I have been in the early childhood profession for over 50 years and have had experience both as a director and college professor preparing early childhood teachers for the field. I hope what I suggest below will help you.
Before even thinking about what to do about these new teachers, you need to take into account what their professional preparation is. So, what is the professional preparation of these young teachers and how much experience have they had working with young children?
One way to take care of "professional behavior" issues is to have policies and guidelines for expected behaviors at work. In my years of working in the field and visiting many early childhood centers, this is the easiest way to take care of issues, at a basic level such as how to dress for work, maintaining confidentiality about conversations with families, discipline philosophy regarding how children's misbehavior is managed, use of cell phones in the classroom, and expectations about how language is used in the classroom, etc.
New teachers need to be oriented to their positions and then continuously mentored at least through their first year. In addition, continued employment should be connected to evaluations of their teaching and classroom skill development and adherence to expected school behaviors as well as their effectiveness in promoting the children's development in all areas and building relationships with the children and other adults in the school. These evaluations should occur more than once a year for new employees.
I hope this helps. Best of luck.
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Nora Krieger
Associate Professor Emerita/ Chair NJEEPRE
Bloomfield College/ New Jersey Educators Exploring the Practices of Reggio Emilia
Highland Park NJ
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Original Message:
Sent: 08-10-2018 04:27 PM
From: Alissa Mwenelupembe
Subject: Professionalism resources
I'm struggling with some young teachers and helping them understand what professionalism in our field looks like. I feel strongly that I want to offer an environment that is not rigid, so adding more rules for them to follow isn't really an option for me. I was wondering if anyone has some good training resources on professionalism. I was hoping for a video or a webinar that would be easy to show. Thanks in advance!
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Alissa Mwenelupembe
St. Vincent Early Learning Center
Evansville IN
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