Reflection on Leadership Connections

From: Ann Hentschel
Email: ann.hentschel@nl.edu
Date: May 23, 2008

Comments

This reflection might be slightly biased given I am an employee of the McCormick Tribune Center for Early Childhood Leadership. Nonetheless, I can share how the conference impacted my professional growth and development.

What I find particularly valuable about Leadership Connections is the way the conference is set up to promote networking opportunities. Leadership Connections is as much about meeting and supporting colleagues as it is about attending dynamic workshops. This is one of the few conferences where you have an opportunity to connect and have meaningful dialogue with others. I also appreciate the networking reception and pamper yourself events. It seems like a positive message to send to leaders in our field… to build relationships with others and take time to care for yourself.

With 25 years in the field of early care and education or early childhood education… which ever you prefer, I was delighted with the public policy forum. I can’t say I enjoyed it. In fact, emotions were running pretty high at my table because we could not come to consensus on a number of the questions posed to us. But, it was an excellent opportunity to begin discussion around how we determine what defines and bounds us as a field. It’s not easy work and it creates a certain amount of discomfort and disequilibrium to hear we are not considered a profession.

I attended a workshop at the NAEYC conference with Marcy Whitebook. She is nearing retirement age and was brought to tears when someone in the audience started bemoaning the abysmal wages of our field. Marcy said, “I’ve been in this field for over 35 years and we are still stuck having the same conversation.” I don’t want to be approaching my retirement and feel that we have not moved this field forward in meaningful ways.

Stacie Goffin and Valora Washington’s book, “Ready or Not: Leadership Choices in Early Care and Education” is an important piece of work to unify our field and build a system to improve the quality of care and education for all children in this country. I was disappointed with the overall results of the public policy forum. It worries me that we’re not willing to make some hard choices to move us forward. Are we saying let’s just keep everything the same, why rock the boat? We will continue to call ourselves early childhood education, we will continue to serve children birth through age 8, and most anyone that wants to be in our field can call themselves a member.

One starting point might be to target the population we serve to be birth through kindergarten. It’s bold and audacious… but, maybe that’s what we need at this time in our field!