8084 MD4 Dis

Implementation Experiences – Lorraine Cooke

Implementation Experiences – Lorraine Cooke Program Transcript

LORRAINE COOKE: Some of the problems or challenges that we encountered were cross-referencing items that were redundant between and among standards. It was kind of walking through the dark and finding your way. I decided to develop a file system which was divided by standard and criterion. And I filed the sources of evidence, but then I realized that there were so many redundancies that the evidence kept being filed in different criterion and that became very frustrating.

And the volume of paper was just enormous. So it took months to figure that part out. I kept going through the manual and highlighting and cross-referencing. Since my program was one of the first locally to go through this reinvented accreditation process, I really had no one to share my experiences with. I did have contact with staff in NAEYC Academy who were very helpful. Fortunately, my being a pioneer I was able to share my system with the new programs going through the system after we did. So that was helpful to other programs.

Also challenging was some criteria was just not applicable to our center. One of those was a criterion regarding the use of outdoor pesticides. It's so not relevant to us because we're located in an urban environment and pesticides have nothing to do with us. And while I may be assessor aware of that, we were still rated very poorly on this criterion. I do believe that that criterion has been removed since it was realized that it just was not applicable to many center settings.

I think the biggest challenge that most directors and programs have is actually getting started. The accreditation materials used to come in a big box and many directors said, oh my god, I've got the box and I can't even open it. So just opening it was intimidating.

It's important to break the process down into small pieces. We did learn that. It's a lot of work, but it certainly does make the program better.

Scheduling is important. So you actually allocate a specific block of time in your day just for the accreditation work. And it really is possible to run a program and pursue accreditation.

I did learn that delegation was necessary. As I said, having a lead teacher take on the monitoring of the classroom portfolios saves an enormous amount of my time. Allowing the social worker or the family worker to take on the families and community piece helped. The custodian was able to deal with the facility. The kitchen staff worked on nutrition. And it's helpful to make relationships with health

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 1

Implementation Experiences – Lorraine Cooke

professionals in the community because that will also help you in the process. And bringing in the entire team is absolutely necessary.

© 2016 Laureate Education, Inc. 2