Elevating leaders to co-create a cohesive approach to early learning.
Our Approach
LFC’s innovative approach supports vibrant, effective early learning programs by sharing wisdom, building equity, and promoting sustainability.
To achieve this, we base our approach on five core elements.
The Learning Network creates coalition-building to share the wisdom of adults across organizations and roles in early learning.
Our Learning Networks bring together all of the adults in the early childhood ecosystem for facilitation, coaching, and interactive group activities. Learning Network members can be teachers, parents, program directors, cooks, bus drivers, and anyone else who supports young children’s learning and development. LFC brings them together for regular full-network convenings, keeping in touch through text messaging and small-group meetings in between.
With support from LFC facilitators, Learning Network members collaboratively identify goals for their community, establish a shared vision of quality, and design a sustainable implementation plan for supporting positive child outcomes. This results in participants’ sense of ownership over the process and development of shared and sustainable community goals.
The Five Commitments of Optimistic Leadership create a pipeline of early learning leaders who:
- Think impact to make informed decisions.
- Cultivate self-awareness to guide thought, emotion, and behavior.
- Nurture relationships to support learning and collaboration.
- Refine communication for mutual clarity and understanding.
- Activate curiosity to find connections and continue learning.
The commitments help adults engage in reflective practice and intentional relationship building. This, in turn, helps them to incorporate collaborative, equitable relationships and decision-making into their work and daily lives. Adults who practice these commitments are “Optimistic Leaders.” Optimistic Leaders are hopeful and willing to find a path forward, even in the face of challenges. They recognize how they affect those around them and collaborate with others to achieve positive outcomes.
The Coherent Path to Quality supports early learning leaders to model equity as they establish a shared vision and language.
Too often, a vision of quality varies from person to person. Yet by collaboratively defining steps to quality that are logical and consistent, all adults who care for and educate children can understand what quality programming looks like, why it matters, and how to implement it in practical ways. The Coherent Path to Quality provides Learning Network members with the tools to identify program strengths and to link these strengths to child outcomes.
To achieve strong child outcomes, our Coherent Path to Quality prioritizes:
- Relationships and interactions that are honest, trusting, open, and two-way
- Emotional and physical environment that is calm, safe, organized, and respectful
- Learning experiences that are meaningful, exploratory, and actionable
A lasting digital library promotes sustainable program development, creating a legacy for improving early learning outcomes statewide.
In collaboration with Learning Network members and professional video producers, we create libraries of professional development videos that illustrate effective early childhood programming in action. The video production process is participatory, with members involved from start to finish in setting the narrative, video design, and filming.
Evaluation will show the efficacy of the approach and support replication.
With programs across multiple states, independent evaluation of our programs provides insight into their effectiveness across a diverse range of contexts. We have a long-term partnership with Luminary Evaluation Group, which conducts document analysis, interviews with participants, document analysis, and content analysis.
Evaluation captures how Learning Networks, the Five Commitments of Optimistic Leadership, the Coherent Path to Quality, and digital library creation build equity into programmatic decision-making and interpersonal relationships.
