Home Hot Topics Articles Directors' Choice Awards About Us / Contact Us Activities & Curriculum Activities for Outcome-Based Learning Arts & Crafts Music for Learning Recommended Reading Sharing Boards: What Do YOU Think? NEWSlink Current National News Conference Calendar Topics In Early Childhood Education Art and Creativity in Early Childhood Education Job Sharing Board State Licensing Requirements Stay Connected! Each month we'll send you an email filled with articles and ideas for your classroom. Subscribe Now Date: 1/26/2006 5:06:00 AM Author: karen Subject: much better! bravo! You did what a leader needs to do! You communicated! Nobody listens in staff meetings generally, and nobody feels compelled to change their behavior if it is not addressed personally. I feel directors owe it to their staff to have a real discussion privately, even if it is casual, to expres their ideas as well as to hear and really listen to the teacher's feelings and ideas. This is teamwork, it is professional, it is mature, and it is desperately needed in childcare centers. If teachers are not treated with respect and professionalism by the directors, then they will not be implementing the directors goals most of the time, of this I can assure you! Just as with children, it is more difficult to give time and energy, to listen, to respond individually to issues and problems, so it is with adults far more easy to dictate and basically "yell orders from across the room" than to communicate one and one. Childcare directors in my experience are very lacking in higher level business management education and skills and so they operate on principles toward their staff that are neither appropriate nor productive. Until they begin, as you have begun, to see these staff as valued and important people in the running of the business, they will not be truely successful and the center will not be effectively managed. Name: Email: Subject

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