One of the best tools preschool teachers have for making a classroom program the best it can be is networking. When early childhood educators can exchange ideas, share experiences, and ask fellow teachers how they would handle a particularly difficult situation, they often gain a great deal that they can incorporate into their own teaching. 

“Research shows that when teachers get to talk with peers about strategies, it invigorates their own work,” notes Jerlean Daniel, Deputy Executive Director at the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), based in Washington, D.C. “Teachers love to network with each other,” adds Lori Harris, Director of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center Child Care Center in Lebanon, New Hampshire. Harris notes the excitement she has seen in teachers who have just gotten a new idea from another teacher, as well as their eagerness to try it out.

Preschool directors and teachers are united in believing in the value of networking for educators. But the trick is to actually make it happen. “Preschool teachers are so busy with their teaching responsibilities that they just don’t have time to schedule in networking opportunities as well,” says Harris. “The only way, realistically, that teachers will be able to network with other teachers,” she says, “is for administrators to make it happen.” In fact, she maintains, networking among preschool teachers is so important that center directors should schedule teacher networking time into the school day.

Daniel agrees. Providing teachers with time during the school day to meet with their peers often requires hiring substitutes, but “the expense is well worth it!” she says. By blocking out time for teacher networking on a regular basis, a center director makes it possible for educators at his or her school to schedule a variety of useful meetings with one another.

Scheduling networking time during the school day offers another advantage. If they have enough time, teachers can go to another local preschool and observe another classroom program in action. This direct observation during the school day is valuable in a way that simply hearing about another preschool’s program can never be, Harris explains. Such visits could even be part of an exchange program with another school, in which many teachers from each school can learn from their peers at other institutions. Helping teachers from different schools get to know each other can lead to informal networking opportunities as well. Such an exchange program requires commitment on the part of the preschools’ directors, both in terms of organization and money to hire substitutes.

Another way a center director can help teachers network is to join together with other local directors to create professional development events that are open to educators from all the local institutions. For example, a school in Harris’s area frequently includes in its after-school staff meetings a guest speaker who is of interest to preschool teachers throughout the community. Teachers from the other local preschools, then, are invited to attend the program portion of the staff meeting. In addition to learning about a topic of professional interest, the teachers have the chance to discuss the topic with peers from other schools and to begin getting acquainted with each other, which can make future networking opportunities more fruitful.

When a director is planning a training or workshop for the school’s teachers, he or she can make the upcoming event more valuable by joining forces with the director of another local center or preschool, Harris has found. “A joint training that brings together teachers from two or more local preschools gives teachers the chance to learn from their colleagues as well as from the workshop instructors.”

Even bringing teachers together for more casual activities can prove an effective way to network. At the Concord Children’s Center, a three-site center with 40 staff members in Concord, Massachusetts, teachers get together several times a year to enjoy pizza while they work on their classroom portfolios. “It’s kind of like a scrapbooking party,” explains Pat Nelson, Executive Director. As the teachers share ideas about putting together a portfolio, Nelson explains, they learn about some different teaching approaches that their fellow teachers have successfully employed. “I see teachers getting very excited about the techniques they hear about from their colleagues at these casual events,” Nelson notes.

A very tangible way teachers can network for the benefit of all is through a toy lending library, according to Margee Fabyanske, Director and Lead Teacher at the Garden Play Group at Falcon Heights United Church of Christ in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. Either within a single institution or with several working together, a lending program can be established that allows teachers to “check out” toys for a period of time. Teachers can donate toys that are no longer fresh from their own classrooms while borrowing toys the children in their class have not seen. By participating in a toy lending library, Fabyanske explains, teachers can refresh their classroom offerings. Parents may also be encouraged to donate toys to the library, and a volunteer parent may even be recruited to manage the lending program. The lending library concept could also be expanded to new, or particularly costly, teaching materials and books.

And don’t forget the networking opportunities offered through professional associations. The biggest one for preschool teachers, NAEYC, has many local affiliates that offer a range of workshops and other activities that bring area teachers together to learn and network. Membership in NAEYC also includes access to online discussion groups among early childhood educators about topics of interest to them, according to Daniel.

Whatever the strategy, networking provides fresh ideas, greater resources, and a base of support and energy to make early childhood learning programs the best they can be.

April Moore’s work has appeared in the American School Board Journal, Brakes: The Interactive Newsletter for Kids with ADD, Woman’s World, The Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. She is a former teacher of elementary and environmental education and lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.