to get Bachelor's degrees that matter. We know that affordability, access, relevance, and effectiveness are barriers for many early childhood teachers looking to get degrees. Degree programs are often too expensive. Even if they're able to afford  it and find a program, the coursework may not be explicitly linked to the work they do in the field, and they often don't have enough opportunities to practice and improve the specific skills they need to be effective teachers.

One of the other barriers that we know is important for early childhood teachers is the barrier of connection. All too often, students, especially in online programs, don't feel connected to their institution, their peers, and their instructors, leading to serial completion of coursework that may not get them any closer to a degree. Helping students build those  important connections is essential to increasing the rate of degree completion among early childhood teachers. Students need and want to feel connected to the school and program they attend. EarlyEdU Alliance is addressing  that important barrier, as well, working with local institutions of Higher Ed across the country to deliver courses, support faculty skill and teaching online, and embedding communities of practice within all the courses.

What is the EarlyEdU Alliance? It's a collaborative effort nationally to improve access to affordable and effective Bachelor's degrees, and we're doing this through a network of institutions of Higher Ed through using innovative and competency-based courses that were developed by national experts at the University of Washington  and other partner institutions. We're also doing this work  through state-based teams who are working together to improve access to affordable degrees.

How did we begin? Well, we began out of the National Center for  Quality Teaching and Learning, which was funded by the Office of Head Start and led by the University of Washington. It was created to develop and disseminate training materials for Head Start teachers and other Early Childhood teachers to improve child outcomes. As part of that work,  there was a Higher Ed objective, where we developed innovative, competency-based courses for Head Start and other early childhood teachers. Our goal was to provide courses and use of a coaching companion  to local institutions to support effective and relevant Bachelor degree completion.  We're also wanting to build  a national alliance to improve access to those degrees and those degree programs.

Our work began before this report came out. This is a report that came out  from the Institute of Medicine. "Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth through 8: A Unifying Foundation." And this really confirmed the work that we had been doing when this report came out in 2015 that really recommends that in order to transform the early childhood workforce, you really need to build an  interdisciplinary foundation in higher education for child development. To also develop and enhance programs in Higher Ed for care and  education professionals. And this is what we have been working on.

So our goal -- the EarlyEdU Alliance's goals are to improve access to affordable Bachelor degrees, especially for early childhood teachers who may be returning to the field to complete their degrees, and  then to ensure the relevance and effectiveness of those degrees through competency-based higher  education courses. So that students are really graduating with a degree that has prepared them for  the work they need to do in the classroom to improve  child and family outcomes.

Who is the EarlyEdU Alliance for? Well, it was developed for students, and particularly students working in the field to be able to really apply the coursework to their work in the field. We have memberships in the EarlyEdU Alliance for individuals who are professionals with a relevant affiliation in the early childhood workforce. We also -- institutions of Higher Ed can join the alliance that serve the early childhood teacher population. All faculty at those institutions who join have access to the EarlyEdU materials and membership benefits. Particularly, we're reaching  out to tribal colleges, historically black colleges and universities, and Hispanic-serving institutions to ensure that we are responsive and our materials are responsive  to all early childhood teachers and the children and families they serve. States and nonprofit organizations are also important members  of the EarlyEdU Alliance, because we know that  systemically, it's important to have the state players  in workforce development at the table in order to really improve the early childhood workforce  in a way that's sustainable.

So, before we move further into the presentation, we'd really like to know who we have with us. We have over 500 participants, so if you could please answer this poll. What is your role? So we have lots of Early Head Start and Head Start program staff  with us today, which is great. We built these materials  for you to really help you in the work you're doing  and the teachers you work with. We're glad to see that we have some higher education faculty members at the table. We have some teach coordinators,  which I see in the chat box. That was not an option in the poll. So if you do not see your  role adequately reflected in the poll, please post it in the chat box because it's really important  for us to know who is here and who we're sharing this information with. So you can keep posting in the chat box, please, your roles, because, again, that's really important for  us to know who is here, and we're going to now move  back to the presentation.

So these are some of the courses that we have currently developed. These are the courses  we've currently developed. We're currently developing  additional courses to these. I'd like to just highlight some of them. Resiliency and Wellness for Educators, which is actually a course about building educator  resilience and wellness, because we know how important it is for the adults who are  taking care of our children and teaching our children to feel good about the work they're doing and to not be stressed out,  which is often part of the job. Positive behavioral  support for young children. Supporting dual language learning we know is increasingly important in the field.

Engaging interactions and environments. For all of you there with Early Head Start and Head Start, I'm sure that these are  very resonant with you and the work that you do. You'll see down here on the bottom left a link to a course sampler and then a link to the modules, and if you look on the box on the side where it says, "web links," there's EarlyEdU Alliance, which will take you to our website.

"Modules and more" will take you to some of the modules we developed for the Office of Head Start that are really sort of samples from our coursework, and then the course sampler  takes you to a link that will show you how  our courses are structured.

So when you join the EarlyEdU Alliance, other than this national collaborative effort of  institutions of Higher Ed and state-based teams, what is it? Well, there are EarlyEdU courses, and there is the coaching companion. There are online and in-person courses. All of those courses we  just saw come with a full set of course materials, including rich content, whether that's a PowerPoint  for the in-person course or lecture videos of some  sort for the online courses. Syllabus, instructor guides,  assignments, rubrics, handouts, anything you would need to  teach a semester-long course in any of those topics.

All of the courses use  communities of reflection and practice to improve teacher practice and feelings of connection, and all of the courses include  competency-based assignments to really help ensure that teachers are working on the practices that they need to have once  they get into a classroom. All of the courses use  the EarlyEdU coaching companion, which those of you in Head  Start may be somewhat familiar with a version of the coaching companion, and it's an innovative  video collaboration tools where students are able to upload videos of themselves  teaching in the classroom and get feedback from their peers and their instructors.

What makes our courses unique? We really feel we're bridging the gap between theory and practice through our competency-based assignments. Over the course of the five years of the NCQTL grants, we've collected thousands  of hours of classroom video of real teachers in real classrooms with real students, and these videos are used throughout all of our courses to help students learn about the practices and learn about what's happening  in other classrooms, as well. We use a variety of expert voices and, of course, video reflection and feedback. What are the advantages  of these courses for faculty?

Well, when you get a course, you get a complete set of course materials. You have more time to coach students because you're spending less time preparing course materials, and you get access to the high-quality videos of classroom practices. You are able to observe and  facilitate student growth, and there are multiple opportunities through the assignments and learning activities for faculty and peers to  observe and provide feedback on student teaching practices.

One of the advantages for students -- typically in a course, you hear a single voice. Through this course, you actually get access to various expert lectures. You have multiple opportunities  to observe different sites, communities, and practices,  and you get a lot of practice providing and receiving feedback, and we'll look a little bit more at that aspect of it in a few slides.

So the next few slides are our field test -- are from our field test of the coursework that we've developed at the University of Washington. So in this field test, there  were 110 students enrolled in the Early Childhood Family Studies BA completion program. Ninety-four percent of them  were currently working as early childhood professionals in the field -- in family childcare, center childcare, Head Start, Pre-K, and 29 percent of them were participating  in the state QRAS. All of the courses were built on using the intentional teaching framework, which those of you in Head Start and many others may be familiar with, the know, see, do, reflect, and improve framework of content delivery. So in the first course, we're going to really sort of look at in terms of how that gets -- how they get the work done than those who do intentional teaching framework is Engaging Interactions and  Environments course.

At the beginning of the course, students submit a baseline video  of themselves in the classroom, not necessarily doing anything specific, but working with young children. Students then attend engaging  lectures with rich media, then they look at the --  they watch other videos and identify the practices that  they are going to be working on. They reflect on their own videos, and then they try out these new practices, reflect with their community  of reflection and practice, and then submit a final video, ideally demonstrating improvements  to their practice.

So here is an example of what it looks like in the coaching companion. This would be a baseline video  that Brittany would upload. And in the know, there would be -- this is an example from the online course. There is a lecture video  delivering the content about the importance of and what it looks like to  work on those skills. And then, again, these are screenshots from the coaching companion,  the EarlyEdU coaching companion. An instructor can upload a  video reflection assignment, where the instructor provides the video and asks students to identify  specific teaching practices because we can talk about  developing emotional literacy or responsiveness, but if students don't actually  know what that looks like, it's going to be very hard for them to implement it in their classroom. So this way, you can really  work on getting students reliable and identifying what those  practices look like.

They can also upload a video and create a multiple-choice  assignment out of that, where students have a selection  of choices to choose from in terms of identifying the practices. Then they will watch their own video again to reflect on it, now that they've received some content and some context for what kind of lens they might be looking  at their own video with, and here is an example of a reflection. So after having had this content, this student really became aware that they needed to ask more  open-ended questions because for any of us who have  been in a classroom, what we think we're doing is  not always what we're doing, and so this is an incredibly effective tool at helping raise awareness, self-awareness, and then really helping students have a basis from which to make changes.

"I could have asked, 'How are they the same?' And, 'How are they different?'  But I didn't think to do that." "I don't think I personally 'think critically' enough myself," right? These are just the kind of deep reflections that we want students to start to be able to do about their practices in the classroom.

Here is another example. This is working on emotional literacy. "I am 'surprised,' a little 'disappointed,' and 'perplexed' for the lack of emotional vocabulary words I used in my baseline videos." "I noticed many engaging conversations and positive interactions," which is great, "but a lot of missed opportunities where I could have added emotional vocabulary to the conversation." Again, an example of a student without even making a plan  to do something different really starting to understand what it is that they are doing and where they're able to grow. And then back in the coaching companion, this is an assignment where you have students  upload their own videos, and now they're going to get  feedback on those videos. They've made a plan, they've  planned to implement a practice, they take a video of themselves  doing that practice, and then they upload it here to get feedback from their instructors and from their peers. And so here would be an example of that video where they're now doing the practice.

This is an example of their communities of reflection and practice -- that's what that CORP stands for. So you can build and put your  students into different groups depending on their skill level, interests, or the practices they're working on for them to work together to get better at what they're doing. So then they now reflect, provide a reflection on their video that they've uploaded to give their peers and their  instructor a rationale for why they're using what they're using. They then reflect on that. They stopped and talked  about the word "towering" and asked several questions, and then later, the best part was when one of the parents picked up a child and she looked at her dad and she said, "Dad, you really tower over me."

Again, a great example,  an opportunity for students to share their successes  in the things that please and thrill them about teaching. So this issue of feedback is really important, and so we really want students to be getting coach-level feedback, whether that's from their instructors or from their peers. So we provide students with an example of what  does that feedback look like. Starts with a positive observation, you know, you demonstrate many of the elements of this practice. You make connections to the coursework and the content. You provide a suggestion for improvement, and then you provide an encouraging end.

And so these practices,  these feedback practices, are explicitly worked on and addressed in all of the courses. So here is an example in that same course, a 10-week course, of a student providing feedback  at the beginning of the course, perfectly nice feedback. "I liked how the other boy  was offering help and quietly started to offer help for his friend. I also noticed him doing a  lot of self-talking. Good work!" Nice feedback, provides a little  bit of detail about the behavior they see  the child engaged in, but it really doesn't give  the teacher or the student who posted this video anyplace to go in terms of  improving their practice.

But then you see by the end of 10 weeks, this student has gotten  better at providing feedback. Starts out with a positive example. "This is a good example of  an engaging interaction. I like the way you asked her, 'How are we going to take  care of our ponies?'" And then you -- there's an  offer of constructive -- of something that they might  want to do, a suggestion. "You might want to show more affect when she gets happy or excited." And then also noticing  what the children are doing because, again, as we know, in the classroom, it's very hard to watch everything, and we often don't see what  all the other children are doing when we're working with a few. So this is a really important  aspect of the EarlyEdU courses is this idea of feedback and building students' capacity for feedback.

Here is another example of it. "Great activity, so involved and interested in the task of sorting!" Fine feedback does not give me coach quality where I now know where I  can go to grow and get better. Her second example of feedback is much more potent. "The children seem to be  engaged in the activity. The girl seems to be pondering  or not as engaged. When you started on the next word, she was drawing a picture. What do you think about giving them a one or two-minute warning?

Now I have something very specific that I as a person who uploaded this video can go out and practice to get better at what I'm trying to do. And so one of the ways that we do this is students do not just get  graded in the courses on doing the videos and their  own reflection, right? We have a rubric that does grade them and that gives them feedback on  the doing and the reflecting, but we also use rubrics to grade and give them feedback on the  feedback they're giving, right?

So we really want to get it where if you are in a classroom and instead of just having  a single instructor giving you coach-level feedback, you've got 19 of your peers  giving you coach-level feedback. You can see how that really can multiply that effect and really help improve practices. And all of the courses and  all of the assignments include rubrics along these  lines that we've provided. So what is the impact of this course and this approach?

For this in this field test, which again was a single  course across 10 weeks -- actually, I think it was two courses -- taught with 49 students,  so it's a small sample. And it's a single instructor, but we can see here,  these are class scores, the classroom assessment  scoring system, which again, those of you in Head Start are very familiar with. Others may not be as familiar, but it's a tool that measures  teacher/child interactions and the quality of teacher/child interactions to support learning.

Instructional support is one of the three dimensions, domains, and then concept development,  quality of feedback, and language modeling are the  three dimensions that make up that domain of  instructional support. This is very hard numbers --  these actually -- the scale is one out of seven on the class, and this is very hard domain to move through professional development.

And so this -- these are very promising scores here. And particularly, if you look at the concept development dimension, that there were significant increase over a 10-week period in all three dimensions, but particularly in the concept  development dimension. In the field test of the resilience and wellness course, they did a randomized block-controlled study with- pre and post-measurement where teachers reported after taking the course reductions in job-related stress, improvements in teaching self-efficacy, so they really believed that what they did would make a difference, and stronger intentions to implement evidence-based classroom practices.

Those of you who do work in early childhood and particularly in Head Start know that those are all very significant elements of effective teachers in our program is that they are not stressed  and that they really believe that what they do will make a difference and that they have strong intentions and plans to implement evidence-based practices. Again, this is student feedback from the field test, so this was the full cohort  of the two years of -- that we looked at, and there was  a 92 percent retention rate, which is extraordinarily  high for online courses and online programs.

These were students who were connected virtually through the online program. There were many elements that we think are responsible for that. Students had a retention coach  who worked with them. They also worked in communities  with reflection and practice with their peers,  which made them feel connected. Ninety-eight percent felt the coursework was relevant to their career  in early learning.

Ninety-nine percent felt the coursework was exciting and challenging, and they felt connected to other students and felt connected particularly to the students in their communities of  reflection and practices. This was a retention rate --  in terms of the chat there -- this was a retention rate in the program. This was the students who came in. They came in as a cohort in September, it's a two-year program, and 92 percent of them over the two years -- the two cohorts, there were two  cohorts that finished, retained -- stayed in the  program and finished it.

So one of the things that we've done, and we are in the middle of our  second national pilot, we finished developing the courses in the winter of 2015, '16, and we started a national  pilot of the courses through institutions of Higher Ed  across the country last January through June. And we are now in the middle  of our second national pilot, which is running through the end  of this school year, June 2017. And this was just some of the feedback that we got from faculty who used our course materials that they -- high-quality content and design, practical strategies were beneficial, lots of resources, excellent videos, lecture videos were more engaging, and the CORP assignments were  effective once students became comfortable with  critiquing their peers' work.

So these are just some of the feedback also we've gotten from faculty,  that the concept of reviewing, planning, practicing, and reflecting using the intentional teaching framework is certainly intriguing. The content was fabulous, students liked the video because they -- it really gave them eyes  into other classrooms and made it much more real to them, and then the format of students applying the information immediately and reflecting on what they learned was very relevant and  important and effective.

One of the students was a  director of a local program. She has been sharing the  information with her staff. Discussions were relevant to what they were doing in the classroom. So, again, really bringing the  early childhood classroom into the Higher Ed classroom and bringing the Higher Ed classroom into the child classroom. As we are attempting to create  more reflective practitioners, the format and content were outstanding. One of the things that  institutions of Higher Ed and faculty get when they join the alliance is access to an early -- an effective online teaching  course to really help so that we're really helping build capacity in faculty and institutions of Higher Ed to effectively teach online and to use the EarlyEdU approach.

So these are also from our pilot, our work out in the field in  the outreach we're doing.You saw the innovations that are now going on. We have had local champions  in various states do -- conduct statewide presentations  on their current work, which has recruited certainly more members and helped get the word out. We have faculty who are  submitting proposals for professional conferences, highlighting their innovative teaching, which has been very exciting  for them and for us.

And then we also have institutions who are developing degree pathways through partnerships with two and  four-year institutions using the EarlyEdU courses as common  transferable courses at both the two- and the four-year level. And then we also have one of  our institutions is doing an extensive three-year  research project on practice-based coaching using  the practice-based coaching materials, course materials, with students and mentor teachers.

Some of the state innovations -- and I apologize for the little  bit of the wonky -- bullets coming in, but that helps everybody pay attention. We have some states we've been invited to participate in their early childhood workforce development advisory meetings. We are co-planning webinars for statewide early childhood  faculty institutes and we have been invited to present at statewide conferences. Some states, as they're moving towards  developing more courses that are transferable across the state, they're really looking at EarlyEdU as a way to really help make sure that those courses are consistent and high-quality. And then we also have two states right now who are piloting the delivery of courses, so the state delivers the courses through their PD system and institution -- a local institutions of Higher Ed confer credit for that course. So there are a couple of different ways states are looking at that, but that is also an option for those of you who are working at the  state level to consider.

So, where is the EarlyEdU Alliance now? I just looked over the chat  box and I see -- Okay. I'm going to let Randy answer that question.  [Chuckles] We are developing new online courses, we're develop a course in infant mental health, we're developing a course in  parent-family engagement, and a course in brain science. We're taking our existing courses and redeveloping some of them  for birth to 8 perspective.

They were developed out of the national center that was really focused on 3 to 5, and while some of the courses currently have a broader  perspective than just 3 to 5, we knew that we needed to really beef up our infant/toddler coursework, and then provide where  relevant and possible the P-3 perspective. We are scaling up the EarlyEdU  coaching companion and making a targeted outreach to high-priority partners, tribal colleges, HBCUs, and Hispanic-serving institutions. And we have secured funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to keep membership free and -- to keep our resources free for  members through 2020, so this is a great time to join  as an institution of Higher Ed or as a state stakeholder to  really help start to plan how you might leverage these resources to really move your workforce forward. We finished our first national pilot in our California pilot in June,  and as I said earlier, we're in the middle of our  second national pilot, which will end at the end of  this June, June 2017.

And then beyond that,  we will just have our -- it won't be a pilot anymore. We will just be up and running  at the EarlyEdU Alliance. What does membership offer? As an institution or a  state who might want to offer the courses if you  join the Alliance, you have access to seven online currently and 15 in-person courses. You have access to use of the EarlyEdU coaching companion, self-paced online course about effective online teaching  in the EarlyEdU approach. You join a national community of  early childhood scholars and experts, and you get  invited to the annual EarlyEdU Institute for faculty  and state teams in June.

Who are our current Alliance members? We are currently working in 18  states across the country. I will leave that slide up so you can look and see if your state is up there. If your state is not up there,  you can still reach out to us, and we can get you going. If you're an institution of Higher Ed, you can join and sign a memorandum of agreement. If you are a state stakeholder  and are interested in starting some state work,  please let us know.

We began in California with a large pilot of two of our courses with all  of these institutions, and we want to thank them greatly  for their leadership. And then these are the institutions that we currently have in our -- we have had in our pilot from  last January to now. The blue are four-year institutions, and the orange are two-year institutions. So just to clarify, right,  institutions of Higher Ed use these courses and  students get their degrees and get their credits from the institution they enroll in. We deliver these courses to  the home institutions. University of Washington is  not delivering these courses directly to the students.

So where do we go from here? For institutions of Higher Ed,  we want to consider if becoming an Alliance member is right for you. Are your students early childhood teachers who are working towards  Bachelor degree completion? The second bullet is really important. Do my students have access to  early learning field sites where they can complete video assignments? It doesn't mean that students  can't work on a field site.

There are some creative ways one can still work on some of those practices using video, but what we know is that it really -- if you want to improve teachers'  practices in the classroom, you actually have to see what  they're doing in the classroom and give them feedback specifically targeted at specific practices. Are my students and I willing  and able to use video to give and get high-quality feedback about their teaching practices? All of our courses include use of video.

For faculty and institutions of Higher Ed, are you interested in using  competency-based assignments to help my students improve  their teaching practices? And if you teach at a community college, do students have a clear pathway to completion of their Bachelor's degree? So this is really an effort to increase Bachelor degree completion. We know the community college work  is very important to that, but it's really important that if students are taking courses at the community college that they don't have to take them again when they get to the Bachelor's level. So that's a conversation that we have with institutions and states when we're talking about working  with community colleges.

One thing just before I go further, I just want to clarify because  I know this has been a lot of information  delivered very quickly. When we were looking at  the field-test slides, we were talking about the early childhood and family studies Bachelor completion program at the University of Washington. That is a program that's an online Bachelor degree completion program. It's a two-year program. You enroll at the University of Washington. We really consider that our lab or our development of the EarlyEdU courses. EarlyEdU Alliance is this alliance of other institutions of  Higher Ed across the country who are delivering the coursework that we've developed. So they are not the same. They are related,  but they are not the same.

So -- anyway, I just  wanted to make that clear, because I know that can  get a little confusing. If you have students who  need a degree right away and you don't have an institution nearby that they can take their courses, they can enroll at the early  childhood family studies program at the University of Washington. But if you have an institution  or you are an institution and you're interested in offering these courses and joining this Alliance, you can get access to the courses and deliver them directly  through your institution.

For state-based teams and state stakeholders, you really want to consider  what are your leverage points. What colleges and universities  play an important role in educating your state's workforce? Which colleges and universities  serve early childhood teachers who trying to complete their Bachelor's degree? You may have institutions who  serve more of those students and who are interested in  serving those students in such a way that they don't  have to quit their jobs to get their degree.

So that they can do the work that they're currently  doing in a classroom and get their degree at the same time. And then to look at what community colleges in your state have articulation agreements with four-year institutions  where students can earn a Bachelor degree in early childhood education. Which Higher Ed programs are interested in competency-based coursework where students really have an opportunity to work in the field?

Which local and statewide organizations could partner with and support institutions belonging to the EarlyEdU Alliance? We know there are a lot of professional development organizations and networks within states that help deliver coursework for the state or for boards of education, and so it may be that that would be a useful partner in terms of really helping to leverage and increase the access that students have to this coursework. And are there any colleges or universities that might offer credit for an EarlyEdU course that would be delivered through your state? So there are a lot of creative  ways of thinking about how to really get this  material out there, right? And that is what we want to  improve teacher practices and to improve the early  childhood workforce so that we can improve child  and family outcomes.

So we are very open to thinking  creatively with you about whichever aspect may be  most relevant to your role, whether that's the  effectiveness or relevance or the issues of access and affordability. For Early Head Start and Head Start directors or education managers, professional developers, you can also consider how you can leverage EarlyEdU Alliance for the teachers in your program. Are there institutions of Higher Ed that are serving or could be serving your teachers now? Is there a local community college or college nearby that might be able to serve a cohort of your teachers?

Do you have a cohort who need to get Bachelor degrees? And is there a mechanism in  your state or region whereby teachers could take classes and have an IAP confer credit? These are certainly things to think about. Where do we go from here? Well, for institutions of Higher Ed, you can sign a memorandum of agreement to join the Alliance.

You will also see down on the bottom right of your window under "supporting documents,"  there is a "next steps" handout. And if you click on that, that will download, and it outlines -- depending on your role -- what are some of the next steps. Community stakeholders can join the Alliance, identify strategies for leveraging our resources.

For those of you in a Head Start or early Head Start or professional development, you can really work with your Head Start collaboration director to bring different stakeholders together. That is the role in many of our state teams that the Head Start directors have taken is really sort of coordinator and point person to bring the relevant stakeholders together. You can always send a potential institution of Higher Ed a fact sheet or any faculty you may know, and you can go to our website, and always, you can send us an e-mail to ask us any questions that you may have.

And I believe that is it and leaves us time to sort of field some more questions. And also give people time to  fill out the evaluation. I do believe -- Suzanne Burnette has asked, "Are these PowerPoints available?" I believe that this whole presentation will be available on e-click, but then also because you are a member of the EarlyEdU Alliance, we have access to the EarlyEdU PowerPoint is available on the member's website or will be soon.

What is the cost? So the cost currently is free to members. There is no cost. For states who might want to  use the coaching companion on a statewide professional-development basis, there would be a cost for that, but for institutions of Higher Ed who are interested in offering the courses and using the EarlyEdU coaching companion, there is no cost at least through 2020. So get in now.

I am sorry if people had trouble with audio. So is there any more questions? Again, you can always -- any questions about the EarlyEdU Alliance you can e-mail info at earlyedualliance dot org. Okay. So Janie is actually  going to wrap us up before everybody disappears. I think there is something  else to be said, and an -- the evaluation will be sent via e-mail. So, Janie, you can go ahead.

Janie: Okay. Well, Katie, I really just wanted to say thank you to both you and Randy so much for sharing this  information with us today. I know that many folks across the country are thinking about possibilities  for their workforce in their states after hearing your presentation and the opportunities available  through the EarlyEdU Alliance. I'm also amazed by Randy's ability to read and respond to messages in her chat box so quickly. That was remarkable. So thank you for that and for sharing your expertise with all of us. On behalf of NCECDTL, I want to thank all of you for participating in the webinar today. As Katie mentioned, the evaluation will be sent to you by e-mail following the webinar, so please make sure to complete that so that we have a way for continuous quality improvement for all of us. So with that point, we will sign off now. So have a great afternoon, everyone. Thank you.