The Continuous Journey

Recruitment and Training of Minority Personnel in Early Care and Education: A Collaborative Model Between Communities and Higher Education Systems in New Mexico Co-Authors

Polly Turner, University of New Mexico Dan Haggard, Office of Child Development, New Mexico CYFD

Project Participants

Polly Turner, University of New Mexico Dan Haggard, Office of Child Development, New Mexico CYFD Gloria Clark, University of New Mexico-Gallup David Atencio, University of New Mexico Nancy Baptiste, New Mexico State University Elaine Benally, San Juan College-West Pat Dalton, San Juan College Lolita Ellsworth, Crownpoint Institute of Technology Loui Reyes, New Mexico State University Clay Slate, Diné College Helen Zongolowicz, University of New Mexico-Gallup

Project Evaluator

Nancy File, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Acknowledgements

This project was funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation

Cover and title page designed by Mimi Dean Layout and design by Barbara Poling Lucero

The New Mexico Continuous Journey model of systems development is an adaptation of Journey Analysis: A New Methodology for Evaluating Complex Change Initiatives, developed by Hal Lawson at the University of Utah (Third Revision, March 25, 1998) CORRECTIONS TO:

Continuous Journey Book (pages 87-89).

The material on the above pages contain references to Appendices D.1, D.2, D.3, and D.4. Since these Appendices were small, they were incorporated into the text of the final version of the book (pages 140 through 144).

Page 140 (Wave One Interview Questions) contains the material referred to as Appendix D.1.

Page 141 (Wave Two Interview Questions) contains the material referred to as Appendix D.2.

Page 143 (Participant Interview Questions) contains the material referred to as Appendix D.3.

Page 144 (Possible Questions for Focus Group Dialogue) contains the material referred to as Appendix D.4.

References will be changed for the next printing of the book.

The Continuous Journey

2 Contents

Introduction 5

Points of Origin 9

Preliminary Mapping 29

Critical Friends 35

Essential Elements 41

Reflective Practices 53

Barrier Busting 57

Voices and Stories 61

Destinations 67

Backward Mapping 75

Return Engagements 79

Legend 81

External Evaluation 85

Appendix A - Map of New Mexico 146

Appendix B - Early Childhood Education Competencies 147

Appendix C - Articulation Legislation 163 3 The Continuous Journey

San Juan College

Diné College

CIT UNM Gallup

UNM

NMSU

Locations of Participating Institutions

4 INTRODUCTION

n September, 1997 the Kellogg Foundation funded the Center for Family Iand Community Partnerships in the College of Education at the Univer- sity of New Mexico for a three-year project. This funding was the result of collaboration between the Center and the Office of Child Development, located in the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department. The grant reflects the Foundation’s commitment to improving the quality of early care and education programs for young children who are at risk for school failure. Six institutions of higher education partnered in this project. Two comprehensive universities: the University of New Mexico (UNM) main campus and New Mexico State University (NMSU) main campus in collaboration with El Paso Community College in Texas; and four two-year institutions: the University of New Mexico at Gallup; San Juan College; Crownpoint Institute of Technology (CIT); and Diné College (formerly Navajo Community College). The University of New Mexico main campus is centrally located in metropolitan Albuquerque, in which more than one-third of New Mexico’s population resides. New Mexico State Univer- sity is located in southern New Mexico, bordering El Paso, Texas and Mexico. San Juan College in Farmington and UNM-Gallup are located on the northern and southern borders of the Navajo Nation. CIT is located on the Navajo Nation in New Mexico, and Diné College is on the Navajo Nation in Tsaile, Arizona.

We view this project as a continuation of a circuitous journey in the preparation of early care, education, and family support personnel—one that has been exciting, challenging, and incredibly rewarding. In what follows, we will describe our journey, focusing on the journey itself as a process rather than on the products that have resulted. We believe that the framework we have chosen can be adapted to other projects that focus on the change process, to other states, to other institutions of higher education, and to other communities. We have adapted the model of Journey Analysis, developed by Hal Lawson at the Univer- sity of Utah, and we thank Dr. Lawson for his work.

5 The Continuous Journey

After more than fifteen years of history in the development of early care, education, and family support professional development systems in New Mexico, we felt that the Journey Analysis model assisted us in describing the paradigm shift that was necessary for the success of the Kellogg Project. For example, we needed to find words to describe our shift from a linear to a more dynamic development and evaluation process. We wanted to find ways to acknowledge the substantial complexity of existing systems that not only had to be integrated, but often had to be changed. We had struggled to find ways to articulate the processes of collaboration and empowerment that were so foundational to our work. Perhaps, most importantly, it was crucial for us to learn how to talk about our success in responding to the unique context within which we were attempting to create exceptional early childhood teacher preparation programs. These programs would become part of a larger system of licensure and certification based on the same competencies and common core content that provides universal articulation.

Finally, after months of dialogue, we were able to assign words to our process. Words like “answerability” helped us move beyond the paradigm of accountability. And, carefully selecting the word “responsive” with regard to cultural and linguistic issues propelled us into action, rather than merely talking about our sensitivity to—or even our knowledge of—cultural and linguistic appropriateness.

With the words, the image of a map emerged, one that has guided us in reflection as well as in the process of exploring the need for future journeys. We share this map along with a description of our most recent journey in the hope that it will assist you in preparing for and dialoguing about your personnel preparation efforts.

When a journey is used as a metaphor and a map as an illustration, there is a risk that people will misunderstand the dynamic nature of the model. It is impossible to fully understand our journey as a linear or step-by-step process. Leadership, for example, is embedded throughout our journey. Voices and Stories define reality and give meaning to our journey.

6 In order to avoid repetition, components of the model are discussed separately. As you read this document, please keep in mind the dynamic complexity and holistic nature of any journey.

Fifteen years ago when New Mexico’s journey began, our efforts were more focused and “single-minded.” As a result of this journey, multiple mini-journeys have been spawned within the broad structure of a much larger effort.

Now, Let the Journey Begin.

7 The Continuous Journey

Intended

Outcomes

Documentation

Institutionalization

Answerability

Mapping

Backward

Building

Capacity

Outcomes

Unanticipated

Dissemination

Destinations

Border

Detour

Lessons

Learned

Change

Practices

Processes

Reflective

Dialogue

Barrier Busting

Legend

Rest Area

Stop/Caution/Go

Fuel Check Point

Pedestrian Crossing

Garage Mile Marker

Speed Limit

River Interpretive Sign

Voices and Stories

Special

Supports

Resources &

Trust

Skills

Knowledge

Essential Elements

Cultural

Responsiveness

Linguistic

Responsiveness

Leadership

Criteria

Evaluative

Practices

Collaborative

Flexibility

Commitment

r T

Funders

Who?

Origin

Points of

Problem

Identification

Community

CONTEXT

Mapping

Roundabout

Preliminary

Why?

Policy

Critical Friends

Makers

Recruitment and Training of Minority Personnel in Early Care and Education: A Collaborative Model between Communities and Highe Education Systems in New Mexico, UNM Center for Family & Community Partnerships, 2000. Adapted from Journey Analysis: A New Methodology for Evaluating Complex Change Inititatives, Hal Lawson, University of Utah, 19

Planning

Journeys

Professionals

8 CONTEXTContext

Why? Who?

Previous Points of Journeys Origin

POINTS OF ORIGIN

he points of origin for this continuing journey are historical, represent- T ing more than fifteen years of effort to establish a common system of certification and licensure for the four strands of early care and education that are included in New Mexico’s Early Care, Education, and Family Support personnel preparation system: child care, public schools, early intervention, and Head Start.

1. Child care consists of centers, family child care homes, and before- and after-school and summer programs. These programs serve children from 6 weeks to age 5 and children from ages 5-12 when they are not in school. Historically, child care personnel have had little or no formal training, and informal training has consisted of workshops, conferences, and in-house in-service training. For many years, the Department of Human Services provided technical assistance, program evaluation, and subsidies to child care programs, and the Department of Health and Environment (later to become the Department of Health) was responsible for licensing and monitoring facilities.

2. Public schools have provided education for children from kindergarten through third grade since public kindergartens were offered and ultimately mandated in the state. Once New Mexico agreed to accept monies authorized by PL 94-142 and PL 99-457, schools have offered programs for 3- and 4-year-old children with developmental delays and disabilities. Teachers were required to have a bachelor’s 9 The Continuous Journey

degree in either Elementary Education (preferably with an early childhood endorsement) or a degree in Special Education. The Department of Education issues licenses and required periodic renewals by taking additional college courses. Schools also provide in-service training.

3. Early intervention programs for children from birth to age 3 with developmental delays/disabilities are offered through community agencies, but historically most have not provided full-day services. Personnel represent a range of educational backgrounds and experience, but teachers have not been required to have degrees and be licensed. The Department of Health provides training, technical assistance, and monitoring for these programs.

4. Head Start is a federally funded program, initially for 5-year-olds, now encompassing children from birth through age four. Most children qualify for this program on the basis of income. Over the years, Head Start has relied on the Child Development Associate (CDA), a national credential, for the preparation of its personnel, also offering a significant amount of in-service training in the form of conferences, workshops, and in-house training. In New Mexico, there are three types of Head Start programs: Regional, Migrant, and Indian.

In retrospect, we can see that it was essential for us to spend time at the very beginning of our journey with the Kellogg Project dialoguing with stakeholders of all of these systems, and then continuing the dialogue in many different ways and in many different places throughout the development process. When conceptualizing a new project or the continuation of a project currently underway, we have learned that it is important to ask foundational questions early on, such as those that follow:

10 Questions to ask Why do we want to engage in this project? Is it more appropriate for someone else to take on the work? Who are the stakeholders? Who would be affected (and in what ways) now and in the future by this project? Why now? Is this project the most important thing to do at this time? Are we taking advantage of the current context? Does the project mesh with goals/foundational principles that have been established? What are the previous projects that we can build upon? Does the project build on strengths? What aspects of prior work will have a direct impact on the work of this project? What can we learn from the prior work? What types of barriers were encountered previously? What are the implications of the current state context (socio- economic, political, etc.) for this work? What is the national context? Do we know groups in other places that have tried these strategies before?

These questions fall into four categories:

• Previous Journeys

• Context

• Why?

• Who? 11 The Continuous Journey

Previous Journeys

It is impossible to describe in detail the numerous journeys we have experienced that led to the current journey. (See La Ristra: New Mexico’s Comprehensive Professional Development System in Early Care, Education, and Family Support, 2002 for a more complete description.) We will highlight here the most significant ones. In 1986 the State Department of Education eliminated several specialized endorsements, among them the early childhood endorsement. Early childhood professionals were extremely concerned (outraged might be a better word), but what appeared to be a major setback turned out to be the impetus for advocacy and pressure toward change. In 1988 a small group of advocates collaborated with a key state legislator who was a champion of early childhood programs to introduce a memorial (unfunded resolution for the study of an issue). The passage of House Memorial 9 resulted in a task force charged with developing criteria for training and certifying child care and early education personnel. They recommended a two-pronged licensure system—one for public school personnel and one for non-school personnel. It also called for a state government office to be created for instituting non-school licenses.

At about the same time, Project Impact was funded by the New Mexico Department of Health to develop recommendations for a personnel development system for individuals working with children from birth to age three with developmental delays/disabilities. Later funding was obtained to expand the age range from three to five. Competencies for personnel were developed, and a competency-based system for licensure was recommended. However, the state Interagency Coordinating Council, in the end, only adopted the recommendation for a competency-based system, ignoring the competencies and other recommendations. What a disappointment!

The following year a statute was enacted that created the Office of Child Development (OCD) and the Child Development Board. The Office and the Board were given statutory authority to identify the personnel requirements for individuals working with children birth through age eight. It was not until the following year, 1990, that funding for the Office was allocated by the legislature. And so, OCD began with one director (program manager), a secretary, and a modest level of operations for a year, housed in the state Department of Educa- 12 tion. Judy Paiz, director, almost immediately was instrumental in the appoint- ment of a Joint Task Force that would report to both the state Board of Education and the Child Development Board and would take on the work to develop competencies and licensure. This task force made a very strong statement about the specialized preparation necessary for work with young children.

The Task Force made the strategic decision to create a competency-based license that spanned the entire period of early childhood, birth through age eight, and, drawing on the competencies developed by Project Impact, to make the license inclusive of personnel working with children with special needs. At the time, no state had such a license. The notion of two licenses, one for non-school personnel and one for public schools, was wisely abandoned. The preparation of the competencies spanned approximately eight months, with careful review of licenses from several other states, the CDA functional areas, NAEYC’s content areas, the New Mexico elementary education licensure program, and Project Impact competencies. The final draft contained seven areas of competency: Child Growth, Development & Learning; Health, Safety, & Nutrition; Family & Community Collaboration; Developmentally Appropriate Content; Learning Environment & Curriculum Implementation; Assessment of Children & Pro- grams; and Professionalism. (See Appendix A.) Competencies for working with children with special needs and for multicultural responsiveness were infused throughout the seven areas.

As work on drafting the bachelor’s level license progressed, the CARE (Committee Advocating Resources and Education) for Children Task Force, appointed by the Governor, was meeting to draft the state plan for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, newly appropriated federal funding. The First Lady of New Mexico chaired CARE for Children, providing high-level focus to the work. CARE continued as an active task force until the Governor’s term expired, advising the Governor’s Office and state agency personnel on all issues regarding early care and education for young children.

Concurrently, another task force was appointed to study the feasibility of creating a single cabinet-level agency to focus on the issues of children and youth. Fortunately, the state agency, Children, Youth, and Families Department (the first of its kind in the nation), also was created before the Governor’s term expired. For the first time, the Child Care Bureau, the Child Nutrition Program, 13 The Continuous Journey

the Child Care Licensing Division, and the Office of Child Development were together in one agency. An essential feature of the new department was to be an increased emphasis upon the importance of prevention and early family support services to reduce the later need for more expensive intervention and/or incar- ceration services.

In the meantime, recommendations that emerged from a baseline study of training for early care, education, and family support personnel that was commissioned by the Office of Child Development included the following:

• Develop a long-range training plan for the state;

• Develop a state-wide system of approval for training;

• Develop a credentialing system (career ladder) for all early care and education personnel, regardless of program type; tie specific types of training to each level of the career ladder;

• Begin efforts to develop a plan to link salaries to levels of training;

• Expand the opportunities for CDA training to count toward baccalaureate degrees.

The proposed BA-level license and its competencies were widely circulated for review and input, and the approval process was one of the more extended processes that had ever been used to develop a licensure proposal, including hearings around the state. Four thousand copies of the proposal were mailed to interested and affected parties across New Mexico. Early concerns centered on the issue of extending public school authority downward to birth. Some felt that it was completely unnecessary to have a license, or, indeed, to even prepare personnel to work with babies. Therefore, not everyone loved it! Four hundred forty-four comments were made, including 181 that presented vocal opposition from groups objecting to the license on the basis of “government intrusion.” This opposition was based on the perception that such a license would lead to an intrusion into family responsibilities and to excessive state control of young children.

14 As with the revocation of the endorsement to the elementary license, what appeared to be a barrier actually turned out to be a blessing. The outrage toward some of the charges brought by opponents of the early childhood license galva- nized the supporters and resulted in the largest group of people ever to attend a State Board of Education meeting. At the conclusion of statements in support of the license, the group received an unprecedented standing ovation! On July 3, 1993, the State Board of Education adopted, with only one dissenting vote, the bachelor’s level inclusive license in early childhood, birth through grade 3, and the accompanying competencies. Almost immediately, institutions of higher education began to develop programs meeting these requirements.

A broad group of stakeholders developed Guiding Principles as a foundational statement for the training and credentialing system in early care, education, and family support. The guiding principles established at the stakeholder meeting in 1993 were the following:

A. Parents and educators work in concert to meet each child’s needs; young children develop and learn differently from their older peers. Although diverse in their development, all children progress along a continuum in integrated domains. They learn through active participation in play and are innately curious and spontaneous. They need concrete and rich environments.

B. Those entrusted with the care and education of young children are committed to providing safe and nurturing environments in which children can develop and grow physically, socially, emotionally, linguistically, and intellectually, enabling them to reach their highest potentials.

C. Professionals and families work in concert to meet each child’s needs. Families know their children best—their temperaments, character, preferences, strengths, needs, and experiences. They can provide professionals with unique information about their children. In turn, professionals have specialized skills and resources. Together, families and professionals can explore choices that are respectful of the beliefs and values of families. 15 The Continuous Journey

D. Training and licensure systems for persons involved in the care and education of young children in group settings must uphold the beliefs that:

All children must be given opportunities to be educated in supported, heterogeneous, age-appropriate, natural, child- focused classrooms and school and community environments for the purpose of preparing them for full participation in our diverse and integrated society.

Professionals uphold and honor the diverse cultures, traditions and spiritual values of families, recognize that families are the primary core of support for children, and provide coordinated support that is family centered and community based.

E. The professional development system reflects the richly diverse needs of New Mexico’s young children and their families:

linguistically,

culturally,

geographically,

developmentally.

F. The system provides professional development that is:

flexible,

comprehensive,

accessible and affordable,

responsive to adult learning styles and needs,

motivating,

cognizant of and rewarding for expertise shown in demonstra- tion of life experiences,

available to individuals in all areas of the state, both urban and rural. 16 G. The state must ensure proper credentialing while recognizing that a diversity of both training programs and programs serving children is viable.

The state sets standards for early childhood licensure and training.

The state allows program options to meet local needs.

In the initial meetings and retreats, important decisions were made that were to lay the foundation for the way the system was to be built—decisions that would have been very difficult to alter. For example, one of the earliest decisions was that the system would be inclusive, and the system did become inclusive in several important ways:

• Inclusive of all those who work with children ages birth through age eight (through third grade). It was deemed important that the early childhood professional development system span the entire early childhood developmental continuum.

• Inclusive of professional preparation relating to children with special needs, so that educators would be able to work with children with a range of abilities and needs.

• Inclusive of families. While writing the first five-year professional development plan in 1994, which served as New Mexico’s proposal for the Wheelock College Partners in Change (PIC) project, it was determined that family support would be included in the concept of early care and education. Therefore, the system became the Early Care, Education, and Family Support Professional Development Initiative.

• Inclusive of all systems and programs serving children birth through third grade and their families, including Head Start, public school, child care, preschool, early intervention programs, and home visiting programs. As a result, the term “career lattice” seemed the most appropriate way to describe how individuals could move (horizontally, vertically and diagonally) within one system or from system to system as positions became available and as professional preparation enabled 17 The Continuous Journey

them to seek and move into positions with more responsibility and increased compensation.

In the fall following approval of the license, a professor at one of the four- year institutions decided to call a meeting of faculty from all two- and four-year institutions that were working on creating or revising early childhood programs. She felt that attendance at this meeting would indicate if there was an interest in forming a state-wide group to work on issues surrounding the preparation of early childhood educators, particularly articulation from two-year to four-year institutions. The turn-out at this initial meeting was far more than had been expected, and the response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. As a result of that meeting the Higher Education Early Childhood Articulation Task Force was off and running! We began to meet monthly, despite the fact that we had no funds to reimburse for travel, and distances across New Mexico are vast! Nevertheless, this group of incredibly dedicated professionals came faithfully, at their own expense, to face the challenges that lay ahead.

Many thorny issues were addressed during the first year following approval of the license: How would competencies be addressed at the AA level in two- year institutions? Should we try to come to agreement about dividing the competencies across lower and upper division courses? If so, how? Or should we try to devise a system whereby all competencies were addressed at each level? If so, would there be redundancy?

After many hours and weeks of lively discussion, in conjunction with staff from the Office of Child Development, the framework for a model of personnel preparation emerged—from basic entry level through the master’s level—based on the seven areas of competency approved with the BA license. All competencies would be addressed at each level, with increasing depth and sophistication at each succeeding level. However, predictably, uncertainty about implementation crept into discussions. Lack of collaboration across institutions up to this point had contributed to fragmentation of programs. And, not surprisingly, the typical distrust that is common between faculty from two- and four-year institutions clearly was no different in New Mexico. In fact, this issue of trust loomed large during the first year or so of our work.

18 At the end of the first year, staff from the Office of Child Development proposed that the Task Force consider becoming an official task force of the Child Development Board, to whom the Office of Child Development reports. If such action were taken, there was the possibility of staff support and the likelihood of funding for travel and per diem. This possibility was attractive because many of us worried that we would not be able to sustain the enthusiasm and commitment without support from some other entity. We also felt that it would be important for the work of the Task Force to be sanctioned by a state entity with statutory authority. Therefore, the Task Force achieved official status in September, 1994.

Over the next year or two, both two- and four-year institutions were working busily to establish early childhood preparation programs that integrated the competencies as student outcomes. Each four-year program was faced with the arduous task of seeking both internal (university) and external (State Board of Education and its various components) approval, whereas two-year programs needed only internal approval. However, in a sense, the task for two-year institutions was more challenging: They had to figure out how their programs would articulate with four-year programs. The discussions that occurred throughout this process have been one of the most valuable aspects of the Task Force. As trust gradually increased, faculty were able to engage in substantive dialog about what early care and education professionals should know and be able to do.

Through collaboration among members of the Task Force and staff from the Office of Child Development, a career lattice for personnel in early care, education, and family support was developed and accepted. Individuals can enter the lattice at any point in their professional development, with each level increasing the skills and knowledge in the seven competency areas. Professionals can move up the career lattice in lock-step fashion, receiving a certificate or credential for completion at each level, or an individual can move directly to the bachelor’s degree, bypassing pre-bachelor’s levels.

The levels of the career lattice are as follows:

• A 45-Hour Entry Level Course—a basic course that introduces the seven competency areas at the awareness level.

19 The Continuous Journey

• Child Development Associate (CDA)—a national credential requiring a combination of classroom-based and practicum experiences.

• Vocational Certificate—earned after completion of 32 to 35 credit hours of coursework (mostly early childhood content) at two-year institutions.

• Associate of Arts (AA) degree—a two-year program ranging from 62 to 65 credit hours, consisting of the early childhood content offered in the certificate program and general education courses, offered at two-year institutions and some four-year institutions.

• Bachelor’s (BA or BS) degree—a four-year program, consisting of approximately 128 credit hours, available at four-year institutions, leading to early childhood (birth through age eight) teacher licensure.

• Master of Arts (MA) degree—a two-year program, consisting of 36 to 42 hours of post-graduate work in early childhood, available at graduate universities.

To push the planning ahead, OCD commissioned a faculty member from a two-year institution and an early childhood teacher to develop New Mexico’s Common Core Content, based on the seven areas of competency and their indicators. This document clearly specifies BOTH the content and the level of competence that is required at every level of the career lattice. The common core content provided immense support for institutions in designing a fully articulated system.

Based on the common core content, both two- and four-year institutions designed programs that collectively spaned every level of the career lattice. Once these programs were designed, small groups consisting of faculty from two- and four-year institutions reviewed syllabi for each institution to verify that the content addressed each competency at the appropriate level. Then the Task Force faced the challenge of figuring out a system of articulation. In the meantime, the Task Force had helped to design legislation that mandated the transfer of at least 64 credits from two- to four-year institutions (29+ credits of early childhood and 35 credits of general education). (See Appendix B.) The legislation passed, and 20 institutions negotiated to determine the specifics of the transfer modules from two-year institutions. This matrix of transfer modules was approved by the Commission on Higher Education. The end result was that all four-year institutions would be admitting students with AA degrees into their programs in junior status, without the loss of credits. Finally, New Mexico had a fully articulated career lattice.

During this span of time, several other relevant projects were undertaken. The first was the Partners in Change (PIC) project. Wheelock College funded four states (New Mexico among them) to determine the barriers, and ways to overcome them, for individuals desiring to undertake formal education in the field of early care and education. The project required collaboration among state government, higher education, and local training projects. New Mexico was ripe for this challenge, for these collaborations already had begun to occur. Four communities in the state were selected as sites, together representing the diverse demographics of the state. Using real live people, the project identified and tracked participants in the local training projects to determine barriers they confronted in continuing their professional development. Among these barriers were limited financial resources; multiple responsibilities of work, family, and education; fear of not succeeding in higher education (many participants were the first persons in their families to go to college); and lack of a system of credit for prior learning in the state. While the project was not successful at discovering ways to overcome all of the barriers identified, it set the stage for the future work in this state, and most important, was the foundation for the Kellogg Project.

Another effort was the design, pilot-testing, and final approval of the Entry Level Course. This course, as noted above, was designed to provide awareness of the seven areas of competency, and was to be considered as the minimum entry level for all personnel working in early care, education, and family support programs. A curriculum and facilitator’s guide were developed, and once approved, a massive effort to train facilitators across the state began. At the time of this writing, approximately 350 facilitators have been trained, and nearly 6,000 individuals have completed the Entry Level course, spanning three languages!

A third effort was the development of a Guide to Best Practices: Essential Elements of Quality for Programs Serving Children Birth through Age Eight and their 21 The Continuous Journey

Families. This project was funded through a joint powers agreement between the Office of Child Development, the State Department of Education, and the De- partment of Health. This comprehensive guide details elements of quality for infant-toddler, pre-primary, and kindergarten through third-grade programs. Subsequently, a self-assessment tool and a video describing how to use Best Practices and how to conduct a self-assessment were developed. The package of materials has been widely distributed to child care programs, early intervention programs, pre-kindergarten programs for children with disabilities, and to K-3 programs throughout New Mexico. As hoped, it also is used as a textbook and as a resource for workshops and conference presentations.

Finally, the Task Force began to address areas of specialization at particular levels and generalist competencies at the master’s level. This work is currently in progress. The Task Force and the Child Development Board have approved the competencies for a certificate in administration at the AA or BA level (consisting of 9 credits). They also have approved competencies for a certificate in Fam- ily, Infant, Toddler at the AA level (9 credits beyond the AA). Pending approval are competencies for an area of specialization in administration/leadership at the master’s level and competencies for an area of specialization in Family, Infant, Toddler at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels. It is envisioned that coursework in the areas of specialization will be identical across institutions. Generalist Master’s degree competencies have been approved by the Task Force and the Child Development Board, and approval is pending from the State Board of Education.

All of these previous journeys have been challenging and immensely rewarding. Throughout this nearly fifteen-year process, we were fortunate to have regular retreats (we refer to them as PIC retreats or “advances”) of stakeholders from all early care and education systems across New Mexico where we could focus on our on-going work and engage in strategic planning. These journeys led us to a collaboration with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to continue our journey of significant change.

Context

Demographic. New Mexico can best be described as a high desert situated in the heart of the Southwest, where one can see for miles. In some areas of New 22 Mexico, one can drive great distances to reach the next town, encountering few other travelers along the way. The diverse population is approximately 1.8 million people, including approximately 40% Hispanics, 10% Native Americans, 3% African Americans, 1.5% Asian Americans, and the remainder, Anglos. We are a state that is rich in cultural traditions and diverse languages, with 19 American Indian pueblos, a large portion of the Navajo Nation, the Apache reservation, and many traditional Hispanic, Spanish-speaking communities. More than 1/3 of the population resides in metropolitan Albuquerque, and a substantial portion of the state is rural, even remote.

New Mexico is a poor state economically. We have a high poverty rate, especially among families with young children. The median family income is approximately $12,000 below the national median. New Mexico ranks 46th in the nation in 10 indicators of child well being identified by Kids Count. These indicators include teen birth rate; teen death rate by accident, homicide, or sui- cide; teen dropout rate; percent of low birth weight babies; child death rate; percent of children in poverty; percent of families with children headed by a single parent; percent of teens not attending school and not working; and percent of children whose parents do not have full-time, year-round employment. Our children are also at risk educationally—our fourth-graders score below the national average in both basic reading level and basic math level.

Political. Until recently, a Governor in New Mexico was not allowed to succeed himself (we have never had a female governor in the history of the state), which meant that the political agenda in the state was subject to continual change. Initiatives begun under one governor were consistently shelved or ignored by the succeeding governor. With each election, new gubernatorial appointees replaced personnel in key state agencies, especially if the new Gover- nor was from the opposing party. However, over the years, several Governors have made key appointments that advanced the work of the early care and education profession and the services to children and families. One Governor can be described as a Governor who “gets it.” Bruce King was Governor for three terms, with alternating “sit-out” periods. His wife, Alice King, was and is a champion of children’s causes. She had enormous influence on her husband. Supporters used to joke that with the Kings, we get “two for one”. It was Gover- nor King who appointed the first Task Force on Family Policy. It was Governor 23 The Continuous Journey

King who appointed CARE for Children. It was Mrs. King who was committed to establishing the Children, Youth, and Families Department. Fortunately, Governor King was in office when states first received the Child Care and Devel- opment Block Grant, the largest boost in federal funding for child care ever. It also had a “set aside” for increasing the quality of child care services, supported enthusiastically by the Kings. During each King administration, children and their families were always a priority, and the door was always open for child and family advocates.

Besides the CCDBG, at the national level funding for Head Start was increased. In 1992, candidates for President of the United States addressed child care for the first time. The political scene looked promising. Further, longitudi- nal research in the professional community was demonstrating the cost benefits of high quality early childhood programs, and politicians were beginning to listen. Some research indicated that there was as much as a seven-fold return on every dollar invested in high quality early childhood programs for children at risk. Many state legislators who long had assumed that anyone could take care of children without any specialized training were beginning to recognize the advocates in the State Capitol. Times were good.

Professional. New Mexico has exceptionally strong professional affiliations in the field of early care, education, and family support. Perhaps because we are so few and often isolated from other professionals, we are willing to travel long distances to sustain professional relationships, which is indicated by the success of the Higher Education Task Force. Collectively, we are painfully aware of the difficulty that many have in accessing higher education systems. Prior to the beginning of this project, it was estimated that less than 5,000 of the approximately 25,000 individuals who work in early care, education, and family support programs, had any formal early childhood coursework. Personnel in child care, early intervention, Head Start, and other non-school programs tend to be older, to have families, to be tied to their communities, and to be from minority populations. Most cannot afford the cost of higher education, even if they could access professional preparation programs. Those who are fortunate enough to have the opportunity to complete a bachelor’s degree most often teach in the public schools where compensation is considerably higher, and they are most often Anglo females. The challenge of assuring equitable access to higher education 24 programs and the need for preparation programs to be responsive to community needs and values, especially culturally and linguistically, led us to the Kellogg Project.

Since the initiation of the PIC project, annual retreats have been held with a variety of stakeholders from state government, higher education, community- based programs, public schools, and others to assess where we are with respect to the comprehensive professional development system and to engage in strategic planning. Actually, we call these 2-3 days of work “advances” since that term more accurately describes the process and outcomes. These gatherings have been crucial for implementing a common vision, goals and objectives, and timelines. They also enable us to maintain our focus on the “big picture.” We take advantage of every opportunity to use experts on the national scene to help guide our thinking.

The Higher Education Early Childhood Task Force (the term “Articulation” was dropped once articulation became a reality) remains a strong presence in the state. It demonstrates that faculty from two- and four-year institutions actually can trust one another and work collaboratively to enhance the quality and accessibility of early childhood preparation programs. The development of the bachelor’s level license and its competencies and the subsequent collaboration on developing personnel preparation programs provided the infrastructure for our future work. Further, the collaboration among state government, higher education, and local communities, exemplified by the PIC project, became stronger over time, becoming the modus operandi for implementing our work.

However, the strongest aspect of the professional context was and is the personal and professional commitment of the participating individuals. Without that commitment, the journey would have ended long ago. There is a strong sense of community among all of these individuals that has allowed this journey to continue.

Why?

The demographic, political, and professional contexts all seemed to be right for continuing the journey. So much had been accomplished by a relatively small number of individuals, and in the scheme of things, in a relatively short 25 The Continuous Journey

period of time. The political landscape seemed conducive to a focus on high quality early care and education. Emerging research by neuroscientists was supporting the importance of high quality early environments for children. We educators were ecstatic that their clout directed attention to our passion! How- ever, poverty rates for young children in New Mexico were getting worse, and rates of school failure and dropouts were escalating. We knew that in many early care and education programs, especially in the public schools where licensure is required, there was a mismatch between teachers and children with respect to language and culture. And finally, we recognized the serious gaps in accessibility to higher education personnel preparation programs across the state, especially in areas with large numbers of Hispanics and Native Americans. We also recognized that young children need teachers from their own communities, who speak their own language and who understand their own culture. While Head Start and child care programs across the state do hire these individuals, many do not have access to higher education and are therefore unable to advance up the career lattice. These conditions kept the journey alive.

Who?

The Career Lattice that had been developed was tied to higher education at every level, with two partial exceptions: both the 45-Hour Entry Level Course and the CDA did not necessarily have to be taken at an institution of higher education. The Training and Technical Assistance Programs outside the higher education system were offering the Entry Level Course and agencies other than higher education also were offering CDA training, mentoring, and assessment. In the case of the Entry Level Course, the student was not affected since the course was not, in most cases, required as part of the academic program in early childhood. However, students who completed their CDAs outside of higher education were affected since there was no way to grant college credit for the CDA toward the next rung in the career lattice. In our desire to have a fully articulated career lattice that would accommodate all work that students had completed, we made a conscious decision to tie the career lattice to higher education. Therefore, identification of institutions of higher education that would

26 participate in this journey was key. The following criteria were used to select the six institutions:

• institutions with the potential to attract large numbers of Hispanic and/or Native American students (both Navajo and pueblo), many of whom already were working in early care, education, and family support programs;

• institutions in areas of the state with low accessibility to early childhood professional preparation programs;

• institutions that collectively could provide a range of programs to prepare students to advance through the career lattice—from entry level through the bachelor’s degree; and

• institutions with faculty committed to developing, expanding, and/or revising early childhood preparation programs that are responsive to community needs, especially culturally and linguistically.

27 The Continuous Journey

28 Problem Planning Identification

Preliminary Mapping

PRELIMINARY MAPPING

e discovered that, especially since we were in the initial stages of Wconversation with a large foundation, the Preliminary Mapping process was critical for us as well as for our potential funder(s). Through this process we were able to identify specific gaps in the implementation of our professional development system and to determine if there was a “match” with the priorities of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. During this stage of our journey, we began to ask questions such as those that follow.

Questions to ask Where are the gaps/needs in our system as it is being implemented? What are the issues surrounding these gaps/needs? What populations do these gaps/needs impact? How are these gaps/needs addressed by our foundational principles? Is it appropriate for us to address these needs? How would we begin to address these needs? Who should be involved in preliminary mapping? What kind of process would be appropriate in order to involve everyone who should be involved? How will we decide what to do? How can we begin to share this vision with others? Will resources be available to do what is needed? Can these efforts be sustained?

Initial discussions with the W. K. Kellogg Foundation about the implementation of a comprehensive professional development system that was 1) culturally and linguistically responsive, 2) tied to a career lattice, and 3) equitably available in areas of the state with high minority populations, occurred between staff in the Office of Child Development and a representative from the Foundation. A few 29 The Continuous Journey

weeks later, a small group of stakeholders and the foundation representative met for dinner and brainstorming. This initial meeting was followed by two all-day meetings of stakeholders representing state government, higher education, community-based early care and education programs, Head Start, the Navajo Nation, Indian pueblos, and others. Through these meetings, the stakeholders established some basic parameters that would serve as the basis for all future conversations regarding funding. The stakeholders determined that any project that was established must be based on the following principles:

• Support collaboration at the local, regional and national levels;

• Demonstrate sustainability;

• Focus on the institutionalization of systemic change;

• Influence public policy;

• Leverage other funds and/or resources;

• Build upon existing infrastructure and other successful projects;

• Develop community leadership and advocacy efforts;

• Respond to community needs and involve stakeholders in all phases of development;

• Take a comprehensive approach and view families and communities holistically;

• Acknowledge and respect cultural and linguistic diversity;

• Demonstrate innovation and encourage the development of creative solutions;

• Include an on-going evaluation component;

• Have a base of reality and be driven by input at the grassroots level;

30 • Show potential for replicability;

• Integrate and apply current research.

Now, by reflecting on the earliest stages of this project, we can see that there were two foundational components of Preliminary Mapping: Problem Identifica- tion and Planning.

Problem Identification

Structure. Because of the complexity of the project and the potential diversity of the institutions that would participate, we felt we needed to create a new structure within higher education to “house” and direct the project. The Univer- sity of New Mexico appeared to be the institution with the most appropriate resources and existing relationships with state government. Faculty already had approached the Dean of the College of Education about the possibility of establishing a Center in the College related to children and families. The possibility of foundation funding for a large project was the perfect lever to bring that conversation to the forefront. Faculty, supported by staff from the Office of Child De- velopment, met with the Dean to request the establishment of such a center. In February, 1997, the Center for Family and Community Partnerships was established in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico.

Goals. Faculty from the Center and staff from the Office of Child Develop- ment, based on input from the stakeholders’ meeting, identified the following two main goals of the project and the strategies to achieve them.

• Assure that early care, education, and family support personnel preparation programs are responsive to local needs. The major strategy to achieve this goal was to develop local Community Councils that included community members, parents, higher education faculty, representatives from the early childhood profession, and public officials, where appropriate, to participate in the development and/or redesign of early childhood education personnel preparation programs in higher education so that the content and methods of instruction would be culturally and linguistically appropriate for the personnel being trained and meet the needs of community programs. 31 The Continuous Journey

• Assure that access to higher education programs in early childhood education is equitable across the state and within bordering communities that access higher education programs in New Mexico. The major strategy to achieve this goal was to form partnerships with selected institutions of higher education that had the potential to serve large numbers of Hispanic and/or Native American students to design new or expand existing personnel preparation programs in early childhood education that would be responsive to local needs. The project supported the implementation or expansion of programs at all levels of the New Mexico Early Care and Education Career Lattice, from entry level through the bachelor’s degree.

Expectations of participants. Each participating institution was expected to do the following:

Attend all Kellogg Core Group Networking meetings and all meetings of the Higher Education Early Childhood Task Force. (These meetings were held back-to-back approximately once each month.)

Offer the Entry Level Course that constitutes the first step in the Career Lattice unless the course is offered by another agency/institution in the community area.

Participate in networking via an e-mail list-serve.

Develop a 3-year Plan of Action and an annual work scope based on the goals and needs of the institution that is consistent with the goal of implementing access to the Career Lattice.

Work with the Principal Investigator in developing and approving sub- contracts.

Maintain careful records of expenditures.

Submit an annual progress report, expenditures, and proposed budget and work scope for each succeeding year.

32 Appoint a Community Council that provides a forum for the interaction among faculty of the institution, early childhood practitioners, community members, and family members in the development and/or redesign of early childhood personnel preparation courses/programs that are culturally and linguistically appropriate for the personnel being trained, both in content and methodology. The Community Council should be involved in all aspects of the planning and implementation of institutional goals and work scope.

Actively participate in the evaluation process with the external evaluator.

Planning

The specific planning began with the development of a Concept Paper submitted to the Kellogg Foundation. This paper highlighted much of the demographic, political, and professional context described earlier in this document. It also chronicled our previous journeys—our accomplishments and the gaps in the system. Goals and strategies were identified, and a rough budget was included. Sometimes a journey accelerates, and at other times, it slows down. In this instance, it was unexpectedly accelerated. We expected a response from the Foun- dation to our Concept Paper, either encouraging us to or discouraging us from submitting a full proposal. The wait seemed interminable. Suddenly one day the Principal Investigator received a call from the Office of Research Services informing us that the President’s Office was holding a check from W. K. Kellogg, and they were trying to figure out to whom it belonged! A formal proposal had not been processed through the university system, and the check was looking for a home! We had our grant (of course, with less money than we asked for) while we were still waiting to determine if we should proceed with a proposal.

The first few months of the project were hectic. Sub-contracts for each of the six participating institutions had to be developed and approved by various individuals in both the home institution and the sub-contracting institutions. During this time we began meeting with faculty at each institution to begin to determine specific community needs and to identify available resources. While the Concept Paper outlined generally the specific goals of each institution, we

33 The Continuous Journey

now had to make firm decisions. This process was long and arduous, and higher education bureaucracy was at its best! It was particularly difficult for the two tribal institutions that had no early childhood faculty to take the lead. Both institutions had significant difficulty hiring individuals to head up the project because of the limited (almost non-existent) pool of qualified Navajo individuals and the remote locations of the institutions. The final result was that each institution initiated its project at different times, and, overall, the start-up times that we had projected turned out to be unrealistic. This situation is a good example of how a journey sometimes progresses extremely slowly.

34 Professionals

ROUNDABOUT

Funders Policy Makers Community

Critical Friends

CRITICAL FRIENDS

very journey must include critical friends—particularly when the jour- E ney results in systemic change. We view the quality, dependability, and the unrelenting commitment of our critical friends as one of the most important aspects of the project for both the process and the outcomes. Without these critical friends, we would not be in a position to continue our journey.

When initiating any project, it is important to pose questions regarding the inclusion (or exclusion) of individuals or groups, such as those that follow.

Questions to ask Are the voices of the community represented? Are parents at the table? What form should stakeholder groups take? Who will provide the leadership? What are the spoken and unspoken issues among stakeholder groups? Are all stakeholders present? Is the faith community represented? Profes- sional groups? Business community? How will everyone remain involved? What is “in it” for them? How can we maintain focus on the needs so that the tail does not “wag the dog”? How can we build trust among stakeholder groups? From whom do we need “buy-in” in order for the effort to be sustainable? Will there be policy or political impact? How do we find “champions” from the appropriate systems?

35 The Continuous Journey

In our efforts, Critical Friends consisted primarily of four groups:

• Community

• Professionals

• Policy Makers

• Funding Sources Community

Each community was unique, but every one was crucial to the success of the project. Lasting relationships were formed between higher education faculty and community members. Once project faculty realized how valuable community support and input is in program development, it was hard for them to ever again think and behave in the same ways. Higher education is notorious for being insulated from “outside” influences—for developing and implementing programs in traditional ways because that is the way it always has been done. With- out exception, faculty at each institution have reiterated the value of community input and support, and these relationships will be sustained long after the project is forgotten.

Community councils. Formalization of the partnership between higher education and the community (“town and gown” if you will) was realized through the Community Councils. These six councils varied in their representation, the frequency of meetings, and the specific activities in which they were involved. However, all had significant impact on the important decisions that were made at each institution with respect to community needs and cultural and linguistic responsiveness. Each and every institution was profoundly affected by experiences with the Community Council. Issues that were addressed collaboratively included course content (especially with respect to diversity), times and format of classes taught, negotiations related to work and school schedules, flexibility of practicum/student teaching experiences, other community needs, recruitment and retention, mentoring/career coaching, sustainability of programs, and a host of other issues.

Community leaders. Then, of course, there always are individual community leaders who are critical friends to the success of any project. Particularly 36 important to the current project were key leaders of the Navajo Nation, most especially in Head Start, child care, and the Department of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services. The project’s coordinator for the Four Corners area was especially critical in making connections among the institutions and tribal representatives. In every community there were critical friends, without whom the projects would have foundered.

Professionals

Equally important to community leaders for the success of this project are the professionals who were/are critical friends. There is a description of the professional context of early childhood in New Mexico and reference to the Higher Education Early Childhood Articulation Task Force earlier in this document. At the local level, early childhood professionals, both in higher education and in community-based programs (many of whom served as members of Com- munity Councils), were key to the continuation of this journey. At the state level, the commitment of members of the Higher Education Early Childhood Task Force was key, because those not directly involved in the project were always available for feedback and input and others were deeply involved. Finally, we were very fortunate to hire an extremely capable early childhood professional, who is Navajo, to work directly with the four institutions in the Four Corners area and to negotiate support from the Navajo Nation for the project. She has, indeed, been a critical friend to the project.

Higher education administrators. We all know that having key administrators in higher education as critical friends is absolutely essential in sustaining and institutionalizing programs. Most administrators are ecstatic about receiving funding from foundations and state and federal agencies. It makes their record of external funding look good. They are far less enthusiastic about sustaining and institutionalizing programs developed with soft money once the money has dried up. It is important to gain administrative support early on. This effort may be monumental, as many administrators, even those in Colleges of Educa- tion, are not necessarily convinced of the importance of high quality early care and education. (It departs from traditional teacher education.) A partnership with state government, especially if this partnership may result in additional future funding, can be a strong force in forging support from administrators. It is 37 The Continuous Journey

important to generate credit hours—at least in New Mexico, where higher education funding is determined by credit hour production. It is important to be so visible in the community that administrators will look bad if they do not support the project.

In this project, administrators at some institutions should be noted as critical friends. (Note the “some” in the previous sentence.) At UNM, for example, the Dean established a Center to serve as the “home” for the Kellogg Project; at UNM-Gallup the Director paid for instruction and other costs so that Kellogg funds could be diverted to student support; at New Mexico State University the Department Chair actively participated in community council meetings; and with a little nudging, the Director of UNM-Gallup and the President of CIT began to collaborate on a vocational certificate program. Once again, if change is to be systemic and permanent, critical friends are the centerpieces of the project.

Policy Makers

Particular policy makers and legislators have been supportive at many junctures throughout our continuing journeys and have made this journey possible, beginning with the introduction and passage of the House Memorial that created the Office of Child Development and outlined its charge. Key legislators are crucial to every journey and to every initiative. Meet with them often. Edu- cate them about the issues in your state. Work in their campaigns. Of course, Governors also are key, and sometimes Governor’s spouses, as noted earlier in this document. Be sure the Governor knows the issues and the advocates. Get his/her commitment. Finally, state government employees in key agencies that address and monitor early care and education programs are critical friends. New Mexico is uniquely blessed by having REAL early childhood professionals in the Office of Child Development in the Children, Youth, and Families Department. They have continually fostered the collaboration between state government and higher education; they have made it possible to fund faculty at institutions of higher education to get the important work of the state done; and they have supported the Task Force in travel and per diem to ensure continual participation of its members. They truly have been the most important critical friends of this 15-year journey. Without funding and support, the journey is far more arduous, and the destination continually eludes you. An important lesson that we have 38 learned is that this kind of collaboration, along with community partnerships, is absolutely critical for success.

Earlier we mentioned policy makers in the Navajo Nation who have been critical friends to this project. It is important to note that both policy making and higher education at the tribal level and at the state level are vastly different, and these differences had to be accommodated.

Funding Sources

Of course, funders are essential critical friends. While all of the previously mentioned friends are indeed critical, unless there is money to embark upon an ambitious journey, good intentions eventually evaporate. First and foremost, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation provided funds that allowed us to begin the next phase of our journey. Their funding supported valuable faculty time and support services to pursue the goals of the project, and they provided support for students in the form of tuition and stipends. These funds leveraged other funds. Three other national funding sources contributed to the various institutions: the U.S. Department of Education; the U.S. Department of Education, Office of In- dian Education; and three funding streams from the Navajo Nation: Head Start, the Child Care and Development Block Grant, and Growing in Beauty (funds from the U.S. Office of Education, Division of Special Education and Rehabilita- tive Services).

State funding sources also supported the project. As noted earlier in this document, the Office of Child Development, Children, Youth, and Families Department, the Department of Health, and the Department of Education have continually supported the design and implementation of the Comprehensive Professional Development System in Early Care, Education, and Family Support. The Kellogg Project is but one part of this system. (For a more complete description, see La Ristra: New Mexico’s Comprehensive Professional Development System in Early Care, Education, and Family Support, 2002.) In addition, the New Mexico Commission on Higher Education supported UNM-Gallup with $67,000 for a Teacher Quality Enhancement Grant, which helped 10 students from Zuni Pueblo complete their bachelor’s degree and licensure.

39 The Continuous Journey

In summary, critical friends for this project have consisted of those in local communities, professionals, policy makers, and funding sources. Without all of these critical friends, we would not be writing this report.

40 Flexibility Evaluative Criteria

Linguistic Skills Responsiveness Special Commitment Resources & Supports

Essential Collaborative Elements Practices

Cultural Responsiveness Trust

Leadership Knowledge

ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS

very journey requires baggage—the trick is to pack the right things for E the selected trip. Just as sunscreen and a hat are essential for a trip to the beach, we found that our journey required some essential elements. Some things we knew we would need were planned for inclusion from the beginning. Other things we picked up along the way. Then, there were essentials, like trust, that emerged from the foundation of previous journeys and grew even stronger throughout this journey.

As you can see below, most of our “essential elements” are intangible rather than concrete. We believe that the development of these elements as outcomes often is more important than the products that typically are celebrated and re- warded. They are based on attitudes, beliefs, values, and relationships. They represent the way we see others and ourselves. For example, we have very carefully worded our first two “essential elements” as cultural and linguistic 41 The Continuous Journey

responsiveness. We have purposefully used the term responsiveness in order to convey not only sensitivity and respect, but also the appropriateness of the action taken.

We have learned that our journey required three basic elements in order to accomplish our goals:

• A shift in our thinking. We had to move outside the box and think in new and different ways in order to create new and different systems.

• An action-orientation. It was not enough merely to think differently— we had to DO things differently—and we still are struggling with what this basic element really means.

• Strategic thinking about how to make lasting change. We are weary of projects that come and go with funding opportunities but have no lasting results. In fact, we do not involve ourselves with these projects anymore. Our commitment is to create systems that become part of the infrastructure.

We gave ourselves the task of identifying the eleven most essential elements for our journey. They are as follows:

• Cultural Responsiveness

• Linguistic Responsiveness

• Commitment

• Trust

• Knowledge

• Skills

• Collaborative Practices

• Leadership

• Flexibility

42 • Evaluative Criteria

• Special Resources & Supports Cultural Responsiveness

New Mexico and its surrounding areas are rich with the diversity of cultures. However, even in large metropolitan areas, this diversity has not been represented fully in early childhood personnel preparation programs. As a result, there are very few people of color in leadership positions in early childhood education programs. In some rural areas with large concentrations of Native American and Spanish-speaking peoples, a continuum of programs leading to the bachelor’s level early childhood teacher license (birth through grade three) simply was not available. This project focused on creating programs that were responsive to the needs of students from under-represented groups and increasing the opportunities for those students to become teachers and leaders in early childhood programs in their home communities. Programs were developed at each institution that were based upon community needs and existing opportunities.

Linguistic Responsiveness

Language is often a barrier for people of color in accessing higher education programs. This barrier is fueled by the attitudes of an alarming number of individuals regarding English-only instruction and is compounded by the political complexities surrounding immigration. Issues of language were always a part of our discussions, but we now realize that we were naively thinking about overcoming the language barrier by merely offering the same courses in a different language.

It seems so obvious now that language embodies the culture, values, and beliefs of people. A simple translation of English curriculum into a different language does not meet the criterion of responsiveness. It became increasingly important to critically challenge the content of courses and to develop curricula that are meaningful to students—enabling them to understand the content in relationship to their own lives and experiences. We learned this lesson over time as we engaged in deep and challenging discussions about language and culture. We came to believe that all teacher preparation programs must model respect for 43 The Continuous Journey

the cultural beliefs and values that are embedded in students’ language so that they will do the same when they become teachers.

We know now that using students’ native language enables them to understand the material being presented and communicate effectively their vast array of knowledge about children and the ways children learn. In addition, teaching the language of the community also becomes a critical component of the teacher preparation program since it ensures that the language and culture of students will be incorporated into the curriculum.

The commitment to linguistic responsiveness is represented in this project by the creation of Navajo language programs of study on the Navajo Nation, as well as by the creation of Spanish language courses at El Paso Community Col- lege and New Mexico State University. Navajos have a serious fear that the language of their people is being lost. As a result, the Navajo Tribal Council mandated that the Navajo Nation Head Start Program transition into a monolin- gual Navajo language immersion model. As a part of this project, Diné College accepted the enormous challenge of creating an Associate of Arts degree program that would prepare early childhood teachers who are not only fluent in the Navajo language, but also are able to use the Navajo culture as a foundation for early childhood curriculum and instructional methods.

On the southern border of New Mexico where Las Cruces, New Mexico, El Paso, Texas, and Juarez, Mexico are growing into one large metropolitan area, large numbers of the Spanish-speaking population are disenfranchised from traditional English language higher education programs. As a result of this project, New Mexico State and El Paso Community College have begun to collaborate. They now offer the 45-Hour Entry Level Course in Spanish and have increasingly begun to offer coursework off-campus so that higher education is less intimidating and more accessible.

Commitment

The commitment to developing a culturally and linguistically responsive professional development system must come from three levels simultaneously:

44 1) State and/or tribal government and other governmental entities: Flexible standards and policies as well as collaborative working relationships must be established by governmental entities whenever reciprocity or articulation issues are involved.

2) Higher education institutions and their faculty: These individuals and institutions must value the input of stakeholders and be willing to work in nontraditional ways.

3) The local community: These individuals must be committed to working with two lumbering giants—higher education and government. Change can be slow and painful in these worlds, where even a seem- ingly small response like changing a three-credit course to three one- credit modules sometimes can be a huge accomplishment.

The substantive work of this project was accomplished through the commitment of these three groups, but especially through the work of the Community Councils. Despite significant institutional barriers, local stakeholders dialogued for long hours to identify community needs and then to work in partnership with higher education faculty to translate the needs into workable strategies.

Trust

One of the most critical issues early on in this particular project was the lack of trust of potential students and community members in their local institutions of higher education. For example, many students had experienced spending valuable time and resources on associate degrees that later would not transfer into bachelor’s degree programs. Others were confronted with institutions that appeared to present barriers that prevented their attendance by scheduling classes during the workday and by offering content that seemed to have little meaning to their day-to-day realities in classrooms.

We also had to acknowledge and address issues of trust within our own profession. For, at a very basic level, some did not see as valid an inclusive professional development system that acknowledged individuals with dramati- cally different levels of training and education as “professionals”. It was debated

45 The Continuous Journey

that, for example, at least a particular degree was necessary to earn the distinc- tion of “professional”. Others argued that those who worked in certain systems of early care, education, and family support (like child care) were not professionals since child care could not be considered a profession. Therefore, it was crucial that leaders in the field establish the “membership” of the profession as including all those who had made a commitment to work in all areas of early care, education and family support. It was necessary to have a common vision for the “professionalization” of our field. As a result, we worked many hours to establish a common language so that we would be able to communicate effectively across systems. Still, we are challenged by the lack of a common nomenclature, and we struggle with what to call those who work directly with children— teachers, caregivers, or providers? We know that we cannot expect others to respect us and treat us as professionals if we fail to respect one another.

Built through continual networking and dialogue, trust has evolved within the broad early childhood education community in New Mexico. Evidence of this trust is most apparent in the Higher Education Early Childhood Task Force, which began as informal meetings of faculty from two-year and four-year institutions. The Task Force has now become an official standing committee of the New Mexico Child Development Board, and the trust established through these meetings has grown to include policy-makers, legislators, advocates and practitioners—all working on behalf of young children and their families.

The Community Councils had to establish trust among their members in order to sometimes bluntly confront issues and attitudes that served as barriers. Interestingly, the issues often were actually well-meaning attempts by faculty to make the curriculum more responsive. For example, the Community Council at San Juan College decided that they needed to begin their work by identifying “critical elements” that should be a part of their associate degree program and then serve as the foundation for the creation of the bachelor’s degree program. In an effort to be culturally responsive, the faculty of the college had assumed that the program should be based on and emphasize the Native American cultures of the students—who were predominantly Navajo, Ute and Apache. The Community Council (consisting primarily of administrators in local early childhood and public school programs), however, was emphatic that the teaching of language and culture was the responsibility of the community. They saw the 46 responsibility of the community college as preparing teachers who would be fluent and literate in the English language, while at the same time being responsive to the students in their programs.

Knowledge

It is impossible for any one person to know everything that is necessary to build a comprehensive professional development system. That is why collaboration is so critical. However, we have found that it is important for everyone to know as much as possible about the public infrastructure. For example, we have had to learn how the state legislature works and how public policy is created. We have had to learn how money flows into programs from the federal, state and local levels and how policies and regulations impact professional preparation. We have had to learn how institutions of higher education function and the ways in which they are regulated and funded. We have had to learn about all of the aspects of the early childhood systems that we want to include in our professional development system: child care, Head Start, early intervention, and all aspects of public school through grade three. We have had to listen carefully to students, parents, children, and program administrators. It is not enough to know how to facilitate children’s growth and development; we also have to become knowledgeable about adult learning.

In developing the programs in this project it also was essential to become knowledgeable about the traditional beliefs of the community regarding children and their growth, development and learning in order to incorporate those beliefs into the teacher preparation curriculum. Through collaboration and the search for mentors with valuable experience in different arenas we were able to move outside our own areas of expertise. And, most importantly, we were able to respond collectively to the needs of students from under-represented populations.

Skills

Even knowledge by itself is not sufficient—it must all come together in systems that work for the community so that children can be successful in their endeavors. Skills require practice. So, we have found it important to link with people who have skills—in successfully working with the legislature, for ex- 47 The Continuous Journey

ample—and to recruit “champions” for our cause who are willing to work with us and teach us while working on our behalf. For, all the knowledge we have gained must be appropriately translated into action and enable people involved in every aspect of the system to acquire the knowledge and skills to impact the system in ways that are sustainable and institutionalized.

Collaborative Practices

Every aspect of our journey has required collaboration within and among those working in the profession: in higher education, in state government, and in the community. This collaboration becomes even more challenging when a commitment has been made to inclusion—of all families, all children, and all programs. Again, we purposefully have chosen not merely to talk about “collaboration”. We have chosen to challenge ourselves by committing to “collaborative practices” in order to focus on the action required:

• listening,

• synthesis of input, and

• response.

Leadership

Every journey requires leaders—the people who plan the journey, the driver or the pilot, and so on. Leadership can be formal or informal (and usually is both), but leadership is required to get where you want to go. We found it important to have many different kinds of leadership at many different levels. Sometimes the leadership was designated and authorized, but many times it came collectively or emerged through respect for a particular individual and his or her expertise. This complex system of leadership made a common vision and common commitment to the foundational principles of the project imperative. For, staying on track is important for any journey.

In New Mexico, we initiated and continued our journey with considerable dialogue involving all stakeholders. From the very beginning, retreats (or advances) provided the opportunity to establish a shared vision, to reflect, and to plan. Foundational principles that were discussed and challenged and re-dis-

48 cussed eventually became part of the plan and the strategies that became institutionalized in a variety of forms. In many ways, these foundational principles provided the leadership for the professional development initiative and this project, because each individual had to provide leadership within his or her own sphere of influence. For example, the foundational principle of inclusion required hours and hours of discussion through the years—and again every time a new person joined the group or a new aspect of the initiative was begun. Did we really mean that our Common Core Competencies would be inclusive of ALL children? Did we really mean that our profession would be called Early Care, Education and Family Support? Have we really been inclusive?

A critical common thread of leadership was found among the faculty at each individual institution of higher education. All of these dedicated individuals were committed to the ideals of the project. Consistently they maintained a common vision and engaged in creative thinking. Some of these leaders, because they were the only faculty person in early childhood, added this project to their already heavy workloads. Individuals representing the Navajo Nation and the Spanish-speaking population involved in the project were especially crucial to its success.

Flexibility

We quickly learned that a responsive professional development system must have a structure that allows for flexibility. Therefore, the programs that were created were based on the Seven Competency Areas and the Career Lattice to provide students the maximum benefit in transferring credits and in receiving state-issued certificates and licensure. However, each program was uniquely designed to meet the needs of the community in which it was located. Each program accommodated its students in different ways. It is especially important to note that initial strategies for implementation changed over time. Some initiatives that we thought would be successful were not—others that we didn’t plan from the outset ended up being successful. The foundational principles, however, remained the same, and they are stronger now in reality than they were at the inception of the project.

49 The Continuous Journey

Evaluative Criteria

Through continuous dialogue at all levels, the professional development initiative as a whole and the development of each institution’s program of study have evolved based on the foundational principles that were established in the early years of the initiative. These values and beliefs were re-examined and became the “lens” through which all aspects of the project were viewed. Goals and outcomes were based on an understanding of the foundational principles with a belief that the process of achieving these goals was the most important aspect of the project. Of course, all funding agencies have evaluative criteria, and ours is no different. But, many significant criteria emerged over the course of the project. (Please refer to the final section of this document.)

Special Resources and Supports

Numerous resources and supports have helped to make this project and the entire professional development initiative a reality. Considerable assistance and support were gained from professional groups such as NAEYC and DEC through conferences and their efforts to provide leadership through developing standards and competencies. Foundations have provided financial resources and direction through direct funding, as well as through consortium funding to Wheelock College that resulted in New Mexico’s participation in the Partners In Change (PIC) Project. Grants from state, federal, and tribal agencies have played a crucial role in supporting this project.

The networking that was inspired and challenged by colleagues from other places has been invaluable. Even though we were determined to create a system that was uniquely ours, our work would not have been possible without understanding the work of others. For example, the work of colleagues in Victoria and other provinces of Canada made us bolder. The work of colleagues in Hawaii provided challenges and inspiration about the use of native language and culture as a foundation for curriculum. The stories of success and disappointment of individuals and groups in states like Oregon, Texas, West Virginia, and California provided cumulative inspiration and direction. Feedback on this model from colleagues in North Carolina has enriched the process of reflection and documentation.

50 It is always important to acknowledge individual people—parents, students, legislators, policy makers and so many more—who have been a part of the dialogue over time, as well as individuals like the Executive Director of the Associa- tion of New Mexico Community Colleges, who has championed the initiative since the beginning. It is important through the process of dialogue and implementation to make every individual feel ownership of the initiative by respecting and valuing their contributions and participation.

51 The Continuous Journey

52 Reflective Practices

Dialogue Lessons Learned

Change Processes

REFLECTIVE PRACTICES

ust as vacations of the past influence the planning of future journeys, Jevery project requires continual reflection in order to ensure that everyone is on board. Reflection sometimes must be formalized and facilitated—with specific questions leading the discussion. Community Council meetings and monthly meetings of the Kellogg Core Group and the Higher Education Early Childhood Task Force served as forums for reflection and discussion. As always, key questions were asked about this process, such as those that follow.

Questions to ask Are all key stakeholders a part of this discussion? Are we giving more than “lip service” to cultural and linguistic responsiveness? Are we really listening to what people are saying? What are we DOING about their input?

We have identified at least three important components of reflective practices as follows:

• Dialogue

• Lessons Learned

• Change Processes 53 The Continuous Journey

Dialogue

Dialogue is the heart of reflective practice, and active listening is the heart of dialogue. Too often, advisory groups have been formed as a formality with everyone involved soon realizing that their input really does not matter. In this journey, the dynamic process of change could not have occurred without actively seeking conversations with as many people as possible. It is critical that all avenues of dialogue are explored so that as many individuals as possible participate. This dialogue can occur through casual conversations, topical focus groups, or on-going conversations via e-mail. Dialogue is only as good as the action produced, and so a commitment to synthesize the input and act on it is essential. For example, we found that we had to explore changing the traditional three-credit course, by creating non-traditional class formats, establishing flexible practicum and student teaching experiences, teaching classes off-campus in less intimidating settings, changing the language of instruction, and integrating content that is important to the community.

Dialogue not only produces action, but it builds commitment and buy-in for the project. Like a family vacation, there is much more willingness to take the “good with the bad” if everyone has been involved in the planning and everyone has ownership and responsibility for the decisions.

Lessons Learned

Change is difficult, and we tend to seek consistency, even if our efforts are not working. Systems—government infrastructure and higher education in particular—are difficult to influence and change. But our experience has been that change is possible, especially when we have listened to stories, gathered information, and translated data into different forms that make sense to policy- makers and others. Then we can influence decisions.

Paying attention to what is and is not working requires patience and the ability to think outside the box. The process cannot be linear, based on what we thought would happen prior to engaging in the process of dialogue. It requires giving—or perhaps assuming—permission to change direction and alter the course of the journey. And it demonstrates that collaboration really is hard work

54 since real change is extremely complex and involves many people in a variety of roles.

For example, at San Juan College we quickly heard that it was difficult for low-income students from under-represented populations to commit to three- credit courses. However, they would be much more willing to enroll in one- credit mini-courses. This change seemed to be a fairly simple task, until the early childhood faculty were told that it was impossible because the computer was programmed only for three-credit courses. Listening to this input and having a commitment to meeting the needs of the community led to redesigning the college’s computer system so that it could accommodate a myriad of course configurations other than three-credit courses.

Change Processes

The change process requires a shift in the way we work—a shift in para- digms. We cannot be guilty of “paradigm paralysis”. Authentic or real change that produces long-lasting differences in the way we “do business” means that we cannot merely do more of the same and expect change to occur. The change must be sustainable and must result in altering institutions and systems.

Authentic change requires taking a hard look at all aspects of inclusion … and taking responsibility for attitudes and assumptions that have led to the exclusion of many. It requires asking, “Whom do we REALLY want here?” When we talk about inclusion in teacher education programs, for example, are we really just talking about teaching middle-class white females how to make tortillas for Cinco de Mayo or are we committed to inclusion in every aspect of the program?

55 The Continuous Journey

56 Barrier Busting

BARRIER BUSTING

e usually think of barriers as insurmountable objects or situations Woutside of ourselves that keep us from going where we want to go. We often feel that we have no control over these barriers. However, as we have progressed on this journey, we have found that many barriers are internal; they are ourselves or of our own making. In fact, some barriers we hold dear to our hearts (such as the celebration of Halloween, for some teachers) must be addressed before we can successfully move through our journey and “bust” the barriers established by others.

Self-reflection reveals that we have assumptions and attitudes that severely limit our ability to influence change. We must take a hard look at ourselves collectively, as early care and education professionals. Who are we? Who is included and who is not included? How do we behave toward one another? Is someone without a Ph.D. or even a BA a professional? Do WE hold attitudinal barriers that influence how programs are structured, what “counts” within higher education programs, and whether child care and special education professionals with equivalent training are regarded as equivalent by their peers and inclusively regarded within the early care and education profession? Are we creating “separate but equal” systems or are we creating change that is inclusive?

Our inability to agree on nomenclature for the profession is indicative of the barriers that exist. For example, one of the first decisions we made in New Mexico was to decide to call our profession Early Care, Education, and Family Support. We felt that the words when spoken would communicate a message to ourselves and to others. However, we still struggle with using the terms “pro- vider” versus “teacher” versus “caregiver” and whether to say “training” or “professional preparation”.

57 The Continuous Journey

We must look at how society regards us collectively and how we, then, regard the others and ourselves in our profession. If members of our profession are to be regarded as an underclass, then we must examine our ethical responsibilities when recruiting, particularly individuals who have been disenfranchised from higher education. Is it ethical to recruit individuals from under represented groups, many of whom are single parents, into a dead-end minimum wage job? It is our responsibility to find ways to empower ourselves before we go too far in our journey. If we expect others to regard us as professionals, then we must act like professionals. We must present ourselves collectively and assume a bearing of power. We must create a common vocabulary and assume a language of possibility, ability, and inclusion. We must overcome the barriers within ourselves and within our profession. Dialogue, leadership, trust, and all of the other essential elements that are part of this journey are built through the process of “barrier busting”. Once cohesion in the profession is established, the remaining barriers seem much easier to address.

The barriers that exist between two- and four-year institutions, such as articulation, are typical institutional barriers when two- and four-year faculty members begin to work together. Barriers within traditional teacher education programs are easier to address when there is a clear vision. Attitudes about how people gain knowledge and formally recognizing competencies gained outside higher education can be an exciting challenge when viewed through the lens of inclusion.

It has been fascinating to look at the artificial, and even arbitrary, barriers of state and national boundaries. We found that individuals crossed these boundaries as part of their everyday lives. However, the institutional and political structures created by states severely limit individuals from accessing services that often are only a short drive from their homes.

As always, it is important to ask important questions throughout the journey in order to anticipate, to circumvent, and sometimes to “bust through” barriers. Using the journey map, some questions regarding overcoming barriers might include those that follow.

58 Questions to ask How can the Preliminary Mapping process assist us to identify and plan strategically for dealing with barriers? Which of our Critical Friends is most knowledgeable and skillful in working with particular barriers? How have groups in other professions or in other locations addressed these or similar barriers? What lessons can we learn from them? Are there trust issues that need to be addressed before we move forward? Who will lead this effort? What knowledge and skills do we need to gain before we move forward? What would happen if we simply waited for the context to change?

59 The Continuous Journey

60 Voices and Stories

VOICES AND STORIES

commitment to dialogue means respectfully giving a place and mean- A ing to the voices and stories of everyone. The telling of stories is a valued tradition in the Southwest. Stories are given considerable meaning and power as a means of transmitting culture, religion and language. The keeper of the stories is traditionally given a position of significant responsibility and respect.

Voices and stories, though, are not only about listening and gathering input. We must be able to talk with others about our journey. We need to be able to share our vision, our hopes, our destination, and our stories. We must find our own voices.

Because this component is so critical, it is important to ask questions about the voices and stories throughout the journey, such as those that follow.

Questions to ask Which stakeholders do not have a voice? How can those voices be provided and maintained? Are parents being asked to share their stories? Who is saying what? Where do we need to go to hear from all stakeholders? Do we need to learn a different language in order to be able to understand what is being said? …or to share our stories? Do we have a voice? Do we have a common language? Who is listening to our stories? Who is not listening? Why?

61 The Continuous Journey

It is from voices and stories that any journey gains its heart.

From New Mexico State University

S.G. is a single parent with six children ranging in age from two to nine years. She speaks no English. As a Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program participant, she enrolled in the New Mexico 45-Hour Entry Level Course through La Vida Institute Training and Technical Assistance Program. During the course she was more of a participant observer but responded when questioned. Prior to taking the course, she volunteered in her child’s Head Start program, which was next door to her home. Upon completion of the course, she applied for and was accepted for a cook’s position in a community child care program. Although she was reserved during the course, she must have seen La Vida Institute and the facilitator as family resources. Last Christmas she called the facilitator, who had said, “If you need anything, call us.” She was very upset that she had no financial resources to buy presents for her six children. The facilitator shared that information with the La Vida staff who made sure that each child received several gifts. Submitted by Nancy Baptiste

62 From University of New Mexico—Gallup

The majority of students at UNM-Gallup are non-traditional. We have some students with special stories to tell. One, whom I shall call Sally, is a legally blind grandmother of sixty plus years and a dedicated child advocate. Sally is Navajo. She is performing well in her classes. She is an excellent source of information on past educational practices in this area. She gives much to our younger students.

Another special story is that of Joan Yazzie (not her real name). She worked for the Navajo Nation Head Start program. She obtained her CDA and then continued her educational career until she finally completed her bachelor’s degree through the Kellogg Project in May, 2000. This was a ten-year process, and she commuted more than 100 miles each way to attend classes. She is now teaching kindergarten in the public schools. Submitted by Helen Zongolowicz

From Diné College

Among our first cohort of nineteen students in the AA program at Diné College is Priscilla Benally. Priscilla was not raised on the Navajo Nation, but she does speak Navajo, though she is not articulate, and is raising her child in a traditional way. Each week, to our class, we bring in an elder, usually a woman, to tell us of the traditional wisdoms of child-rearing, be it the teaching of the web of clans or the carrying out of a ceremony (such as the “Baby’s First Laugh” ceremony). The hunger that Priscilla shows for the traditional knowledge and perspectives of these elder women is pal- pable. During our sessions in Navajo (these elders usually cannot speak English), neither her face nor her body moves. She soaks it up like a sponge, in rapt attention. Submitted by Clay Slate

63 The Continuous Journey

From San Juan College

Muriel works in a tribal child care center in a rural area of Northern New Mexico. She was respected and acknowledged at the Center for her organizational skills and leadership qualities. Muriel often kept “things going” when the director was called to meetings or off-site duties. However, Muriel had never achieved her educational goals–a credential in early childhood education. She had attempted a CDA at her work site with a consultant, but the project was not completed because of funding constraints. Muriel began courses at the community college 88 miles away but found that center and family responsibilities, as well as financial concerns, interrupted her educational process. Through the Kellogg Project, Muriel was selected by the Community Council as a candidate for the Summer Institute. For one month four days a week, Muriel traveled 176 miles each day and never missed a session.

Last May Muriel completed her certificate in ECED. She is currently completing her Associate Degree and plans to go on for a bachelor’s degree at New Mexico Highlands University. Muriel states that the financial support, personal encouragement and availability of the BA on site at the Community College inspired her to continue the journey.

A recent visit to Muriel’s work site with a college instructor re- vealed that Muriel has taken on the role of mentor and model for other staff at the Center. Muriel not only encourages staff to take college courses, but she makes sure that current college schedules are available at the Center and drives the van for staff to attend Friday classes at the college. Submitted by Pat Dalton

64 From Crownpoint Institute of Technology

Shirl Begay, age 57, enrolled in the 45-Hour Entry Level Course at CIT. She said, “I have six children: three sons and three lovely daughters. I’m presently raising my son’s daughter, Tina, who is six years old. Her mom had put her up for adoption when Tina was less than a day old. I drove to Flagstaff, Arizona and picked her up and brought her home. She is a beautiful child, and she calls me Mom. After raising six children, I was not aware of how children learned, language development, social skills, fine and gross motor skills. As a mom, I thought providing food, shelter, clothing, education and a mother’s love was all there was to raising a child. After taking the 45-Hour Entry Level Course, I learned a lot about early childhood education. I was fortunate to have an experienced, skillful and educated teacher who taught in her native language (Navajo) and in the English language about all areas of early childhood. After I completed the course I realized that I had raised my children without the understanding that play is learning, the proper way to discipline children, getting on the child’s level, providing safe toys and a healthy environment, proper hand- washing, child growth and development. I have made changes in the way I speak to Tina. I support her in her school and I am involved with her School Parent Group. I give a lot of support to the Kellogg Project for valuable Early Childhood Education courses for those that still have the heart to learn about young children. Thank you.” Submitted by Lolita Ellsworth

65 The Continuous Journey

From University of New Mexico

As an early childhood educator in her village for over 30 years, Mary recently enrolled in our Early Childhood Evening and Weekend bachelor’s program. She entered our program with an abundance of expertise in guiding children’s learning and development. Through the span of three decades, Mary completed more than 180 college credits through a variety of programs offered on site at Laguna Pueblo. During the 1970s and 1980s, several federally-funded programs were initiated to offer college courses on Tribal lands throughout the United States. Unfortunately for Mary, these programs terminated before she and many others were able to obtain their undergraduate degrees. When Mary learned of our new Evening and Weekend Program, she was initially reluctant to put faith in yet another Teacher Preparation Program. However, after many advisement meetings, telephone conversations, and letters, together we developed a plan for graduation. This plan included a comprehensive evaluation of her prior coursework to determine course-equivalency with our program requirements for graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Early Childhood Multicultural Education. Mary has inspired us to continue learning about how we can better understand the needs of excellent teachers and community members in order to help our university be more accessible to the people of New Mexico. “After all these years, I will finally get to graduate from college.” Like Mary’s statement, many others have assured us of how important this journey is for those who have dedicated their lives to teaching young children.

Submitted by David Atencio

66 Unanticipated Outcomes

Institutionalization Capacity Building

Intended Destinations Outcomes

DESTINATIONS

very journey has a destination, even if it is a stopover that is part of E travel that will take a very long time. It is important to identify these destinations for a sense of accomplishment and for celebrating achievements. This project, too, had destinations as reflected in the two major goals.

At the beginning of any journey, it is important to ask questions about destinations, such those that follow.

Questions to ask Where do we expect to go? How long will it take? How do we get there? What will happen once we get there? How long will we stay? What might happen along the way? What will we do if something unexpected happens? Can we be flexible with our plans? Are we all in agreement about the guiding principles that will influence decision-making along the way? What will happen if we do not reach our destination? How can we demonstrate to others that we have reached our destination? What differences will our journey make? 67 The Continuous Journey

Even though the topic of destinations appears toward the end of our journey, it has a critical presence throughout the journey. Even at the very beginning, it is important to ask questions and make determinations regarding destinations. It is, perhaps, even more important to recognize the unanticipated destinations that are reached, or shorter side-trips that are made, during the course of the longer journey. When acknowledged and celebrated, these destinations are sometimes more rewarding than the final destination.

We have identified the following four components of destinations:

• Intended Outcomes

• Unanticipated Outcomes

• Capacity Building

• Institutionalization

Intended Outcomes

Destinations most often result in intended outcomes, but not always. We identify the outcomes and work toward their accomplishment. Sometimes we identify them at the beginning of the journey and sometimes they are identified and added as the journey progresses. We have discovered that even the accomplishment of intended outcomes is not a linear process. When we celebrate the journey itself as a non-linear process of change, it is even more exciting to acknowledge that some of the most meaningful accomplishments were never specifically identified ahead of time.

Unanticipated Outcomes

These accomplishments often serve as the fuel to keep us going. They can be small incidents or huge events, but either way they are usually overlooked as unimportant in a linear process that is merely looking for predetermined outcomes.

The following significant accomplishments represent both intended and unanticipated outcomes of the Kellogg Project in New Mexico: 68 New Mexico State University

• Translated the 45-Hour Entry Level Course (the beginning point of the career lattice) into Spanish, thereby creating access to the career lattice for Spanish speakers in southern New Mexico (97 students completed), West Texas (70 students completed), and Juarez, Mexico (27 students completed).

• Trained 10 mentors/career coaches for students taking the Entry Level Course; 10 students have enrolled in the AA program.

• Received funds from a private foundation to teach the Entry Level Course in Spanish in Juarez, Mexico.

• Initiated work on an articulation agreement across state lines between NMSU and El Paso (Texas) Community College.

University of New Mexico—Gallup

• Collaborated with main campus to offer its bachelor’s program (3rd and 4th years) on site; 37 students have now obtained bachelor’s degrees.

• Tripled the enrollment in pre-bachelor’s programs as a result of the Kellogg Project.

• Initiated an AA program on site at Zuni Pueblo with 25 students.

• Secured outside grant funds from several different agencies to hire a mentor/advisor for students, to purchase laptop computers for student teachers to implement an electronic mentoring project, and to pay stipends to students in both the AA and the BA programs.

San Juan College

• Negotiated successfully with Highlands University (Las Vegas, New Mexico) to host a bachelor’s program (3rd and 4th years) on site in Farmington; 12 students currently enrolled, 10 of whom are Navajo. 69 The Continuous Journey

• Offered a Summer Institute in Cultural Literacy for students from under represented populations working in Head Start, child care, and public schools with children at risk.

• Increased enrollment in the AA program for Head Start teachers with a grant from Head Start.

• Created a repository for early childhood materials in Navajo at San Juan College-West.

• Established significant library holdings, including ERIC documents and a microfiche machine, for use by students in early childhood preparation programs.

Crownpoint Institute of Technology

• Pursued accreditation, with the support of Kellogg Project staff, from the North Central Association so that approved certificate and AA programs that articulate with the career lattice can be implemented.

• Taught the 45-Hour Entry Level Course in seven remote communities on the Navajo Nation, using both English and Navajo languages; 197 students completed the course.

• Collaborated with UNM-Gallup to teach courses in the certificate program on site in Crownpoint until accreditation is received.

• Built and opened a child-care facility on campus for students, which will serve as the laboratory for early childhood students (not Kellogg funded).

Diné College

• Reconstructed the 45-Hour Entry Level Course to be based on Navajo language and culture, using the expertise of a variety of community leaders; translated the course into Navajo.

• Taught the course in Navajo to more than 100 individuals. 70 • Designed and implemented an AA degree program based on Navajo language and culture, taught partially in Navajo; 38 students enrolled.

• Developed early childhood materials in Navajo.

• Secured a commitment for continuing funding from three funding streams of the Navajo Nation to institutionalize the AA program.

• Built a child-care facility for students, which will be connected to the early childhood program (not Kellogg funded).

University of New Mexico

• Created an evening/weekend early childhood bachelor’s program with 17 students enrolled.

• Collaborated with the Albuquerque Technical-Vocational Institute to implement a massive recruitment effort for students of color to enroll in pre-bachelor’s and bachelor’s programs.

• Created a database of more than 842 potential students, including individuals from surrounding Indian pueblos (nearly 65% of the pool are either Hispanic or Native American).

Capacity Building

One of the basic assumptions of the project was that young children from under-represented groups, especially those at risk, need teachers from their own communities who understand their cultural traditions and who speak their home language. While many early care and education programs do hire individuals from the community, they often hold the lowest paying jobs because they have not had access to higher education. One of the goals of this project was to increase access to the career lattice for those individuals, thereby building the capacity of high quality, culturally and linguistically responsive early care and education programs. To increase access, we had to build the capacity of high quality personnel preparation programs in institutions of higher education in areas serving primarily Hispanic and Native American students. We also were committed to the institutionalization of these programs. 71 The Continuous Journey

This project has led us to identify several other significant capacity issues:

• There is a critical need in the region for master’s-level and doctoral- level professionals (particularly Hispanics and Native Americans) who can become faculty members in newly created higher education programs and in policy-making positions within tribal, state, and local governments. There also is an increasing need for individuals with higher levels of education to assume positions of leadership in community programs to assure that they are appropriate for the children and families in the community. Some of these locations are quite remote, and recruiting is a serious problem. It has become clear that we must “grow our own” in order to build this capacity.

• Implementing systems for the awarding of credit for prior learning has been identified as a critical need so that individuals with significant knowledge and competence gained through years of experience and informal learning can move into the higher education system at a level that is appropriate.

• We still need to increase the capacity of existing associate degree and bachelor’s degree programs and enable individuals to access these programs. We know that there are approximately 20,000 individuals in New Mexico alone who have little or no formal professional preparation that are earning their living by working with young children. Nearly 5,840 of these individuals have now completed the 45-Hour Entry Level Course, but we have not established an effective system to provide these individuals with career counseling and advisement into the higher education system.

Even though programs have been established and expanded through this project, we must focus on both access and retention issues for low-income individuals from under-represented populations. For, even though the infrastructure now exists, we must address the comprehensive support issues stemming from the following context:

• Many individuals live in very rural and isolated areas;

72 • There is virtually no history of the families of these individuals being involved with the higher education system;

• The dominant language and culture of many institutions is both intimidating and inappropriate for many potential students.

Institutionalization

A foundational principle of this project identified by the stakeholders at initial meetings to conceptualize the project was that all project activities and programs would fit into the on-going professional development efforts and that all efforts would be toward systems change and institutionalization. As appropriate, all of the higher education programs involved in this project have institutionalized their accomplishments, based on the needs of their communities. All of the new programs that were established will be continued with institutional and agency funding.

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74 Documentation Dissemination

Answerability

Backward Mapping

BACKWARD MAPPING

ooking back to reflect on where we have been and acknowledging and L documenting the journey are critical. This backward mapping is especially important if we are to learn from the journey and share what has been learned with others who are embarking on similar journeys. For example, the preparation of this document has been an important backward mapping process for us. It has enabled us to focus on the journey itself, especially the process, rather than simply focusing on the more obvious outcomes.

When approaching the end of a journey, it is important to ask some questions, such as those that follow:

Questions to ask How will we document, demonstrate, and/or describe what we have done? Who is the audience for this process? Why do we want to share with them? Are there others who could benefit from our journey? How can we demonstrate to stakeholders that we have responded to their input? Do our products reflect guiding principles?

75 The Continuous Journey

Backward mapping has been equally important to preliminary mapping at the beginning of our journey. This process has helped us learn from our journey, share with those who are about to embark on similar journeys, be answerable to stakeholders, and begin to think about future journeys that we might undertake.

We have identified the following three primary components of backward mapping:

• Answerability

• Documentation

• Dissemination

Answerability

This word was offered by one of our project participants to strengthen the buzz word “accountability.” (Thank you, Loui.) To whom do we answer? Are they the appropriate people? There were many stakeholders in this project, and to them we must be answerable. We especially must be answerable to stakeholders whom we neglected to include and to others who did not have a voice in the direction of the journey. For example, it is important that we be answerable to the children who will be taught by the teachers involved in our preparation programs. Will these teachers have the knowledge and tools to provide quality care and education for the children with whom they work? Are we answerable to the profession? Are we answerable to our generous funders? And, are we answerable to the dedicated members of our Community Councils?

Documentation

It is important for everyone, including us, to take time for documentation. Often people write in journals when they take trips. They write about what they have seen, heard, experienced, and learned. So it is with a journey like this one. Each participant must continually document his or her experiences and reflec- tions all along the way. Writing is one way to own what one experiences, and it increases the possibility that these experiences will be shared. We encouraged participants at each institution to document their experiences at each phase of the journey. 76 Dissemination

Our professional responsibility includes sharing what we have learned with others. Dissemination is particularly important to acknowledge and be answerable to the stakeholders who have been involved in the project’s journey. It also is important to build knowledge and ownership of the work that has been accomplished and the programs that have been established through this project. For, with the close of every project there is the beginning of at least one new one that will continue the journey.

Our presentation at the annual conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) in the fall of 2000 and at the annual conference at the American Educational Research Association in the spring of 2002 have been important in the backward mapping process. Preparation for these presentations and others in a variety of venues has provided us with the opportunity to think strategically about our journey, to articulate and document this model, and to share our journey and model with others in a way that is supportive of their efforts. Our ultimate goal is to put final documentation of our model on the NewMexicoKids.org website. We encourage you to visit us.

77 The Continuous Journey

78 RETURN ENGAGEMENTS

ecause we are embarked on a continuous journey, especially one that is B so challenging and rewarding, we anticipate return engagements. Developing a comprehensive system of professional development in early care, education, and family support is a dynamic process, changing with the changing landscape–demographic, political, and professional. Despite the significant accomplishments of this part of our journey, there is still much work to be done. For example, we have learned that non-traditional students need much more support than tuition and books. They need continuing psychological support and encouragement; they need friends who will help them navigate the intimidating environment of higher education; they need access to personnel preparation programs that are meaningful to their life experiences; they need flexibility in delivery systems of higher education; they need recognition and even credit for their prior learning experiences outside of higher education; and sometimes they need tutoring in general education courses and preparation for teacher exams required for licensure because many of them are entering or returning to higher education after a long hiatus from academic pursuits. They need support in figuring out how to balance the demands of family, work, and school.

We are already in the process of planning for return engagements. We have identified the gaps in our system, and we are exploring possibilities for funding of these initiatives.

And so the journey continues.

79 The Continuous Journey

ECE Students at Diné College

work with

Bruce Hucko,

Art Coach Extraordinaire

80 Destinations Outcomes LegendLegend Rest Area

Stop/Caution/Go Border CONTEXT Fuel Check Point

Pedestrian Crossing Detour

Garage Mile Marker

Speed Limit

River Interpretive Sign

LEGEND

journey dedicated to the professional preparation of early care, educa- A tion, and family support personnel is long and exhausting. Now, more than fifteen years into our journey, we can reflect and identify some “road signs” for others interested in or involved in similar efforts. Like most other components that have been identified in our journey analysis model, there is no particular place or time when these signs might appear. We must be constantly aware of their presence.

It is always important to watch for signs.

Rest Area

We must give ourselves permission to rest, to take time out. We have found that this journey is a lot like weight training. If it does not feel right or if it is just too much effort, we must stop, take a rest, dialogue, reflect, make necessary adjustments, and then begin again when we feel strong and able.

Warning

Pay attention to warnings. Develop contingencies. When we travel, we do not always encounter warnings, but astute travelers become sensitive to the rhythm of the road and know when something is not quite right. Listen to the 81 The Continuous Journey

stories of others who have attempted similar journeys. Remain flexible and vision-oriented, realizing that there are many ways to reach a destination. In the long-term, the important thing is getting there.

Fuel

We have done whatever we needed to keep ourselves and the many individuals with whom we work inspired, motivated, and committed. Know that not everyone will be able to work at the same pace or in the same way. Retreats with different groups of people focusing on different topics have fueled us in New Mexico for nearly ten years. These retreats or “advances” have enabled groups of diverse stakeholders to establish a common vision and build relationships while accomplishing a monumental amount of work in a two- or three-day period.

Pedestrian Crossing

We are all human, and it is important to realize that this work is exceedingly complex and tiring. We chuckle at all the possible metaphors related to this walk: Sidestepping and even backsliding are meaningful ways to describe where we have been. Most importantly, we have looked back and imagined a walk along a deserted beach. There in the sand are some lasting footprints, even though others have been washed away. Which footprints remain? Why were others washed away?

As the tides change (and they will!), is there a way to preserve the footprints that remain?

Garage

Every now and then we have had to stop for repairs. Breakdowns are a part of many journeys. They are frustrating and sometimes expensive, but they often forced us to reflect and reprioritize. Unfortunately, unless we are lucky and stumble upon a shade-tree mechanic, repairs cost money and eat up valuable time. Sometimes, there are things that cannot be fixed at the moment, and we have to wait. Sometimes, irreparable damage has been done. But, usually, pre- ventive care will eliminate costly damage.

82 Speed Limit

Everyone exceeds the speed limit on occasion and realizes the need to slow down. If we are seasoned travelers, there are many indications of moving too quickly. One of the most dangerous results is change that is so easy that it requires very little effort but leaves everyone behind with a sense of bewilderment. There is no point in reaching the destination if all of the passengers are still at home packing their bags. We found that speed limits were essential in dealing with bureaucratic institutions. Initially we were far too optimistic about how long the journey would take. In this regard, for those of us who have engines that run fast, going slowly through a construction zone and waiting for the flagman can be enormously difficult. But lasting change requires enormous patience.

Sign Post

Change is difficult. Even positive change is hard, and we tend to fight it, even if it is something we know that we need. Change agents recognize that signs are everywhere. Some signs are warnings. Others help us adjust our speed to travel at a safe pace. Still others tell us about the climate or an impending storm. All signs provide critical information and direction. Pay attention.

Check Point

When crossing into foreign territory, we must pass through a checkpoint. A similar situation occurs, for example, when state or federal level administration changes after an election. Sometimes we have to translate what we are doing into a different language in order to progress. Sometimes we have to produce documentation to prove that we are legitimately traveling across the border. Our experience is that legislation has enabled us to continue our journey when we have encountered foreign borders. And, by learning different languages, we have been able to effectively communicate with policy-makers and influential people outside our field who otherwise would not have been able to understand the importance of our journey.

83 The Continuous Journey

Roundabout

Sometimes we get the feeling that we are just going around in circles and, in fact, we are. However, our experience indicates that this happens most often when we have lost our way or when we really should simply stop for a rest because it is not the time to move forward for some reason.

Detour

Detours are a pain! They slow us down and sometimes are not clearly marked. Detours, however, occur frequently, and it is important to provide the time and flexibility needed to navigate them.

Interchange

An interchange can be confusing with a variety of directions or paths. With people, there often is a convergence of directions and paths, each with different ideas, participants, and plans. Just as in a real journey, it is important to have a good map in front of you as you enter an interchange or it is possible to take the wrong turn and end up going in a direction that you did not intend to go. Find- ing a way to backtrack and get back on the right road is time-consuming, frustrating, and anxiety-producing.

Divided Highway

Highways often divide with one going one way and another going a different way. Which is the correct way? Where is my map? Again, it is imperative to have a road map to guide decision-making and avoid a parting of the ways, which is a typical result of disagreement.

84 External Evaluation

August, 2001

Submitted by Nancy File, Ph.D.

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

85 The Continuous Journey

Introduction

Following is a report of the external evaluation of Recruitment and Training of Minority Personnel in Early Care and Education. This evaluation was conducted over a 1-year period, using methods that I will describe in the following section. Because of the slow start-up of this project at several sites, including the time required to hire new staff and negotiate work plans, I was not engaged as an evaluator until the project was firmly underway, in the second of its three-year cycle. Data collection continued until close to the end of the third year, but did not include any activities conducted after that third year through carry-over funding.

The evaluation was driven by two considerations. First was the specific evaluation questions posed by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Those questions will frame upcoming sections of this report. Second was the strong will of project staff that the evaluation be qualitative and utilize a model known as journey analysis. The use of qualitative methods allows for the individuality of the various sites to be documented, as it does not require a common statistic or reference point for the analysis. In addition, the project staff reverberated with the concepts and definition of their work as a journey. Therefore, I will document the work of this project as a process using concepts from the journey analysis model.

I find it important to note at the outset that six very different community projects made up this larger effort. While there are commonalities, there are also important differences among these sites regarding goals, local context, specific challenges, and approaches. This presents a challenge to making conclusions regarding effectiveness or outcomes across the large project. My focus, rather, is on documenting processes, both common and unique. Because sites individually determined outcomes, no single cross-site instrument was deemed appropriate as an outcome measure.

86 Data Collection Methods

Data collected for this evaluation utilized the following methods: interviews, observation of meetings, review of written meeting artifacts, and focus groups. Data collection occurred at two points, approximately midway through the 3- year funding period (February through May, 1999) and during the third year (November 1999 through June 2000).

Two waves of interviews were conducted with project staff at the six individual sites. In addition, Gloria Clark, the Four Corners coordinator, was interviewed individually during the first interview wave. During the second interview wave Gloria Clark participated in on-site interviews along with staff at the tribal colleges.

The first interviews were conducted during the first half of 1999. I personally conducted all interviews, using a standard set of questions, with follow-up probes, as it seemed appropriate. These questions were distributed to all staff in advance of my visits. The questions allowed for a discussion of project beginnings, including needs assessment; specific objectives; local, state, and national influences on the work; partners; barriers and facilitators; and work processes. Specific questions are attached in Appendix D.1.

A second wave of interviews with the staff of the six project sites was conducted from late 1999 through mid-year 2000. Another consultant conducted these interviews due to my relocation out of state. The difficulties of scheduling resulted in a rather uneven time frame between interviews. The length of time from the first to the second interview ranged from 6 to 16 months, with an average of 11.67 months. Only two sites were interviewed less than 11 months apart; the remaining four had time frames from 11 to 16 months. Again, a standard list of questions distributed to all staff prior to the interview was used, with follow-up probes at the discretion of the interviewer. The questions included discussion of the operation and contributions of the community council; outcome achievement; project evolution; barriers and facilitators; essential supports; and sidetracks. Specific questions are attached in Appendix D..2.

Interviews were also conducted with six training participants, who had participated in courses sponsored by five of the sites. Due to the length of time 87 The Continuous Journey

required to translate the Entry Level course into Spanish, no participants were available at the New Mexico State University (NMSU) site prior to my out-of- state move. I conducted these interviews, again using a standard set of questions with follow-up probes. The interviews were conducted in July and August 1999. The questions included discussion of classroom experiences; similarities and differences between this experience and other training/higher education experiences; future plans; and barriers and facilitators. Specific questions are attached in Appendix D.3. The participants included four Native-Americans, one Hispanic, and one Anglo. While these students were fluent in English and indeed conducted many or all of their daily activities in English, including schooling, it would have been beneficial to conduct at least some of the interviews in the participants’ home language. It was my impression that particularly one of the participants, who had taken part in an Entry Level course conducted in Navajo might have had a different experience had the interview also been conducted in Navajo. Other participants were currently enrolled in degree programs and so seemed more comfortable with responding in the English interview format, which resulted in lengthier responses.

Another source of data was community council meetings. I attended meetings at three of the individual sites. During this time I took notes on topics of conversation and processes of the group. In addition, I examined the minutes of community council meetings supplied to me by the sites for topics being discussed.

Finally, I conducted two focus group meetings in May 2000, near the end of the third year of funding. The focus groups were convened for two specific reasons. First, the interviews had not adequately covered the topic of program responsiveness to local communities. I believed there were still questions to explore regarding how project staff approached this task. Second, all previous data collection had occurred on an individual basis. On the other hand, there was a clear connection between the individual sites, with regular meetings that brought staff together as a part of the overall effort. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to include a form of data analysis that capitalized on group synergy. One focus group was conducted in El Paso and included seven individuals working with the University of New Mexico-Albuquerque (UNM-A) and NMSU sites. The second group was conducted in Farmington and included nine 88 individuals working with the Dine‘ College (DC), San Juan College (SJC) and University of New Mexico-Gallup (UNM-G) sites. Prior to the focus group date I circulated a list of general questions to the participants. These focused on goals; the influence of culture and the local community; and barriers and facilitators. Complete questions are attached in Appendix D.4. At the start of each focus group I introduced the general purpose and allowed time for general questions and discussion about procedure. Then I informed the group that the conversation was theirs and turned it over to them with the initial question. Following this I did not intervene to insist that the group use the prepared questions, allowing them instead to direct the conversation. When the conversation appeared to go too far afield (e.g., away from a central focus on early care and education), or when it lagged, I posed a question to refocus the group. This occurred a couple of times with each group.

Finally, following the focus group in the Four Corners area, those individuals who spoke Navajo (all were native speakers except for one Anglo fluent in Navajo) conducted their own focus group in Navajo. This included five of the participants from the original group. This group prepared its own questions. Along with one of the original participants, I remained present to watch this process. Unfortunately, the translator of this audiotape found portions to be too soft-spoken to transcribe and translate. However, a partial transcript does exist. While I will use direct quotations from project staff and participants throughout this report, I made the decision to not include any direct quotations from the Navajo tape, my logic being that the English translation may not be an entirely adequate portrayal of the talk of these individuals. Something may be lost in translation that results in a shift in meaning from Navajo to English, particularly since the discussion focused on native values. However, I will note the general themes of the group.

89 The Continuous Journey

Data Analysis

All interviews and focus groups were audio taped. I personally transcribed all tapes. I initially analyzed data from the first set of staff interviews and participant interviews for an interim report. This represented the sum of transcribed data at that point in time. Using the project evaluation questions and journey analysis model as framing concepts, I identified themes using an iterative process.

Approximately a year later, in preparation for the final report, I re-read all first-wave interviews, in addition to the now-transcribed second round of staff interviews and focus groups. Again, I identified themes and then sorted these into categories, using an iterative process. I then approached forming a response to the project evaluation questions using these identified themes.

Because of the richness of the collected data, this report will include, as much as possible, direct quotations (in italics) from project staff and training participants. Generally, I found all those I interviewed to be open and interested in talking about their experiences with this project. Evaluation Questions

Question 1: In what ways did the collaboration serve to strengthen the education pipelines at the early levels for youth most at risk?

The two major goals of the project involved increasing access to programs for those populations typically under represented in the professional field and increasing the responsiveness of programs to local culture and language. Both of these goals could be viewed as serving to “strengthen the educational pipeline” for those who will work with youth most at risk. Project sites achieved outcomes in both of these areas, providing access to training, as well as providing culturally and linguistically responsive training. In addition, the educational pipeline was strengthened through the collaborations created in the project. Each of these aspects of the work will be described in this section.

Capacity enhancements: Access to training. First, access to training was achieved in two ways. Outreach with new training efforts reached individuals 90 who had not previously participated in early care and education training. Two of the participants interviewed had previous experience with some sort of preservice or inservice training, but not within the early care and education field. Both participated in the 45-hour Entry Level training offered without charge to participants. Their assessment of their experience was positive, with both expressing a wish for training of a similar type to continue. In their words,

“I liked it though, I just wonder if I ask, if they would have another workshop like that.” “I guess at the end I would just be, on behalf of our training staff, I really want to thank those people or those organizations that are responsible for that and making that effort for outreach. I really appreciate that.”

Both of these individuals expressed aspirations to continue to work with children. One expressed intentions to return to a paraprofessional job in the schools as well as a long-term dream of becoming a teacher. The other described his goal of receiving a teaching certificate with endorsement in Navajo language instruction. It might be argued that initial waves of training participants are likely to reflect the most motivated. Yet, if these individuals are representative, it is clear that this training effort is responding to and fostering long-term commitment to professional development in the early care and education field.

Because of the relative ease of offering the New Mexico 45-hour Entry Level course, this was the predominant type of new training offered. Even programs facing institutional barriers toward establishing certificate or degree-granting programs were able to mount efforts to provide this type of training earlier in the project. Four of the six sites offered the Entry Level course multiple times (UNM- G, DC, NMSU, and Crownpoint Institute of Technology – CIT). Entry Level training was not an objective at UNM-A or SJC.

The other form of new training was the summer institute developed at SJC as an accompanying experience to established coursework. I interviewed two students who participated in the institute, both of whom were also working toward AA degrees. Both evaluated their experience positively. In their words,

“It was really beneficial.”

“And it was so exciting that I just didn’t even have time to miss, think about missing a day or taking off early. I mean, I stayed even after class, and we just, it was just so interesting.” 91 The Continuous Journey

The second aspect related to access was providing new opportunities for higher-level educational opportunities in the career lattice for individuals already within the system. The work in this area was often slow and labored, beset with dead ends and sidetracks. Further discussion of these processes is found in later sections of the report. By the end of the original 3-year grant period students were enrolled in new degree programs at UNM-G, SJC, and UNM-A. DC had made significant progress toward creation of a degree program. Work on a degree program at CIT was stalled by the institution’s lack of accreditation, while a new degree program was not an objective at NMSU.

I interviewed two students enrolled in degree programs regarding those experiences. Interestingly, while both individuals expressed desires to work in programs for young children, they also envisioned a wide-ranging influence on the lives of young children. One expressed an interest in advocacy while the other spoke of wanting to earn a master’s degree and be a consultant. As above, I found that those individuals connected to the project appear likely to remain professionally involved with children and families, strengthening the pipeline. Both expressed that the project enabled them to achieve their goals. In their words,

“All I can say is that I’m glad these projects are coming in. Like the Kellogg Project, there’s no income guidelines or who’s eligible or whatnot. Because a lot of students hold back from taking classes because their income is a bit too high. But projects like this, where there’s no income guidelines, will sure help other students.” “The program itself is really providing a great opportunity. I think you need an opportunity. For my particular situation, I have a family, and I can’t afford not to work to go to school full- time.”

Capacity enhancements: Culturally responsive programs. The second manner in which the educational pipeline was strengthened was the efforts to provide culturally situated training experiences that reflect the values and language of the participants. Youth most at risk are more likely in this country to be people of color. Increasing educators’ abilities to effectively work with diverse populations is a paramount concern in the field today. While the issue of access is largely related to the quantity of professionals at each level of the career lattice, issues of culturally relevant content relate to the quality of professionals. All training participants spoke eloquently of how their experience had provided

92 opportunities to increase their effectiveness with the children from their communities. In the words of one:

“My previous training was, of course, off-reservation, and non-Indian instructors, and I just had to really blend in and take their philosophies and their learning, as they presented it.” Question: So before there wasn’t really an attempt to reach you, in terms of who you are? “Not who I was and where I came from, and not where I was going to go back to work with children. That was never really there.”

Participants at three sites, DC, CIT, and NMSU were provided training in their home language. These participants spoke of the language as the major positive point of their experience.

Question: What did you like best about the training?

“Bilingual. Talking in Navajo.” “So when she gave instructions in Navajo, there was that cultural sensitivity, where we could look at that child as a whole and being able to learn in two worlds, and that’s probably one of my best sessions right there in those discussions.”

Staff echoed this sense of the effectiveness of bilingual training:

“They seem to learn a lot more, comprehend a lot more, if you teach them in the Navajo language, and they’re more at ease.” “So I think having our own facilitators that are Navajo and can speak both languages really helps, at least the participants, they can ask questions without feeling that they’re asking dumb questions.” “And the amazing thing when we ran these things [Navajo-language sessions], and we had the language and culture …people get so excited, I mean we share, when we start sharing in the language and culture, at least in the Navajo language, it comes right from the heart. It’s so emotional to witness that kind of discussion.”

In addition, staff believed that the use of native language instruction provided meaning to participants that English-language instruction did not. In their words,

“A lot of these things you say in Navajo and you say it in English. And the English translation for it is not going to come across right.” “That’s why culture is always important, the idea of structural language, helping a person to develop a language, and through language develops meaning to a person.”

93 The Continuous Journey

Both of the tribal institutions were focused on providing training firmly grounded within their native heritage. In addition, the NMSU site offered culturally grounded Spanish sessions of the Entry Level training. In their words,

“We contextualized a curriculum to the community in terms of cultural and linguistic aspects. And very often that’s not done. People impose a curriculum on students, whether it be in public schools or the university level.”

This necessitated changes in how professional concepts were framed, presented, and discussed with participants. The hard work and profound changes inherent in an educational system that built from the ground up within the local cultural context were apparent from interviews with the site staff. In their words:

“It’s not just translating the words. I mean that’s really easy to do. But what we’re trying to do is go back to, we have this, we call it the Navajo philosophy of learning. And it’s really deep, it’s kind of, everything the way the Navajo thinks is taken into consideration. . . . We have to express the concept, what’s in the manual [45-hour Entry Level manual], what we’re trying to meet, how are the participants supposed to learn, who are they supposed to reflect on and take away from the sessions . . . And again, we use that culture approach, and all our sessions are done in the Navajo language. And when we do that, when we think in the Navajo language, you’ve got to think how, getting back to the Navajo philosophy of learning, keep that in mind, to be able to get across that term.” “And our particular goal was to have the Entry Level course translated into Spanish and offer that in west Texas, Juarez, and Las Cruces. And it just took more time than we had anticipated. It [the translation] was a major [emphasis added by speaker] effort.” “And then I think that institutionalizing at the higher ed level, and within coursework, institutionalizing all of these questions of Navajo childrearing within the language and culture and bringing these things into syllabi and into documents and into activities and into child environment in an organized way, I think that’s a hard job. But I think it’s one that a lot of people really do want.”

The tribal institutions served a homogeneous student group, and thus were tightly focused in their approaches to cultural responsiveness. In the words of one staff, the long-term goal was simply, “as early childhood people come to us, they come, and leave here as early childhood Navajo immersion teachers.” In sites with a more varied population, the projects focused on sensitivity to diverse cultural values and language, giving students exposure to a variety of viewpoints and ideas. In most cases, many of the teaching staff at these programs is Anglo, while the students are diverse in background. This necessitates staff that knows themselves well but also understands and appreciates the ways of those from different groups. As described by staff: 94 “I think we are very upfront in every way we can be that this is a program of study in which you have to examine yourself and you have to examine how you get along with others. . . We’re aggressively saying ‘Diversity and inclusion are reality. You will focus on this.’ I think there’s another piece to this and it’s that none of us are ‘wannabes.’ I’m real clear with students I’m highly respectful of who they are and their lifestyles, and I’m not in any way trying to take that on.” “One of the responses the community council suggested was to teach an anti-bias emphasis, which would include interacting, self-reflection, and a lot of them felt like even teachers in the public schools now did not know how to do that.”

In the non-tribal institutions, the themes that emerged as describing their teaching efforts included expectations for student self-reflection; providing community-based experiences that guaranteed exposure to various ethnic groups, as well as hands-on learning experiences; open discussion about values and experiences with diversity; and helping students learn how to be “political strategists,” recognizing and responding to the power structures of our society. These efforts would then result in teachers “in tune to the community.”

That the efforts to instill sensitivity to diversity in program content were effective was found in the words of training participants:

“I have to say that with the classes that I’m taking now, with taking the multicultural, you know, each family is unique, each family has their different beliefs, their values, and if we’re to work with those families and build that trust with the families and children, we need to know what their beliefs are, what they practice, and it’s who knows what different cultures are going to be encountered. So it’s best to do research or just gather as much information from the families as you can . . . You know, class, it sounds so easy, but once you get out in that field, it’s a whole new ballgame.” “For me it would just be an activity, but another person would see it as an insult, like racism insult. And in that kind of way, there’s people that came in different cultures that talked about it, that had their say, which makes me be very much aware to do, to go into the classroom and start doing something like that, which I would be cautious more.”

Capacity enhancements: Communication and connections. In addition, the educational pipeline was strengthened by the addition of community connections, voices and input into educational programs, practices, and initiatives. One way this was reflected was in program modifications and changes made as a result of both specifically structured and spontaneous input at community council meetings. By way of example, staff at UNM-A discussed how they were led to re-consider program entry requirements (could students take a course prior to formal program admission to a cohort group) as a result of community council dialogue. Staff at NMSU discussed using community input to fine-tune the 95 The Continuous Journey

Spanish language Entry Level course. At SJC staff led a session for the community council in which the curriculum was evaluated.

I observed dialogue in meetings that reflected achieved consensus in the group and clear recommendations regarding program direction. For example, at both CIT and DC, staff requested the group to brainstorm locations for new offerings of the Entry Level course. In other instances, it was clear that group members had different perspectives, and the conversation in that particular instance did not result in a well-defined plan. An example was the Albuquerque meeting in which there was debate about the need to provide a “bridge” for students moving from TVI to UNM. It was clear that this subject had been discussed before, and at this meeting there was not consensus about the best methods for achieving the goals discussed, with various options being debated, such as a stand-alone one-credit course, a mentoring program, and the re-tooling of existing courses to incorporate identified goals. It is to be expected, and is often desirable, that differing opinions come to light in group meetings.

In every community council meeting observed, as well as in meeting minutes, I noted that site plans were submitted to the council members for their review and feedback. In addition, meeting minutes indicate that at all sites there was information sharing among the representatives present. This indicates that community councils signaled the openness of higher education institutions to hearing and using the voices of community members for program development and improvement. In the words of a staff member:

“We don’t want this program to come out of the college and be laid on the community.”

The processes involved in utilizing a community council resulted as well in greater levels of teamwork and communication among group members. This was evidenced in various ways by program staff,

“An important thing Kellogg has gotten done is to get those institutions [Head Start, child care, early intervention] actually sitting down talking to each other in Window Rock … Kellogg has provided a place, a context in which these institutions are beginning to work together.” “I think the most important thing that we have done all the way around has been communication and dialogue with folks that have not had opportunity to talk to each other before.”

96 “And I think one thing that we’ve learned from this project is that it is relationship-based, feminist.”

One of the benefits identified by project staff of this level of cooperation among community-based agencies was their greater ability to advocate within the higher education system,

“I think the other challenge is trying to pull the tribal programs together and have them think as one. Because if they think as a team it will be a lot easier for them to request from their local colleges what their needs are and what they would like to see and demand, and say these are our needs.”

Another benefit described by program staff was affecting systems-change,

“We’re jelling. We’re becoming cross-system integrated. And from that we’re creating a system that’s going to support more access for people of color into the field of early care and education.”

While the charge to programs to be responsive to communities resulted in greater communication among community-based agencies, another benefit of the project was the increased degree of communication and collaboration among institutions of higher education. Some of the project institutions had met regularly as a part of the New Mexico Higher Education Early Childhood Articula- tion Task Force; however, others had not been involved in that group (tribal institutions, El Paso Community College, Juarez). Thus, new ground was broken in inter-institution communication, as described by the participants,

“Because you tend to be isolated in our own little areas, otherwise, but the project has broken some of that isolation.”

“I really think that I personally, and I’m going to say, please direct me if it’s not so, we have all benefited from the dialogue, often at this campus, sitting and talking to one another. We had not talked before, and I think one of the things for the Kellogg grant that was a real contributor, was the fact that it brought together folks who had never talked before, and we had a chance to exchange views. And we didn’t always agree, God knows we did not agree on everything. But we learned from one another and we grew, and I’m concerned as this project goes to a close that continues and we still, the tribal colleges and the state- funded colleges, talk to one another and look at the best way that we can educate students.”

Capacity enhancements: Growing our own. A final part to strengthening the educational pipeline is the recruitment and development of new cadres of local leaders and instructors. At almost every site, project staff spoke of the need to “grow our own.” Staff was acutely aware of the need for new generations of 97 The Continuous Journey

people of color to lead their local communities and participate as faculty in institutions of higher education. While a long-term goal, it was nevertheless a focus at almost all sites, as described by one staff,

“I envision our first group of students as being tomorrow’s mentors and tomorrow’s community council members.”

In sum, the educational pipeline was strengthened through the increase in numbers of people receiving training, in the use of coursework that was culturally and linguistically relevant, all focused on the long-term goal of “growing our own.” In addition, two less formally intended outcomes were the greater communication and collaboration among community-based agencies, allowing them to “think as one” in relation to their training needs and in communication with institutions of higher education, as well as increased communication among institutions of higher education.

Question 2: What were the common lessons learned about partnerships that support youth in the earlier grades?

Even though individual projects had unique goals and contexts, some common lessons are evident about the partnerships that both facilitated and challenged the work of the sites. Throughout the project both facilitators and barriers have been identified. In opening, though, it must be said that, outside of partnerships, a key factor to effectiveness is the individual commitment level of those connected to the project. Dedicated individuals with a “can-do” mindset appeared to be crucial, as mentioned in several interviews,

Speaker 1: “I’ve seen very little of personalities getting in the way. I mean, I’ve seen people, I’ve seen friction, I’ve seen people clash, but I haven’t seen that get in the way anyplace, everybody just goes right on because there’s so many committed people involved. Speaker 2: There is, they’re really focused. I mean, they want to see quality child care, or quality, we’ve been waiting for this to come to the Navajo Nation, and so when it did through Kellogg, I mean, it was like, wow, it’s here. So we’re really excited about it.” Question: What kinds of things as you began the project really facilitated the work? “Persis- tence. A lot of outreach.”

Necessary conditions: Partnerships within institutions. That said, one among the other key factors to projects is the support that they received from their own home institutions. Staff at UNM-G, and NMSU commented on the 98 institutional support that they received as a facilitator of their work. In their words,

“I got extra release time for administrative stuff … we didn’t squirrel away money for people to run the project – everything has gone to providing instruction and tuition grants. That’s been facilitative of getting as many students as possible in.” “I think the other key aspect was the support of our administration at NMSU. We had a dean who was really supportive, and our department head. And an educational research center that’s very supportive. So we felt that our institution was supporting our work, and that’s kind of a nice affirmation when you’re doing something that’s really different, to know that people were willing to, and that we could go to them with any issues and they would listen and really give their attention to it.”

In contrast, a lack of institutional support was cited as a key factor at CIT. One aspect of this was the fact that CIT, at the time of project implementation, did not have the institutional accreditation necessary for degree programs. An- other was the ambivalence of upper administration, as described by the staff,

“ I think the other thing too that we’ve run into was the CIT administration. They’re really, it seems like, OK, when we first started this whole idea it was Jay R. [Jay R. DeGroat – Develop- ment Officer]. We worked with Jay R.; we never met the president or his staff. And so, when we ran into some problems, it seems that he’s [president] not really supportive of, it’s just another project, it will probably die in a few years from now, so why bother? And so I think you really need your, the college administration to be there, to be very supportive, and to actually go out in the community and actually be there and say, yes, these are the programs I have. This is the staff that’s working with my program, and we are going to see this. You don’t hear that from this administration.”

Staff at other institutions expressed that they experienced some ambivalence from their institutions regarding what their institutions should be doing. This typically worked to slow progress toward final goals. At SJC the question was whether the institution itself would conduct the BA program or invite in an institution with an existing BA level program. In the words of staff,

“I had made several very involved presentations to say what do we need to do a 4-year college by ourselves, not bringing in a host institution … And all of that to help them make up their mind, which in a sense should have happened before, but it was happening after.”

An important role for staff here was aiding the institutional decision-making via the provision of information.

At DC the institution was initially ambivalent about institutionalization of a degree program. Some of this ambivalence appeared to result from questions of 99 The Continuous Journey

long-term resource availability, other of it from the competing needs of programs already established. Again, the result was slow progress toward the final goal, as well as continuing tensions between the community advocates who pushed for a program and college officials, as described by staff,

“The point is to get the college committed to talking about it, right finally. To get the college interested in it, to get people at the college really supporting it and doing it, and that’s not yet in place …My feeling is, we should commit ourselves very deeply to what the community council said needs to be done. There are fears inside the program I work with, that I will overcommit us. That I’ll overcommit us to do things that some other institution should be doing. So there’s a strong tension in there that operates. We’re going to do the program, OK, but …[trails off]”

Necessary conditions: Partnerships with the community council. A second key factor to sites was the community council. At several sites, project staff described the community council was absolutely necessary for program development. Others went so far as to say that their program work could not have come into existence without the community council. In the words of one,

“The community council is an important part of the program to have, you know, as a council. And if we didn’t have them, it’s like part of your body’s gone.”

The staff described several different contributions of the community council to project sites. These include providing perspectives on curriculum review; serving as a sounding board or providing a sense of direction to program planning; serving as a link for program participant recruitment; and serving to keep work focused and on-track (answerability). An important part of the information provided by the community council was that the perspective was at times, “out of the box” for those immersed in higher education. For example,

“Just more recently, one of the things that I’m very grateful for is that, it’s really … you in academia, and the structures of academia, we tend to think very tunnel-vision, and the thing that I’m appreciative is that the community council has the freedom and the insight to think out of the box, so to speak. And Lenore Wolfe helped us very much in thinking about the evening program. We were thinking about policies and procedures that we thought governed our every move here at UNM. But she made a suggestion …so the community council has allowed us to think more broadly because they think from the perspective of the community and not as a person obligated to obey the rules of a university.”

“We just can’t stay in our box either. I mean, we have to hear them.

In addition, the community council provided information about community needs. As described by one staff member, had the team not created “intentional

100 spaces to hear community needs,” “I think it might not have been as multi-dimensional as it was because it would have been, if it was just the project team, it would have been the project team’s perception of community needs. And I think that was really important.”

All of these aforementioned contributions are conceptually similar in that they involve the sharing of information and expertise from community council members. Staff realized, however, that the community council provided other benefits to the program. One of these was the leveraging function provided by the community council. This was described in various ways, including assistance in leveraging funding, through the knowledge and connections of community council members; leverage in terms of making inroads into systems that would benefit students; and use of the community council as a leveraging tool within one’s institution.

Another important benefit of the community council was the general networking and relationship building which it facilitated. In the words of staff,

“And they enjoyed each other. I could really see them enjoying each other and smiling and laughing and having a good time, talking to one another. But I think that what happened was critical in a rural area where sharing information, I mean that is so, oh golly, that was important, I mean, just to connect us.” “And this was a time to network with other entities that worked with young children. And it was a time to get to know each other, and once we knew each other, then we really could address some of the issues that were coming up in terms of, how can we establish an evening and weekend program for our community.”

Another aspect of this networking was opening the doors of the institution to community members. Especially important in larger institutions, such as UNM-A, this remark was made by someone experienced on the local community council,

“You’ve established this relationship. And it’s so much easier than just having to send them over to an office at a university to sign up for something. You can say, well you know, why don’t you talk to so and so. And it’s just easier, we have an ‘in’ to the big institution.”

Necessary conditions: Partnerships with community insiders/higher education outsiders. A key aspect of the community council, as implicit above, is that it is made up of individuals outside of higher education, providing different perspectives from the academic view. In addition to the formal council process, project staff often found that community insiders/higher education outsiders were key to their project’s work. Several examples of partnerships 101 with community insiders follow. The Continuous Journey

At NMSU the project staff included staff from La Vida, a state-funded child care training and technical assistance project. This was done because the staff identified that they needed “community expertise.” Staff at UNM-A noted that having a “very active early childhood population” in the local area was an important feature of their community that influenced the birth and beginning of their site. At DC staff noted the importance to their project of several community insiders, including agency administrators, noting, “the question for us is to hook up to our customers.” But beyond this, the DC staff also noted the importance of community insiders to shaping their program curriculum,

“You have asked a question here, how do we come to know the childrearing practices and values that our students will meet as they work with children and families. For us one of the things has been, ask community experts, ask wise people in the community, take a lot of notes, ask them again, take a lot of notes again, and keep running it back again, and again, and again. Back into the community of scholars and practitioners.”

Project staff also noted how important it was that some of their staff members were representatives from the local community. After they hired someone who had been a member of their community council, staff at UNM-A noted, “it made a wonderful bridge, you have connections with TVI and UNM. You’d been on the community council. So it was a wonderful bridge that you could do that.” Similarly, the contribution that staff members’ history with the tribe and Head Start made to the work at SJC and CIT was noted. Perhaps most importantly, at more than one site, Gloria Clark, bringing with her a history within Head Start and the Navajo Nation while not being tied to any one higher education institution, was cited as a key project facilitator. Her ability to operate as a boundary-crosser was described by one staff member,

“Well, the real key person is Gloria. That was the most important person because she’s not only knowledgeable but is really committed, and when I say knowledgeable, is really circumspect of all the things going on, so that, though she had things to learn about the college, they made sense to her as soon as she learned, you know she was real quick about that stuff. She didn’t say, ‘oh, it can’t be that way.’ So that it isn’t, she didn’t play that game. ‘Oh yeah, I guess it probably is that way.’ And she’s been the key person because she’s so knowledgeable about, not only about child care across the Navajo Nation, but very importantly about what’s going on in Window Rock.”

Gloria herself framed her role as one who crossed boundaries to bring groups together. She described it thusly,

“The way I saw my role was trying, like say with the CIT in Crownpoint, I tried to get the 102 Head Start to visit with CIT, come over. I worked with Head Start and CIT was always there, and Dine College was the next over the hill. But we had no idea how they functioned, and so Kellogg was able to say, ‘You need to talk together.’ That’s the way I saw myself, I’d go to Head Start and say, ‘Work with CIT, get to know who they are.’”

Thus, community insiders, those with roots outside of academia, served as another key factor to program partnerships.

Necessary conditions: Partnerships with the core group. Another of the common facilitators of projects was the way in which the group came together through core group meetings in Albuquerque, as well as meetings of the Four Corners group. As described by staff members,

“And I think also a key development was the core group, the group that meets in Albuquerque once a month. And the sharing from the other projects was real informative. Knowing that we had to report our progress to the core group made us think about what we were doing.” “I think Polly Turner and her efforts to keep the group coalesced and meeting and sharing information with one another, I think that was real important.”

Leaders and followers: Staff as boundary crossers. One interesting aspect of these partnerships between communities and higher education was the way in which project staff, typically higher education faculty members, defined themselves as having intermediary roles. In a sense, all expressed in some ways, more or less directly, that they were working on the boundaries of the community and institution, with obligations to both. This was put most directly by one staff member,

“And that has been my role, you know, to absorb the information [from the community council] and try to put together plans and activities and stuff. And critically respond as to what’s happening with the college itself, so it’s the institution I represent, the institution I work for.”

In sum, several common lessons about partnerships were learned in this project. These include the importance of supportive institutional partnerships, partnerships formed through the community council, the partnering of community insiders with academicians, and the partnership reflected by the various sites supporting each other. In looking back at the quotations cited in this section, the remark that the project was “relationship-based” seems particularly descriptive.

Unique partnership lessons. In addition to these common lessons, sites provided unique lessons about partnership. At CIT, as the program stalled over accreditation issues, partnerships were more difficult to form and sustain over 103 The Continuous Journey

time. While the staff worked hard on outreach, the natural impetus to forming long-lasting partnerships provided by working to reach a common goal, such as establishing a degree program, was absent. Thus partners were short-term and focused on the delivery of Entry Level courses. In contrast, the staff at UNM-A believed that the mission of establishing the evening/weekend program was a strong factor in bringing partners together.

Meanwhile, at DC partners such as Head Start were used to leverage external funding and program support. However, the central question of “who is going to pay for this” provided a very different partnership context than the context at UNM-A where none of the stakeholders was being asked to provide funding. The partnerships at DC were described thusly by a staff member,

“ I don’t think we could be building program without it [the community council], without the people that have been there. Because it’s a brand new program, and we’re trying to structure all the facets, so that it has a permanent status and that depends upon good, good critical interplay and fighting it out and negotiating and pushing and pulling and cajoling … And everybody wants to do it, it’s pushing it up on their priority list.”

At NMSU the partnerships were unique in that they were particularly wide- ranging, with their viewpoint,

“And we’re becoming, we’re becoming like a region. Because that’s what it is, it’s really a tri- state, and the boundaries, it’s really blurred as far as state boundaries, and we’ve really become a border region, with specific needs.”

However, here the state boundaries did exert a toll, creating roadblocks that slowed the articulation between El Paso Community College and NMSU. Simi- larly, the issues of state boundaries, as well as native sovereignty, played a role in issues of articulation and program standards for DC.

At UNM-G, where a BA program was quickly established, partnerships with the area Head Start agencies were already established. Similarly, existing Head Start partnerships were already providing a student base at SJC. In contrast, staff at UNM-A found themselves in the situation of forming new community-based partnerships to recruit students for the evening/weekend program. This new program required the staff to “work more closely with people that aren’t typical UNM undergraduates.” As a result, the staff noted a closer partnership with TVI, the local two-year college and a greater need to devote job time to community out-

104 reach and partnership. There were benefits, though, as noted by a staff member, [Previous comment: We’re going to see ourselves forced to change the way we do business because we’re going to be out of business.] “Well, that’s certainly one of the lessons that I learned this semester. I thought I was going out to do outreach and recruitment, but actually what I was, I was going to get trained on how to do my job. And what I learned …[remaining discussion focuses on identified needs]”

To summarize this question, partnerships were a key component of this project’s work. They existed on several levels and were both supported and challenged by local situations. Working within the strong ties articulated between communities and institutions of higher education, faculty viewed themselves as operating on the boundaries with commitments to both the community and their employers.

Question 3: How was change implemented, and how did change affect the institutions/organizations in each setting?

During the course of the project, each site team reflected upon its own journey and documented its change process. I will not attempt to reproduce similar information for each site. Instead, in this section I will focus on the various barriers and facilitators experienced in the change process, as well as similarities and differences in how sites went about their work.

Lesson drawing: The community council process. Generally, across sites the community councils were viewed as a facilitator to the change process (see as well above sections). When asked about any frustrations or concerns the staff had experienced in regard to the community council, the only area discussed was the difficulty in finding meeting times that worked well enough to ensure consistent attendance from members. As will be discussed later, particularly at DC the community council provided a source of tension; however, this was not seen as a negative influence on the project’s work.

In examining the processes involved in working with a community council, staff described a mixture of structure and open-endedness. At several sites the staff noted that meeting logistics were crucial to the community council. As described by one staff member,

“Probably the most, one of the most important things, is to just set a time and meet consistently at that time, regardless of how other people’s schedules change, fluctuate, because when you try to accommodate everyone, you end up accommodating no one. You keep changing and then, they’ll call you up, are we meeting this afternoon?” 105 The Continuous Journey

While regularly scheduled meetings, a pre-established agenda, and record- ers for minutes were all discussed as necessary facilitative conditions of the community council functioning, the meetings themselves were often described as open and less structured. Even as reports were often a standard agenda item, one staff member described a move toward less domination of the agenda by the reporting function. As some staff members described their typical community council meetings,

“[It’s] very open, very free-wheeling. We do follow an agenda, but everybody feels very comfortable at bringing up related or tangential issues.” Speaker 1: “But it’s very, very interactive, lots of dialogue, talking about all the issues that impact the work that we’re doing.” Speaker 2: “I think a characteristic that marks the council is that they think, they really think and reflect on what they’re thinking, and then they move toward action. And I mean, it’s really a wonderful place to be, it’s kind of spiritual.” Speaker 1: Well, in a sense it’s kind of a luxury for all of us who are so busy with daily things to have a two-hour period once a month where we can reflect and we can really do some thinking together and some sharing together.”

Staff described the positive effects of a community council that functioned well and that made an impact with its work. These are some of their observations,

“They have really taken over, the meeting is theirs, and so they’ve taken it over now with the issues that they’re concerned about.” “One of the things they’ve said to us is that, this is one of the few groups of meetings they go to where they feel things actually happen because they’re there. I mean, we do listen, and we do make it happen. And then we report back …So it wasn’t just, isn’t it nice to see you, it was a working group.” “And I think another thing is that when our council meets, they come ready to work. They always leave with a sense that we’ve accomplished something. And we, I don’t know of any time that we didn’t finish our agenda. To me that’s quite remarkable because usually council meetings you always have a lot of things open or left untouched.” “So a community council that can truly listen to each other, with different points of view. And that’s the way we can learn, and we’ll grow if we can do that. Otherwise we won’t grow.”

One factor noted explicitly at three sites in describing their work with the community council was that the individuals within the council brought with them their own histories. This was seen as something upon which staff could capitalize, as described by one staff member:

“I think one thing that I’ve learned from this community council is that it wasn’t new work, 106 they brought in a rich history. The stakeholders were doing stuff already. And when we came together it was just like a continuation of the work that they were doing. The more voices come in. So the lesson I’ve learned is that as we bring in people, is to understand that they have histories already with them.”

One the other hand, histories may present a challenge to staff. At UNM-A the staff noted that participation from the area pueblos had not been consistent and was a source of concern. At the same time one staff member there described the community council as,

“a small group of people who know each other very well, who see that opportunity to get together and visit, but also to learn what’s going on, not only with the Kellogg Project, but among each other, so you see people who like to be together come together.”

Any relationship between these two phenomena, the lagging participation from pueblos and the description of the community council as having a rich history together, is unknown. However, it presents an alert that a shared history could create a less welcoming environment to those who have not previously participated unless steps are taken to solidify the identity of a new group con- figuration.

Another challenge presented by history is that groups that had previously experienced poor relationships can find themselves brought together in the community council. Organizers must be cognizant of what might be brought to the table. At one site the staff noted,

“So the people that have been in that system are still with us, and there might have been some, I don’t know if there was any ill feelings or anything that might have taken place, I don’t know … I think it’s so mild now, it happened so long ago that right now we’re just trying to focus on children and families and the needs and try to pool our resources together.”

The membership of the community council reflected both similarities and differences among the individual sites. Most councils had representation from the child care and Head Start communities. Many also had public school representation. Representation from pueblos and tribal entities seemed to vary at the non-tribal institutions; some councils had stable members from these areas while others found a lack of stability. As a generalization, with the exception of Head Start, almost every type of agency that was listed as a participant at one or more sites was also referenced at some other site as an agency that was not represented but they wished were involved.

107 The Continuous Journey

A couple of the programs had more unique representatives on their councils, and in both instances felt very positively about what those individuals brought. At NMSU, a representative from the US senator’s local office was a group member. The staff described her contribution as follows:

Speaker 1: “The congressional person who sits on our community council helps a lot. She brings in, this is what’s happening in Washington, this is what they’re looking at. So that gives us a clue. Speaker 2: “That has been very helpful. And her discussions with the senator about what we’re doing has really helped a lot too.”

Also, staff at both NMSU and UNM-G described program participants or students as members of their councils. In the words of one staff member:

“Just making sure you have some diversity in the types of people you choose, not having all, necessarily from the child care community, but having students involved, which we didn’t at the beginning. To really keep us focused, because they bring us back to the real world and some of the other problems that we might not have considered.”

While most sites followed a standard council model – the meeting together of a group of individuals on a regular basis, or as in a dictionary definition, “an assembly for consultation,” at DC a different path was used. At DC the project’s history was different than at other sites, being truly a grassroots effort led by the early care and education community who pushed for DC to accept the challenge of developing a program. In the words of a staff member, “there was nobody at the college that had dreamed to do this.” As a result, there was tension between those in the community who wanted tribally-situated training and the college administration, who was unsure of their commitment to program development. It appeared that one consequence of this tension was a reluctance to increase it through the establishment of a body that should have some ability to impact decisions. As described by the staff, “We shouldn’t have a community council quite yet until we’ve decided to have a program, and that’s an internal decision of the college.” At a different point in time, he added to these thoughts, “I think had I spent more time, having it [community council] more often and made it more forceful, that would have just created more problems with that tension.”

At the time of the second interview a council was meeting, although the attendance was determined by the meeting location, with different people par-

108 ticipating based on location in this geographically widespread area. However, it continued to be a group in formation, as described by the staff,

“My concern is that I don’t, well, it’s not settled into shape yet. Authority finally gets exercised by people who have exercised it several times and in fact it worked and people get used to the fact that the authority sits there and then it works thereafter so long as it’s done right. And some of that, it’s nascent. It will come.”

In spite of the relative lack of formalized community input via a council, it was obvious that the DC program was being shaped and guided by the community from the first steps. In fact, this site was one of the most transparent in its reliance on the community to shape what was taught, as the staff here talked most regularly about relying on sources outside of academia for program development and curriculum guidance. At the two different interviews, community input was described as follows,

“Anybody that I would want on the community council, I’m going to drive to see them, call them up a lot, talk with them a lot.” “Much of what happens with the community council, more importantly operates in the hundreds of phone calls and, in turn, individual interactions with all these people … There’s been an awful lot of volunteer contribution, a lot. But a lot of people who have, it’s not part of their job description, it’s not part of their budget, who are putting in.”

Thus, here we can see a broadening of how community members can be involved in program development, with, of course, resulting pros and cons (as a council in group-meeting form carries its own pros and cons).

Finally, it must be noted that the question of how the community council’s authority could be ideally realized did not exist only at DC. A staff member from another institution noted,

“What I find is interesting, is the struggle to maximize participation from the council …to find a way that people can truly participate and to give their input into what they feel is important for the programs to be …I think this way of finding ways for everyone to have a voice is critical … I mean, I do everything I can within my institution, but my institution is my final decision-maker. How that voice of the community becomes heard louder, that to me is critical at this point.” Barriers and facilitators for staff. In an earlier section I raised the importance of a “can-do” mentality for the success of the project. Certainly, all staff were committed to the project and focused seriously on meeting their goals and objectives. At the same time, they all faced barriers to their work directly related to staff issues. 109 The Continuous Journey

Half of the institutions, DC, CIT, and UNM-A, experienced staffing changes during the course of the funding. In all cases this was viewed as having a negative effect on progress, due to time experienced without staff, the loss of accumu- lated knowledge with departing staff, and/or loss of momentum for the project’s work (e.g., “it was at a standstill when I got there”).

It was particularly challenging to begin programs at the tribal colleges where there was no existing early childhood staff. In addition to finding someone with adequate professional expertise, these programs found that another set of essential skills was Native culture and language. As one staff member described the situation at CIT,

“We had a hard time trying to find a coordinator, somebody that’s qualified in early childhood. We ended up hiring somebody that was not even in the field of early childhood the first time. And the second time the person we hired was an elementary major. So now that Lolita’s here [third consecutive hire], she has a wealth of experience in early childhood. So that plus the administration background. And then to be a Native American is the other one, because the two that we hired, well, the first one was a Native American, but the second one was not Native American. And so that was also, so the reason why we wanted to try and stay with a Native American person, somebody that’s familiar with the culture and language so we can accommodate that need. So that was kind of like a rough start.”

On a somewhat related note, it became evident that projects also were not immune to any staffing issues existing elsewhere within institutions. While not perhaps a huge influence, they nevertheless create a context within which staff had to operate, as well as a context that cannot be predicted, a reminder that life is lived within circumstances beyond personal control. For instance,

“I think the current barriers for me, at this point, has been that I have to go through my supervisor, and my supervisor has been ill and is not always available for timely responses, and I don’t know what to do about that, that’s life. So I hate to even put that in, but it is, it is.” “And one of the things occurring with us right now is there’s a really strong move at the college, all over, to throw out the administration …And yet, we’ve, it seems to be coming on OK [project progress]. But in part through the fact maybe that nobody’s paying much attention because they’re fighting about other things.”

Other barriers existed for staff as well. The three most commonly mentioned were time, funding, and the lack of additional resources.

Lack of day-to-day time was discussed explicitly at three sites. At UNM-G the BA program was added to an existing AA program, creating time demands

110 on the existing faculty who taught courses on overload. In the words of staff there, “We’re just running out of time.”

Time as a factor was discussed somewhat differently at NMSU and UNM-A. At NMSU the frustration was competing job responsibilities,

“I think the biggest frustration was that everybody working on this project was part-time. And they were all people who had very strenuous full-time jobs.”

Similarly, at UNM-A the staff felt that they had competing job responsibilities inherently tied to the university reward structure. As the staff experienced the labor intensive work involved in recruiting students from outside the institution, they felt conflicted,

“And our time is really scrunched. And this time, even though the College of Education recognizes, or says they recognize the value of this work, we get our, we keep our jobs, we get tenure and promotion if we teach and if we do research …All the administrative time David has done, and me before that, it’s, that’s not recognized as very important work within the university setting.”

Generally, at all sites staff expressed that funding was an ongoing issue; all had plans and ideas for which there was insufficient funding or for which funding would run out before the needs. To some extent this can be seen as a product of staff with continuing ideas for program needs and growth working within typically tight budgetary constraints – in other words, there is never enough funding to match dreams. It is also a product of a project funded on a time-limited basis. For example,

“I think what we’re going through now is keeping these scholarships. And we have some interruption in funding at this point … We were hoping for tribal money, and it hasn’t come on schedule. So we’re kind of holding students.”

Finally, it is also a matter of wanting resources to meet the commitment level and enthusiasm of both students and staff. As described by staff,

“Some of our students drive an hour and a half to get to class, after working all day. And that shows you their purposefulness, they want to get it, they’re committed, they want to get their degree, whether it’s the AA or the bachelor’s. And sometimes it’s just a matter of being able to have enough resources available to allow them to do that.” While all sites existed within underserved areas, the tribal colleges seemed particularly to feel a sense that the resources they had were inadequate for the needs they faced. In one respect, this was related to building brand new programs, 111 The Continuous Journey

“I think the other one [barrier] is that we just don’t have a library, resources, nothing, there’s nothing. The facilities, no office. We’re just starting from ground zero.”

In another sense it was related to the extent of the needs and the inadequacy of the tribal colleges to cover the large geographical area of the Navajo Nation. As staff put it,

“The trick is not, we have seven sites [Dine College] on the Navajo Nation, which is the size of West Virginia. And we tend way, we spread ourselves way too thin, and we still immensely suffer from it. Immensely, if we try to cover the whole Navajo Nation with the tiny resources.” “I see us, as often happens on the Navajo Nation, I can see us overwhelmed by demand. And that’s my largest fear. Overwhelmed by demand that sucks all the quality out of the program.”

At all sites the staff struggled with issues of continuing program momentum through further funding. In some cases they sought the solutions from outside of their institutions, looking for other grants or contracts for funding. In other cases they looked within their institutions, aiming to become picked up by the permanent funding stream. In the former case, seeking and obtaining money through grant-writing or contract negotiation became an important activity. In the latter case, building a successful and well-enrolled program became an important frame for the activity, in hopes that the college would then find it important, even necessary, to continue.

Institutional barriers and barrier blasting. Some of the barriers faced by project sites existed on the institutional level. The central themes here were those of control and cooperation (more specifically the lack thereof) across and among the several layers and departments of a college and/or between institutions.

Staff experienced institutional control in several manifestations. For example, at UNM-G the staff discussed the frustration of having to steer requests for approval of adjunct faculty through decision-makers at the main campus. They also expressed that the format of the BA program developed on the main campus was not ideally fitted to their students’ needs. Somewhat similarly, staff at SJC spoke of asking their administration,

“What can we do; what can’t we do?”

At UNM-A staff spoke of the institutional program enrollment requirements that they viewed as unnecessarily rigid and thus not facilitative of their recruit- 112 ment efforts. Finally, at DC staff addressed the issues of institutional (in both a wider and more specific sense) control over what was accepted as a knowledge base for program development. As it was described in the focus group,

“That language, then the struggle to, to re-assert that language, it’s a real struggle, it’s not just an issue of, it’s not just an issue of watch the children, and learn from the children and do the right thing. What you may learn from the children is that your, is that the institution is doing a really lousy job. And that the institution is going to try to continue to force you to do bad things to the children. That’s what you may learn, watching the children and listening to the community. And the portion of that struggle, to, the way I’m thinking of it, to free up community resources, community intellectual resources, community cultural resources, for the good of the children, has a lot of forms. I know for the program we’re trying to put together at DC, one of the forms that it takes, is that as we bring Navajo language and culture and community resources to early childhood questions, we’re forced to spend a great deal of time showing their legitimacy, writing them down, presenting them, showing them that we’ve got community support, showing scholarship behind, listing names. We’re asked to constantly, well, this won’t be accepted unless it’s translated, that kind of thing, there’s a constant move back to English, back to English, back to English. This has to be mapped onto New Mexico common core or it has to be mapped onto DAP or it has to be mapped onto Head Start or it won’t really mean anything, kind of. And that’s a portion of how the struggle goes. When in reality, what we’re looking for of course is a situation where the people who are working in the area locally get a chance to use the resources they got. To really come right out of the heart, not to get really stuck off in a long, long, long checklist kind of education idea, we’ll check off all of these things when we’ve done it right, and I hear such brilliant things from women in the university level in New Mexico about how we want to avoid that. Well, I really do hear that. I hear people who really care about that. And in a dynamic of finding the right things, and do those right, and not get misled by all the checklists and all the stuff that’s coming down on you.”

As well, staff discussed the barriers presented by difficulties in coordination among units of the college or between institutions. For example, at DC the staff expressed concern that a locally determined program would create new problems when it came to inter-institution articulation. Along the same vein, staff at NMSU experienced problems when attempting to articulate programs in different state systems. At UNM-A the staff discussed the frustrations they felt that potential students were not getting enough information about options in early childhood through the general advising office. At UNM-G the staff recalled the frustration of accounting paperwork going missing in the system. At both of the larger institutions, UNM-A and NMSU, the staff felt the weight of the system, understanding they could not control many aspects of the student’s experience.

Following on the heels of this final example is the particular case of how welcoming and transparent an institution and its processes proves to be to potential and enrolled students. Staff spoke eloquently of their concerns in this area,

113 The Continuous Journey

Speaker 1: “Getting back to this notion of a socialization process, we are mediators of information, that is important information for success in the college system … There’s a lot of the privilege there, it’s helping out with these things that are, that we take for granted …” Speaker 2: “I think along with the privilege comes erroneous assumptions, and I think it’s, so often that we have to step out of our own shoes and understand that those are not generalized assumptions. They come with academia and with working through a system. And very often the people that we work with have not come through that system or have come through it in a different way, so we have to be really careful about the assumptions that we make.” “The people I work with …are already teachers …that are being taken out of their centers, where they’re very comfortable, and they’re having to go back to school. And they don’t exactly have that socialization.” “The University of New Mexico oftentimes is not a very welcoming and warm place. And I think that only increases when a person does not have a lot of experience in higher education. I characterize this as a place with very little parking spaces and very few doors. Very compli- cated pathways to get here, and then once you get here there’s an enormous amount of paperwork and all these other things that really make the whole application process somewhat difficult. So I think we have a task in front of us of being more inviting, providing more assistance in the process so that the process of getting into our program is not a hindrance.”

Staff addressed several ways that they worked to counteract these barriers (“barrier-blasting” in the framework of Journey Analysis). For example, they found ways to formalize and thus institutionalize communication between units through the use of standard forms. They forged stronger relationships with those working in other units. At one site the staff talked of using their community council as leverage against institutional control,

“And so when it came from the community council, that it was their decision, that gave us an ability within the college to make things happen that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

At smaller institutions staff who had tracked student needs for coursework to finish their degrees capitalized upon the benefits of their institutional size to lobby for the necessary coursework being provided by other departments as needed. Meanwhile, at larger institutions, staff spoke of helping students through the bureaucracy as much as possible,

“In my efforts to recruit, I’ve really tried to emphasize the fact that I want to help people. I know this can be very overwhelming in a sense, so emphasizing the fact there is paperwork, there is a lot of procedures, but please, don’t let this be the reason you’re not applying. We can sit down and work with you, advise you, figure out what kind of courses you have and how they can best fit.”

Those working with Entry Level students also worked to reduce the intimidation factor for students inexperienced in college. As one staff described, 114 “These classes are so, how do you say it, customized to their area. You don’t have to be in a classroom in the college-level, where we bring these classes to the community, with a building they’re familiar with, the classroom they’re familiar with, and their surroundings, and that helps.”

Students recognized the efforts that staff made at making the way easier for them. Following are some of their comments,

“I probably would be a little more stressed about it if I hadn’t received some really good hands- on guidance from the folks at the program. I had a person from UNM come and meet with me here in my office regarding my application so that was really helpful. She kind of went through it with me step by step. So that was really helpful.” “They make sure that our expectations are met and whatever, you know, if we should have any questions or conflicts, they’re willing to answer our questions, and they’re behind us, supporting us. That’s what I like about the program, that we’re not just put out in the open, to where if we have a problem we know who to turn to instead of giving up, to problem-solve. That’s what I like about the program . . . Right now for a first-time student, with the advisors we have, they make it a lot more easier because they sit down with you and make a plan of what you’re going to be taking each semester.”

While institutions specifically addressed the concept of becoming more welcoming, students also worked at blasting the barriers of the bureaucracy, as described by one,

“Now that I have friends in financial aid, I can just go over to their office. But if you don’t have that access, you don’t go and ask questions, it does get overwhelming. . . I felt that some of the staff here, especially financial aid, they’re not so, friendly. They’re not really there to help students.”

Student barriers and barrier blasting. Both project staff and the participants themselves identified the barriers faced by students. The most common barrier identified by staff was the need for financial assistance. In a related vein, staff also discussed the difficulties faced by students who needed to retain their salaried positions and thus were not free to complete field experiences and student teaching. Among the other barriers identified by staff were the expense and time involved in travel to campuses in the rural areas and child care. As discussed previously, staff recognized that students coming from underserved areas did not always have the experience necessary to successfully navigate college systems. In addition, students often brought with them a past history of professional development that was not geared toward the completion of degree programs, and so in the words of one staff, “they have hours and hours of courses and nothing counts.” This might also mean that they had to fulfill lengthy prerequi- sites in areas outside of the professional course sequences. 115 The Continuous Journey

Every student I interviewed identified finances as an important barrier they faced. Some were receiving scholarships through the Kellogg project or other sources; for others the edge was lessened by the support provided by spouses, and/or their own determination to face this obstacle. While one participant lacked transportation, some of the others spoke of the burden of traveling long distances to attend classes. Logistical barriers had some effect on participants. One spoke of the need to carefully map out the plan of study for a degree because of work/school conflicts. Another student described leaving her job because of an unsupportive employer who both belittled her efforts and stopped negotiating the time off from her job needed to take coursework.

The participants varied in regards to whether they felt intimidated by college coursework. The following quotations illustrate the differences:

“I had been out of school for, gosh, I don’t know how many years now. And personally, even the thought of going back to school, it was a challenge, something I had to work though. So these courses I’m taking, I’m thinking I’m going to prove myself I can still do these things.” “I made an honor roll this semester, which made me really be proud and which made me think, I can do it, I can do it. Which I never really thought I was going to make it.” “Actually I’m not at all intimidated by college work. Actually went to college for a year when I was like 19, and I was pretty intimidated by college work back then. But I’ve been fortunate enough to have a lot of professional experience and success and been able to develop my confidence with my abilities to succeed academically. And you’d be amazed at just what a different attitude will do.” “To tell you the truth, the ECME [Early Childhood Multicultural Education] courses, that’s my interest. I feel that, it can get challenging at times, but since that’s my field, that’s my interest, I work hard to, I try not to let that intimidation get in the way that I can do it. The only scary part was the pre-requisites, math, science.” “I was taking an English class, and I only stayed in it for a week because the professor … he would look down on the ones that really shouldn’t be there …and it was really hard because it’s like, if I try my hardest he’s still going to look down on it, he’s not going to accept the best I can give him. And so I just dropped it and took an early childhood class. Because I felt I wasn’t ready for that pressure.”

In response to these barriers, both staff and the participants identified several resources that the participants themselves brought forward. Generally, staff had a high regard for the commitment level and motivation of students. In their words,

Question: What about the things that are helping them [students] right now? “I think a lot of sacrifice from the participants. They’re very, they’re serious about their class.” “It’s just amazing how these individuals are resourceful that way, to go ahead and achieve the 116 educational goals that they have for themselves.” Students themselves discussed the following resources: supportive spouses; supportive employers; their own determination to do what was necessary (e.g., save money, live apart from family, sacrifice other activities to study time); and being clear about their goals and focus on school as a priority.

At the same time, staff discussed specific efforts focused on barrier blasting in this area. Staff worked to leverage additional funding for student scholarships. Another common approach was the use of mentoring programs. A variation on mentoring was described by one staff member,

“We try to make sure that in every class that students are going into, we do this in gen ed [general education courses], that there’s a buddy, that there’s two or three early childhood folks that they know so that they can develop that support system for one another, and that makes a difference.”

Another form of student support noted was assistance with negotiating the college systems, whether that was other offices/processes or feeling comfortable and confident in non-major courses. Site staff noted this:

“We’ve gone to Best Westerns and registered students that were going to trainings in Head Start.” “We run a telephone registration system, and I know that sounds fairly easy to do, at this campus it’s accessible to people and they felt comfortable asking Elaine or Barbara or Patty, ‘How do I do this thing?’ And they would take a teaching standpoint. They wouldn’t to it for them, but they would have them go through it.”

One important aspect of a mentoring approach, and probably why it emerged as a prominent barrier-blaster across sites was that it gave the participants the benefit of both someone else’s wisdom and experience as well as the gift of someone taking more time with them. As described by staff,

“A mentoring program would help because there are all kinds of people who want to [pursue training], but are a little bit afraid. So that having this support for people, to be able to talk to somebody on a one-to-one basis about ‘how do I get through this or that barrier’ could be really helpful.”

As well, staff looked for ways to provide that sense of wisdom and experience themselves through their personal connections to students’ experiences. Across several sites staff were open and honest about the struggles they had encountered during their own careers, using this to create rapport and serve as a model. As expressed by staff, 117 The Continuous Journey

“We’re [faculty] not just book learners, we’ve experienced life. And to this particular clientele, it makes all the difference in the world. They can identify with you. I would never hire anyone who just had their Ph.D. and they had never been in the trenches, because they won’t listen to them. “I preface this by saying that I myself didn’t experience a lot of warmness and welcoming when I started out. In fact, I was like many students at the University of New Mexico because I had a hard time at the very beginning.” “Well, it took me 11 years to get my bachelor’s degree, 11 years! I tell them [students], you ain’t got nothing on me, just wait. Keep trucking – it’s possible. But you have a connection there. And that’s that socialization that we need to provide.”

In general staff found that providing support to students participating in their programs or recruiting students to programs was time-intensive and wide- ranging in scope of effort. Some of their comments on this topic included,

“Trying to get this mentor/advisor position filled so we can do even a better job of advising students. Plus have, that person will be going out into the field to give them support, to give them the encouragement, to find other resources for them, to help with transportation, child care, whatever else they need.” “We have IEPs [Individual Education Plans] on all the BA students …We’ve started a process where we summarize all of the students and who’s got what and what they need.” “You just couldn’t go out [to recruit], just setting out materials. You’d have to be a mentor and all of that. And find out for that student what is available and get it for them.” “We have understood now that recruiting to our evening and weekend program is just not a one-shot deal. It really involves a series of phone calls and follow-ups. And, we needed to track that.”

In sum, students faced many barriers, several of them in common with each other. Staff and students concurred about these barriers. While students brought resources with them that allowed them to face obstacles in their career paths, staff also focused on barrier blasting on several fronts. Still, they found this to be a process that required much in the way of staff time and energy.

Leaders and followers: Boundaries and boundary crossing. The theme of boundaries and territories was common across the sites. All staff worked within contexts in which there were boundaries. These included, for example, the boundaries drawn by program auspices (e.g., Head Start, child care); reservation, state, and in the case of NMSU, national boundaries; institutional “service area” boundaries; traditional boundaries between disciplines; the boundaries traditionally found between institutions (e.g., mission, student body); and boundaries between the institution and community. 118 In a previous section of the report I characterized the staff as boundary- crossers in regards to the institution/community boundaries. In addition, staff discussed boundaries in other contexts, both directly and indirectly. Staff most certainly saw themselves as boundary-crossers in many respects.

For example, as discussed above, one outcome of the community councils was the increased level of communication among various programs. Staff serving as boundary-crossers brought together institutions, as illustrated by quotations cited previously (see pages 9, 10, and 14).

Similarly, I have discussed previously that staff viewed themselves as boundary-crossers as regards reservation, state, and national lines. As cited previously,

“We’re becoming, we’re becoming like a region. Because that’s what it, it’s really a tri-state, and the boundaries, it’s really blurred as far as state boundaries.”

On the other hand, service area boundaries remained more of an issue. Staff discussed this at both the first and second interviews in various sites. It also is a larger institutional question, less in the hands of program staff. It appeared most pertinent for two-year programs (funded via districts) and for programs operating at the borders, yet still outside, of reservations. At times the service area was a positive factor; it defined limits to programs that helped to prevent a sense of being overwhelmed; a specific responsibility was carved. At other times it functioned to confuse responsibility. The service area issue included the fact that DC had multiple sites; staff at SJC noted they had previously had a relationship with the Shiprock campus, and in their perception, “Tsaile is entirely different from the Shiprock campus.”

Regarding traditional discipline boundaries, it was interesting to note that in both of the separate focus groups, a similar theme emerged. Staff saw a need for those in early care and education to draw from different fields in their work. As they put it,

“We grab from all the disciplines because we have to be holistic. We can’t just be centralized in psychology without realizing the biology, the whole anthropology of who we are, it’s multi- dimensional. And I think that we’re missing that in teacher ed. We’re missing that in public education.” “Sociology, anthropology, still a lot of work in these areas and understanding different groups …Maybe we need to shift in a different direction, to where we’re going to deliver education, 119 The Continuous Journey

we’re going to deliver other human services in that way. So I think, given all of this, maybe it’s time to look into other groups, what they’re telling us, rather than what has been taught.” Even more specifically, this theme of crossing discipline boundaries was addressed in one of the site interviews,

“And we need to cross boundaries. We need to, not only see things from the field of early care and education, we have to see what the health community is doing, what is this idea of immigration law, so we look into law. And that’s what gives us, helps us identify where we’re moving as a profession and how we fit the global scene in the border area at this point. And what usually happens with early childhood people, we just get stuck within our own field. And what our community council has done, we’ve opened borders.” Finally, the issue of crossing inter-institutional borders was previously addressed as regards the heightened communication among institutions as a result of this project (see page 10). Another illustration of border crossing between institutions was the changes experienced by UNM-A in how they saw themselves vis-à-vis TVI. Previously I noted (see page 17) that UNM-A forged a closer relationship with TVI during the course of the project. As they discussed this border-crossing in more detail,

“Our continued collaboration with TVI is something that was one of our goals, and I’m happy also to report that it is flourishing. And we really see ourselves more as one group of folks, a lot different …We’re really recruiting people for the career lattice, and whether they go to TVI or UNM, it’s just letting people know what’s out there. Evelyn Egan, who we hired, who does the student recruiting, most of the advisement that she does, is to advise people to start taking classes at TVI. So again, she’s Kellogg has found a person that has helped recruit to the career lattice. And so it’s not a matter of this institution or that institution.” Building trust. The issue of trust emerged specifically in the Four Corners area. Interestingly, this theme was not identified in transcripts from UNM-G, UNM-A, or NMSU. This is not to say it was not a factor in the work at these sites; it just was not discussed in the explicit way that it was for the remaining Four Corners sites.

Trust issues went both ways, coming from the community to the institution and from the institution to the community. As examples of the latter, as DC pursued the process of deciding what program they could realistically provide, they spoke of needing to trust the community,

“I mean there was a lot of questions, and we kind of had to see what the community council was saying. We had to listen to all different kinds of things. And, are you sure you can get us some more money, or are you sure you’re committed to this. I mean we had to get those out.” Staff also spoke of trust as important to the community council aspect of the 120 project, “Trust your community. Trust that people really do care, in the way that you think you’re the only one who cares. Which you do in isolation, sometimes you think you’re the only one who cares. Trust in the profound wisdom of people of good will coming together … Trust that people want good things.” Also staff discussed trust as the process of confidence building from the community to the institution, situated within the particular historical/local context. As staff described it,

“So then with Dine College, right now I’m trying, my work is to tie the tribe, because Dine College and all its programs are under the same tribe and it’s owned by the tribe. So I’m trying to tie these two together, but right now the programs are saying, well, Dine College hasn’t done anything really for us. What guarantees that their early childhood will help. I don’t know, even though they’re in the same program or same government so to speak, they don’t know each other that well, and it’s like a struggle, and I guess that’s why it’s a difficult task there … Just building that collaboration and that working with, getting to know, having the programs get to know each other. And I think building the trust was a little bit difficult, and we’re still struggling with it, between Dine College and the tribe. But I think we’ll eventually get there. So that’s been a challenge, and I see my role as that.” There has been no history of collaboration with the tribal colleges and San Juan, and in any kind of collaboration trust is an important factor, and a history of some sort of communication and cooperation. And there was none really, on a level that we’re looking for now. And so that in itself slowed everything down. Because you can’t hasten trust.”

Staff recognized the trust barriers and saw them as important to address,

“I think that our present status with tribal government is evolving very nicely. I’ve told you that my presentation Friday to the Education Committee went very well. It was very friendly, and if the Education Committee knows we want this permanent relationship, and that we’re going to do it right. We’re coming in on all the different pieces at the same time, and it’s ongoing, and I’ll be glad to report to them anytime. That’s an important thing. That and the Head Start Navajo Nation Council. We continue to report to and work with them.” “I mean usually when you start actually making progress and start seeing things, and they [community council] get more excited and get more involved. That’s the other, there has to be a trust developed between the program and the council, you know what I’m saying. And so I think that’s really crucial, and that we’re not just talking. We’re going to deliver. And that’s always on the line.” As seen in these quotations, staff recognized that trust was created as they delivered on their plans. Staff was aware that they walked a thin line as they publicized their programs, in that they wanted to believe they could deliver what they promised, yet also needed to create enthusiasm and interest in pursuing new opportunities to help build programs. This was particularly acute in those tribal institutions in which commitment toward long-term programming re- 121 The Continuous Journey

mained ambivalent for a length of time, as well as at SJC as the decision-making over the bachelor’s program dragged out. As they described it,

“You can’t go out and say we’re going to have an early childhood program in three to five years. I mean, we’re hoping to, but, to really establish that faith from other organizations, say we want to invest our money in your program … We can only say, well, we offer the 45-hour Entry Level, if you’re interested we have that program. How long will that program last? Probably another year or so, and that’s it. And then we close up shop and we’re gone … We can’t rely on what’s going to happen in the future because of the administration and their goals and objectives.” “The mood is, the people are waiting, and I find myself at sessions promoting, encouraging parents and people that work with young children, saying here’s a neat program we’re having, the Kellogg project, and this is what we’re doing trying to implement this career lattice. And so they say, well, we’re ready to go, where do we start our BA. And I say, well, your college would be San Juan College, but we don’t have any program. And to me that’s really frustrating. And to say one thing, but not be able to deliver, that’s been a struggle for me.” In the same vein, staff at UNM-A discussed the effects of not delivering on programs as publicized,

“It’s just my perception, but I think after the second false start, by false start I mean that we tried to recruit enough people, but the university said we had to have x amount of people before we could actually offer the course. And the recruiting that was required was much more involved that we ever anticipated, and than we had time for and all that. And so, unfortunately, we made a lot of hoopla, said that we were going to offer the program, and then we didn’t offer it. There was a recovery phase, I perceive that maybe very subtly, but I kind of perceived that as a group. Because it is kind of disappointing that you, you have all this energy and then you have to wait. And so that was kind of a sidetrack that we kind of, OK, now what do we do for a while before we kind of, we got focused.” Footprints: How sites went about change. The change process reflected both similarities and differences among the six sites. While the discussion to this point certainly illustrates critical aspects of that change process, another aspect of it is how the sites conceptualized their own work. To close this section, I will address that topic.

A fundamental similarity among the sites could be reflected in the conceptualization, “outreach as a way of life.” Four of the sites were located in rural areas with a widespread student body. The remaining two were within the two most populated metropolitan areas of the state. Yet, they envisioned a broader base of operation than their own city limits. As a result, at all sites staff discussed the importance of reaching out to where students were located. In their words,

122 “I think I’m reaching the students by going out there. By going onto the sites and making it possible for them, working with their administrators, a close working relationship with the Head Start director, with the preschool, and say, you know, what’s the best time you can have your staff go on educational leave, release time, so I can bring the program to them.” Question: Is your idea mostly to take the training there to them? “Yes, to them. Training on wheels.” “How can we accommodate those people that are living way out there? Can we bring them in, or do we need to run summer programs when they’re not working, or whatever. I mean it gets your thinking going, coming up with all the kinds of possibilities.” “Let us have the course be taught in a way that is culturally sensitive. We can’t we can’t commit to Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 10:00 to 10:50. Because there’s feast days, there’s these other things. So, bring the course here. We’ll tell you when we’re ready to learn, and we all want to learn as a group.” “But I really want, I would like to see the program more visible and more accessible in all areas of the county. And that’s really hard to do.” “And we can have the best program in the world, but if we offer it from nine to twelve during the day, it’s never going to be a success. And what Kellogg has allowed us to do is to go out to the communities and then to offer it in nontraditional times. Someday, maybe what we’re going to have to do is to go to communities and offer our courses on-site. That would be the next phase. But that needs a lot of support, not only from, it would be wonderful to have the support from Kellogg, but from our institution. So that’s a challenge.” “And continuing to look for other resources to do some distance ed, combined with the mentor/ advisor approach, so we could take more things out, cut the driving time for our students.” These final three quotations were from staff in sites offering degree programs, whereas the first two were from staff focused on offering the Entry Level course. All reflect an important shift in the process of higher education toward going into communities and “away from the halls.” Nevertheless, the different tenor of these two groups of quotations also illustrates the easier and more difficult aspects of this shift. It seemed relatively easy to operate with this mindset for one-time only courses. However, those considering an extended sequence of coursework for degree completion realized challenges, particularly financial, of decentralization. For these staff it was not so easy as using technology, as all believed in the importance of the interpersonal aspect of teaching, for both themselves and what they know of their typical students.

In looking at how individual sites conceptualized the change process, I noted more differences. Four portrayals can be drawn to highlight these differences.

The first portrayal was reflected in three sites: SJC, CIT, and UNM-A. At each of these sites, the process of visioning and conceptualizing change appeared 123 The Continuous Journey

to involve an iterative process of determining what was possible given the time frame, infrastructure, and barriers encountered. Thus, plans were made, but at times reached dead ends (e.g., instituting the BA program within SJC, the problems of offering degree programs at CIT without institutional accreditation, and the multiple efforts to enroll the evening/weekend program at UNM-A). In these cases, the sites found alternative paths (e.g., summer institute at SJC), worked harder at doing what was possible (e.g., Entry Level training at CIT), and continued to problem-solve and find ways to barrier-blast (e.g., working more closely with TVI to enroll the UNM-A program; inviting a host institution to SJC). Generally, this then became an iterative process of defining and redefining, and visioning and re-visioning the change process. However, the site objectives remained relatively the same in nature throughout these conceptualizations.

UNM-G provided another illustration of the change process. When asked how objectives had evolved during the course of the project, staff had this reply,

“I don’t know if you can say they really evolved because we’ve been so focused, to get the BA program started, to get the curriculum, the faculty approved to teach the courses, teach the courses, and graduate student has been right there from the get-go. So I don’t see much evolution. Just a real, you know, thinking of what we wanted to do first of all and then just continuing to follow through on that …There hasn’t been a real evolution, or maybe more of a revolutionary process because we really knew what our goal was, and we just charged …I don’t really think we’ve had too many, we had maybe a few stop-outs where we didn’t think things were going to happen. But I don’t think we really had to backtrack or, again, because our focus was so precise to start with …So it’s partly mindset, but I don’t, you know, comparisons of a couple of the other groups, we just didn’t have that many problems because we had so much support from our local school administration.” Thus, UNM-G began with a tightly focused objective (“we were looking for some way to bring the BA program out here”). They experienced support from their administration and found resources available (e.g., a student body for the BA coming from their own AA program, previous outreach efforts with Head Start, a curriculum from the main campus that was to be utilized). This portrayal is not meant to slight the hard work this staff did put into the program because it still required a lot of effort. However, the sense of “charging to the goal” as a definition of the change process was unique to this site. Armed with this unique conceptualization of change, the staff was facilitated in their efforts by the available resources and lack of barriers.

A contrast in the change process was seen at DC. Here when asked about 124 the evolution of objectives, staff replied, “Focus. I think we looked at the question of doing CDAs or doing a one-year certificate. We looked at the question of possibly attempting to deliver the New Mexico certificate. We looked at attempting to do a BA. All of those were rejected. What we’re looking at is an AA. I think we looked at having it at different sites, and we found the sites where we will be focusing our attention. I think the things like the cohort question, or things like what to do about the Navajo language and culture issues, I think all of those objectives have evolved. And in many cases those weren’t formal decisions. These were just long-term discussions, and people seemed to converge on a set of decisions that made sense. And some of that is still happening. But I think it’s focus, mainly.” In comparison to the previously mentioned sites, there was a longer process of deciding upon objectives and the means-to-the-end, although the general goal seemed present from the start – constructing a program of “recognizable impact and quality that’s, a large portion of which is done in Navajo.” Also in contrast to UNM-G, the focus was less tight. I will return to this point in the next section when I discuss necessary infrastructures. Suffice it to say here that a portion of the work at DC also was devoted to infrastructure work, helping to create systems and relationships that would support a degree program. The DC staff member confessed, “I continue to experience the fact that I’m sidetracking too much.” But it must be said that there was from the start an effort to take a long view toward sustainable programs and systems in a context without the resources and support experienced at UNM-G. It may be that some of the differences in the DC and UNM-G change process are related to differences in conceptualization of the work and in work style, but it is also important to note the differences in context and starting points.

Finally, yet another portrayal of visioning and the change process was evident at NMSU. When asked about the evolution of their objectives, they discussed the roadblocks encountered in their efforts toward articulation with El Paso Community College, and eventually with the University of Juarez. How- ever, they also provided a key reflection on how they conceptualized their project,

“Now we’re looking into change in institutions. That’s our challenge. And that might be an incredible complex process.” Even as the project worked toward specifically defined objectives (e.g., translation and implementation of the Spanish Entry Level course and mentoring program), the staff from the start and throughout the project conceptualized change in broad, system-wide strokes. As they described,

125 The Continuous Journey

“I’m overwhelmed because as we engage in this kind of work, you start seeing the bigger picture, and it is quite overwhelming to see that. And the work ahead to meet that. And when, you know, I become responsible, or I sense a responsibility toward, of working toward that big picture that we created, or that has emerged, really. And that’s frustrating.” Even when speculating about the outcomes expected from their training efforts, at this site the staff considered systems beyond the classroom,

Speaker 1: “Wouldn’t it be great if after this 45-hour [Entry Level] course, people go out and vote? Speaker 2: “If they go back home and divorce, and say, I’m getting out of this ugly relationship.” NMSU also differed from other sites in their emphasis on process. The following examples are unique to the NMSU change process. They described a specific planning process for the project, including a victory circle. They identified the need to “have an identity” for the project. They expressed concerns for wanting more research in order to know better how to proceed. They repeatedly discussed their work as a process, such as

“I think the lesson there is that we were really doing some good thinking. And usually people want to see products right away. And we didn’t have those the first year. But we did have a product, and that was thinking. We were agenda-building. We were really trying to figure out how are we going to get this thing done.” During the focus group a colleague from another site made this observation,

“What you folks, the question that permeated the activity here, the community council, was ‘why,’ whereas [in my site] it was ‘how’. And two different perspectives.” These four portrayals are painted in the simplest strokes. I believe, however, that they do illustrate key differences in how staff at the different sites approached the task of conceptualizing the change process and implementing those ideas. And to make this representation as complex as it deserves, these differences should be traced back to all possible factors: the specific individuals at each site and what dreams, concerns, and solutions they brought to the work, the existing resources at each site, the barriers and facilitators encountered, institutional supports and pressures, community councils, and the local context.

Question 4: Can comparisons be made between effectiveness of community- based and collaborative multi-sectoral strategies?

126 Comparisons about the effectiveness of program strategies must be made with caution, as programs operated within different contexts with different constraints and facilitators. In addition, programs did not operate with similar goals. My objective will be to discuss in what ways site-based strategies were effective.

Much of what I have summarized to this point can be applied to this question. For example, sites experienced both common and unique barriers that challenged their abilities to be effective. Some barriers were easier to address than others, mostly related to the degree of personal control the staff had in relation to the barrier. Program effectiveness appeared to be highly tied to the sites’ willingness and ability to involve local communities, both through the more formal community council process and the use of community insiders, as well as through staff involvement in being boundary-crossers.

Destinations: Intended outcomes. At all sites, staff was effective in reaching intended outcomes. A reminder, however that the discussion to follow includes activities only through the end of the three-year funding period.

At SJC staff offered the summer institute and used the community council to fine-tune their AA program while awaiting the final arrival of a host institution for the BA. They also utilized scholarships to support students.

At DC, after being stalled for nearly a year with staffing issues, the staff was effective in finalizing a funding scheme for the program and putting plans in place for a faculty member. As described by staff,

“I think we’ve gotten a whole lot of processes in motion, and we’ve gotten a lot of the foundational, people knowing each other and working, and the ideas in place, and I think we know where we’re going. And that it’s going pretty clearly, pretty well.” At CIT staff effectively met their goals for facilitator training and implementation of the Entry Level course in Navajo, despite facing some of the larger obstacles of the project, repeated staff turnover during the first year and the length of time required for the institution to become accredited. It was interesting that in the midst of these obstacles, the interviews at this site more often than any others, referred to “hope” as an outcome. For example,

127 The Continuous Journey

“And then the other thing is also that it brought hope to some of the people that did participate in the 45-hour Entry Level. They’re starting to become aware that UNM is providing an AA … So they’re starting to see that there is, there is hope, that they will be able to get a degree.” At UNM-G the staff was effective in implementing the BA program, with graduates by the funding expiration. They had leveraged other funding as well and were making plans for increasing student support through future funding with an expansion of mentoring/advising in the field.

At UNM-A, the evening/weekend program was launched with a student cohort and a mentoring program was begun. In addition, an extensive recruitment database was preserved.

At NMSU the Entry Level course Spanish translation was completed, as well as implementation of that effort. In addition, mentoring was in place for students enrolled in that coursework.

Destinations: Unintended outcomes. In addition to intended outcomes, the staff generally found that in their journeys they were effective in ways that were not a part of the original or formal project plans or workscopes. In this section I will note unintended outcomes achieved at this sites.

At SJC the staff noted that one important unintended outcome was a resource collection, consisting of both ERIC materials and Navajo curriculum materials. The staff considered the summer institute an unanticipated but also beneficial outcome devised when they felt the need to improvise upon their plans. In more than one way the staff spoke of the project bringing people together, both within and between the community and higher education, as an important outcome. Finally, the staff also believed that community trust in their program was heightened as a result of work at community council meetings.

At DC, as discussed in other contexts in the report, an important outcome of the project had been the greater levels of trust and communication, both between the providers of early care and education programs (Head Start, child care, early intervention) and between these providers and the institution. Furthermore, the staff found ways to tie this project’s goals of accessible and responsive education to larger goals of creating Navajo immersion programs and strengthening native values. This took the concept of responsiveness to a different level, the concept 128 of local control through empowerment. As a part of this effort, staff tied their program to larger infrastructure work. As discussed by staff,

“I hope, most importantly, that our project ends up in a situation where the people who have participated in the project are ready to engage in meaningful local control of their own centers. Meaningful development of a local dream and local control. And because of the leadership that we’ve had from Paula Seanez, the ideas of this Kellogg project and Dine College’s part of the project, impacting salary scales and finally certification on the Navajo Nation.” At CIT an important unintended consequence was the push toward institutional accreditation achieved by those associated with the project. In addition, the staff remained hopeful that the program would continue to be nurtured through further funding in the future. Another type of unintended outcome was the personal/family development that staff noted in training participants,

“I think it brings a lot of family closeness. A lot of family involvement at your own, like I would tell them to do a project, and they can take it home and work on it. And they always say, yeah, my children helped me make this project, or my husband helped me, and it’s more like family building. You build the family along with it.” Given the earlier identification of UNM-G as the most focused program, it is not surprising that this staff was least likely to talk in terms of unintended outcomes. We could, perhaps, examine the way in which additional funding was leveraged as an unintended outcome. In addition, the success of the efforts here fueled the staff to talk about instituting a master’s programs. Thus, unintended effects could here be characterized as the snowballing of effective growth efforts.

At UNM-A, several unintended outcomes emerged during the course of the project. As discussed previously, closer working relationships were forged with the local two-year college. In addition, as described earlier, the staff was led to reconsider how the program could become more flexible to establish greater accessibility. Finally staff discussed the following impact on their work,

“The Kellogg project, the evening and weekend program, and all the dust that we make around here, from time to time has some wonderful side effects to our existing day program. It’s helped us rethink and reorganize our day program in a lot of ways. And there’s been some nice side effects.” Several of the previous discussions point to the unintended outcomes at NMSU. For example, as a result of the work of the community council, there was an effort of “agenda-building.” Similar to UNM-G, there was effort at this site toward funding leveraging from this project, with long-term goals of funding a local institute to carry on the systems-change efforts that so involved this staff. 129 The Continuous Journey

Destinations: Hope and direction. The effectiveness of change can be examined across the sites in terms of the training participants. One change noted across settings was that students generally were more hopeful and directed. That is, even if they weren’t yet ready for a certain level of program, the existence and/or planning of the program was helping them to continue to push towards it. Also, they seemed to be directed in their professional aspirations.

One of the most consistent themes among the training participants was their reach toward lofty goals. They were focused on degree completion, looking beyond the immediate future, and jobs that allowed them to reach young children and their families effectively. Participants enumerated many barriers they faced in continuing their education, including inadequate financial resources, feeling intimidated by coursework (largely general courses, not early childhood), lack of transportation, and lack of coursework located close to home/work. Yet they remained highly committed to what they were doing. In the words of some,

“If we’re able to raise the quality of education and the quality of professionalism and the ability to do good child development, not just take good care of kids while they’re with us but engage in child development, then we’ll be our own best advocates for raising the standards of the industry of child development. And it would, of course, help the children that are in our care, they’re in our trust on a daily basis.” “Always my goal is to put my school first because I want to become somebody.” “I look forward to the future for my grandkids and also myself.” “And getting my own students and as they grow up, to see what they’re gonna become.” Program development: Points of origin. Much of the report to this point has focused upon the work and efforts of staff and how they led to program outcomes. Another important point to consider is the context and infrastructure within which program operated and how these illustrate important points of origin. Staff identified points of origin at the local, state, and national levels.

First, the strengths and needs of local communities played a part in the points of origin. Staff believed that local support for programs was strong when teaching turnover made impacts on local programs. Stability was tied in their minds to growing local people who were less likely to move away than those who came from outside the local area. Those working in tribal colleges noted the strength of the local culture and language as an important point of origin for

130 program development. Second, the previous work done in New Mexico toward professional infrastructures with the career lattice and articulation agreements was viewed as an important context for the sites’ work. Indeed, having this infrastructure within which to nest project efforts was considered so important that they were a focus of both staff and others in the Navajo Nation system as a connector to this project. Staff described that salary scale and certification issues were,

“as longer term goals, a sine que non to our being able to develop a good program at the college.” While important, these professional development efforts in New Mexico were still relatively young. Therefore this system was still in a process of gathering momentum. UNM-A experienced the effects of this in their recruitment efforts, finding that potential students had begun their educational efforts prior to the establishment of articulated degree programs, and,

“they didn’t have a goal to work toward, so they were just trying to acquire as many courses that would give them valuable knowledge and experience to work with young children, but it was not directed toward an end goal. And perhaps if students did get some advisement working toward an associate’s degree, their plan of attack would be more directed towards a bachelor’s degree.” Staff across multiple sites also identified the work of the New Mexico Higher Education Early Childhood Articulation Task Force as an important facilitator of their work, constituting another point of origin. In the words of one staff member,

“Basically, that’s been, the politics of higher education has probably been one of the bigger barriers. But this group has been, the relationship between the Kellogg project and the Articu- lation Task Force, and just the Higher Ed Task Force, has been a positive one. It’s been a very facilitative group.” Third, at the national level, several programs noted that an important factor serving as a point of origin was the level of publicity and public interest for high quality early care and education programs connected with the social good. The nationally embraced move toward welfare reform was cited as important factor as well. Also at the national level, across several sites, staff identified Head Start mandates for increased levels of teacher training as important facilitators of their work.

Common lessons about program development. Finally, there are some common lessons from the project sites regarding general program development. 131 The Continuous Journey

First, site staff often regarded their work as consisting of many pieces; in other words, that the projects’ work as a whole consisted of pieces coming together to form a whole. In part, this relates to funding, where projects have multiple funding sources, each providing a “piece of the puzzle.” In another respect, this relates to operating on various fronts, each of which contributed to the “big picture.” Whatever the source, the consequence is that staff must be proficient at coordinating the pieces that exist within the larger whole.

As a corollary, another consequence is that staff must become adept at leverage. At several sites staff talked about leveraging funding from agencies providing early childhood services, either through contracts or through tuition remis- sion these agencies provide to staff who can then enroll as students. An important contextual factor for these institutions was the Head Start Act requiring associate degrees from 50% of teachers, accompanied by federal funding to Head Start agencies for professional development. At the same time, CIT, unable to provide associate-level programs, was withering for lack of being able to leverage that type of funding.

Intimately related to these issues is the topic of project funding frames. At some sites the goals were tightly focused and significant resources were in place to aid progress toward those goals. For example, as a UNM branch campus, UNM-G did not have to develop curriculum for its new BA program; it utilized courses previously developed and in use at the UNM-A campus. While it took some time to finalize the form in which a BA would be offered at SJC, nonethe- less, once a decision was made, a host institution came on board with a developed program. At UNM-A, the work was dedicated to student recruitment for the evening/weekend program; again, having the program coursework developed was a significant resource. Staff at these institutions did not express concern with the length of funding provided by the Kellogg grant.

At other institutions, however, there was a concern expressed that, generally, the funding frame was not enough time to reach the desired goals. This seems related to different factors. At some institutions, such as CIT and DC, it seems linked to both the slow nature of the work, often related to trust- and commitment-building (this topic was discussed more fully previously) and the enormity of bringing programs into being without the types of existing resources dis- 132 cussed above. The capacity building required in those cases was seen as requiring a lot of time. In another sense, it seems associated with staff members taking a large view and concluding that the needs are great and the current impact insufficient. Given that underserved areas were targeted for the work, this is not surprising. Finally, this sense of time and funding being too short was present when project staff had ambitious, broadly defined goals. For example,

“Now we’re looking into change in institutions. That’s our challenge. And that might be an incredible complex process …three years is not enough time to do this kind of work. I mean that’s, three years is really start-up time. And I would like to recommend to Kellogg that they consider five years of initial funding.” In sum, effectiveness in program development coalesced around staff viewing their programs as puzzle pieces toward a larger picture, related as well to leveraged funding schemes. Effectiveness was impacted by the funding time frame, in that those with significant established resources experienced the funding timeframe adequacy differently from those with fewer pre-existing resources or a less tightly focused program development thrust.

Question 5: Did the project succeed in supporting at-risk youth in early years, and how was success measured?

While it would be most effective to include measures of participant and child outcomes in response to this question, it was not seen as feasible for the project for several reasons. First, the sites trained individuals at varied levels in the career lattice. Therefore, we would expect that improvements in their abilities to work effectively with children and families would be varied, with each level in the lattice requiring a unique comparison group, an expensive and time- consuming research enterprise. Second, training efforts varied in length. While someone taking the 45-hour Entry Level course could easily be observed in the classroom before and after the experience, others were undergoing training experiences lasting up to two years. This relates to a third reason – at the time of data collection some individuals were not currently working with children as they pursued full-time study. The completion of training varied widely from site to site, depending particularly upon the start-up time necessary for the activity (e.g., the quick start-up at UNM-G allowed students to graduate prior to the end of the three-year grant period, but the slower start of the evening/weekend program at UNM-A did not). At the same time, from the data collected, some 133 The Continuous Journey

conclusions can be drawn about the effectiveness of the project in supporting at- risk youth.

The voices, stories, and theories of staff. We do know from previous research in the field that training focused on early care and education does make a difference in the quality of programs. To that extent, it can be extrapolated that providing training to the individuals funded through this project should impact program quality. Indeed, providing coursework that does lead to quality early care and education focused the staff’s work. In the words of some,

“The emphasis on working with families and on inclusive education is important. There’s not strong relationships between the public schools and families, and we hear that on almost a daily basis from our students and from other folks, and from the schools as well, they’re not thinking it’s a good situation. The way the ECME degree is set up for inclusive education is not a reality in the public schools. By supporting people to get the degree, the project can make a significant difference in the school district.” “A better child care, quality care, to forward to parents, and child care providers will have more skills in working with children.” “What we’re looking at, of course, by the BA program, is to have high-quality training for staff, so children have high quality education.” Staff went so far as to assert that they would not be satisfied with any type of program, but were concerned with fashioning programs that met their definitions of quality. As they described it,

“We’re not just thinking of having a four-year in place, but one that will work for the students.” “First we’ve got to get the classes together, teach the classes, make sure they’re decent classes. Because what happens to us immediately is all seven of our campuses, everyone starts beating the drums, we want these courses delivered out here, and we have no professors. So then what do we do? They put the pressure on us to hire adjuncts to teach those classes, and we have no authority over the adjuncts. And then they’re way out in the field teaching classes, any old way. It’s back into the ‘any old way’ model, and we’ve done that plenty at Dine College, and that’s not the right thing to do … At this early part of the project, it seems to me that, had we gone ahead to have an early childhood, and this is a very early time to say this in our project, but had we not had the community council concept, then whatever AA program we came up with, might have been just some pro forma, cookie-cutter AA program that didn’t necessarily make any difference at all. Now, this is a very early time to say that, that’s making some kind of presupposition, and in fact we are going to end up with quality.” Further evidence as to what sites were attempting to provide in their programs arose during the focus groups. This offers additional, though indirect, evidence of program outcomes. As occurred with other themes discussed earlier, 134 interesting parallels were seen in the ideas raised in the two separate groups. First, in both groups, participants expressed the idea that in good early care and education the child was placed centrally. As the staff described it,

“If you’re really watching kids, understand where they’re at, then you really develop the curriculum on the children and not on the textbook …Then you would have a really great situation where you’re doing things, they have to be culturally relevant because the culture is the kids’ culture.” “But if the kid-watching is good, I think it’s the kids you learn from most.” “Well, in teacher ed it’s too much about how, how to educate, and not enough attention on the child.” Staff in the two focus groups also discussed good teaching as a process, indeed one that was difficult to do well. For example, “Building a curriculum on what, whatever that group of children that you have for that year brings into your classroom. That’s part of the process …We’ve got to let teachers know that teaching is hard work.” “Teaching the process. Teaching the process and helping teachers learn how to develop a process. That is not a canned curriculum, it’s not going to come from Michigan, it’s not going to come from New Jersey, or it’s not going to come from California. It is going to come from that community. Would you, we need to empower ourselves to learn how to develop those processes for doing the work, you know, for imparting the knowledge, picking the knowledge, evaluating how you’re doing.” “I think the issue of ongoing maturing of teachers is the same thing as, to me is the same thinking we’re talking about when we’re asking people to be constantly flexible, active intellec- tuals in their work, we’re asking them to keep on growing.” Also, the two groups expressed very similar ideas about what constituted poor teaching. For example, in both groups concern was expressed about local schools adopting the “Success for All” program. As one staff put it,

“Your most prescriptive curricula are in the poorest schools. Your most non-thinking, non- creative programs are going to be in the ghettos, in barrios, in Native-American communities, because those are the people that need to clean our houses.” Staff provided colorful descriptions in each focus group about their view of poor teaching,

Speaker 1: “And in our field, and I hate to liken it like this, but it’s like interior decorat- ing. Everybody’s out there in big conferences finding out what’s the most…” Speaker 2: “Oh, oh, the trends.” Speaker 1: “And then we come in and say, oh I’m going to do fuchsia this year, which is, this kind of curriculum.” “But it’s [good teaching] a lot harder than just picking up, ‘Look, look, see Spot, funny, funny Spot.’” 135 The Continuous Journey

As well, staff in both focus groups viewed poor teaching as non-individualized. In their words,

“You don’t give them [prospective teachers] some kind of a recipe and say, OK, this will be the new recipe for the Navajos or the recipe for the, you know, it’s not a recipe, it’s these real kids in this real room.” “I mean if we truly were helping prepare children to be successful by six, or school-ready, in the true spirit of the term, I think there’s, the problem is how we’re going about it and how we’re fooling ourselves that these things are actually happening when in all actuality what is really happening is just this homogenization.” In addition to explicating these ideas regarding good and bad teaching, the staff reflected upon the difficult task they faced in preparing students to be good teachers. They faced challenges of supporting active learners who could teach in the ways described above,

“And to change that [passive learning] is very difficult, because the assumption is when you go to college, you know, that you have, an expert who comes and lectures to you. And, in so many cases, that is exactly what our students experience. Not maybe in early childhood, but when they take introduction to sociology and they take introduction to chemistry and so, break through that experience, and that current experience, is really a challenge. And to, to know or to learn that it’s OK, to challenge practices, many of which have been traditional practices that, you know from parents to grand- parents, to different generations, is a real challenge. And when we wrote the Entry Level course, that was our goal, to offer that challenge. That this be dialogic, that we, you know, really hear what each person has to say, and we really, you know, think about what we’re doing with young children. That’s a real challenge. And I think, I think in many ways we’ve been successful, but I think we have a long way to go. Because I think we really have to overcome some history.” A final important component of quality teacher preparation for the staff was the responsiveness to diversity and local communities. In addressing the first evaluation question I included a discussion of how various sites approached this task and how students responded to their efforts. But staff had more to say about this topic in the focus groups. A focal theme was restoring voice to communities and community members,

“And that’s something that I have to struggle with, as I work with entry-teachers or teachers that have been in the field for awhile. As we give them this knowledge, as we, because it does transform their thinking. But we don’t want them to be transformed in such a way that they become somebody else. I don’t know how to put that in a better way.” “And I think that’s one thing we always have to keep in mind, that this socialization process robs voice from people. And as we present this Entry Level training, we have to somehow create spaces, and intentional spaces, from which the participants can share their stories of doing early care and education.”

136 “I think, especially for Navajo teachers, there’s been so much taken away from them, the way that they were taught, and so, right now, we have to go back and kind of un-do, and pull out all their string and things that they had all along. We just pull them forward and all the values that they had, which is something that we knew, it’s not what you put on paper or not what you read from a books, it’s in action and being the real you, which is what we’re trying to get at … Many of them have very strong Navajo and cultural background, but I guess the type of education has sort of sent a message that these aren’t really important. So we’re turning this around and saying, you have those, use them, these values that you have, and your language. So we need to do that, what we do for our children, we also need to do for our teachers.” In addition to these comments, voiced in the focus groups, staff added to these ideas in individual interviews. Those working in the tribal colleges were clearly looking to restore Native language and values to the work of early care and education professionals. As described by one staff member,

“And people are hungry for that kind of information. They are. I mean when they hear about the Navajo language and culture, and they’re missing something, they’ve been in so much, a lot of their lives, I’m sure they’ve been in this mainstream or watching TV, I mean we’re just immersed in that type of a setting. Whereas before, like my mother was raised in a different kind of setting. And you miss that type of life. But they want to put both of it together so that, it’s they really can say, this is me.” This thrust at the tribal colleges resulted in a very different process for putting together curriculum. Whereas science and research have dominated early care and education as the field pushed for professionalism, the staff at tribal colleges spoke directly of using other authorities and sources of knowledge that are close to unheard of in the work of the dominant group. In their words,

“I think the other one that we do have feed into the program from, we’ve done a pretty good, aggressive job of getting some feed, some pretty good feed into the program, but not on the council, is somebody who can really represent, strongly and articulately, a traditional perspective on childraising. Maybe, somebody who’s a real strong elder.” “I teach in Navajo, where I know my students are sitting there and have a real question in their, on their face, and I can go back and give them examples of what I’m talking about. Maybe going back to our, my old teaching, what my grandma taught me, using that as an example, and they have a good understanding of what a, it fits, like a puzzle, the early childhood.” During the Navajo focus group the participants discussed traditional values and what they meant to them both personally and professionally. The one theme I feel comfortable in offering across the translation is the message that “these are things we need to consider in our work.” This group provided an example of the strong community orientation in the program development work at DC.

At the same time, the DC staff also spoke of developing a program, “without any turning our faces away from the important information from other places, important practices from other places.” Thus, the effort was truly bicultural in terms of using both Navajo 137 The Continuous Journey

and Anglo culture as well as the professional body of knowledge and traditional community values. In sum, the voices and theories of staff were strikingly similar. While each site went about its work in different ways, the staff was generally in agreement about the nature of teaching and the importance of responsive teaching. To be sure, there were differences among staff, and one impression I came away from the focus groups was how differently each undirected conversation had gone. However, the search for themes resulted in a finding that in many ways, the voices were in unison.

The voices, stories, and theories of students. As discussed previously, the project sites’ efforts toward increasing the number of individuals receiving training and in making that training more culturally relevant, have produced results. Several of the points made earlier in response to the first evaluation question could be re-inserted here. In addition to referencing these points, it seems fitting to end with the words of student participants. By and large, one of the resound- ing themes identified in these interviews was the strong focus the participants had on children and families and providing quality programs for them. While none were observed working with children and families, they all spoke passion- ately about the way they hoped to do their jobs in better ways. Following are some of their words about the impact of the training experience on their professional development:

“I think for me and for the other staff, we realized that each child that comes to the school, whether it be the residential setting or the classroom, their needs are the same, and we just need to be receptive and be sensitive to those needs.” “Now I’m thinking more in terms of what is culturally relevant to the students that I’ll be working with.” “It really does help with what the workshop that I had took, that it would be different than what I had planned before, and it would be more, add more in what I would know to help the kids.” “And then I think it’s gonna help me to, I know what to expect in the classroom now.” “To start paying more attention to the kids that aren’t Anglo and to the ones that may not feel comfortable because we’re not involving their culture enough.” “As I further myself in the program, I feel that I’m becoming more aware of the different cultures and that I’m getting to be more confident. That when I go out to work in the schools or whatever my goals are in the future, I want to make sure I meet the needs of the children and the families. And what’s very important is that I respect them and trust them. I feel with the children and the families I’m going to work with, the more I’m getting trained in this, I’m getting more confident I can do it. When I look back from when I first started until now, I remember there’s a lot of things that I have seen that I no longer do, that I try to, that I’m 138 learning how to go about it in the right direction. To where when I first got hired, it was just off the bat, I didn’t have no training in ECME. But now that I’m going up that ladder, I’m making major changes.” “I feel I have a much, I mean leaps and bounds ahead of where I was two years ago as far as like recognizing a good classroom that’s doing good child development, that’s really focusing in on good cognitive development, on speech, on fine motor, gross motor, et cetera, et cetera, than I was two years ago. I feel I have a really good working knowledge of the area of child development, and I feel a lot more comfortable engaging in the process of improving our ability to provide a good early childhood development program.” By their own estimate, training participants feel better prepared to support the children and families with whom they currently work or with whom they anticipate working. All could identify barriers to their ongoing training, yet all were determined. Their mix of commitment, professional knowledge, and perse- verance will surely prove a support to young children.

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Wave One Interview Questions

1. How, when, and why did each core group member or agency at your site become involved in the Kellogg project?

2. Who identified the needs addressed in your site? What was the process?

3. What do you think the two broad goals of the Kellogg project mean to your local area? What would things look like if these goals were achieved in your area?

4. What specific purposes and objectives did you begin with at your site? How were they determined?

5. What specific features of your local community influenced the birth and beginning of this project? What has been the influence of state or national factors on your project?

6. What barriers and facilitators did you conceive as you began the project?

7. Who do you work with as partners for this project? What has been the course of this partnership? How has it been cemented? What have been the barriers?

8. As you began the project, what thoughts did you have about evaluation and your site’s accountability for the project goals?

9. What are the specific needs that you are trying to address in your local project? Why are they important?

10. What objectives do you have for your local program currently? How do they relate to the overall Kellogg project goals?

11. How have your objectives evolved during the course of this project thus far?

12. Describe the processes you are using to make your project objectives a reality. Who developed them, when and why? 140 13. How do you think you can measure success for your site objectives? How will you determine what works and where you need to make adjustments?

14. What barriers and facilitators do you perceive as currently affecting your project work? Wave Two Interview Questions

Community Council Operation and Contribution

1. Who currently belongs to the community council? What is each member’s role in the local community?

2. Who has been on the community council since the project began but is no longer serving? What was each “past” member’s role in the local community? Why is each person no longer a community council member?

3. Are there any particular people or categories of people who are not on the community council but you wish were? Why?

4. How would you describe the contribution of the community council to your project and/or community?

5. What are the ways in which the community council has influenced the project staff and vice versa, the project staff influenced the community council members?

6. How would you describe your typical community council meeting? What are the group dynamics?

7. What, if anything, have been your frustrations or concerns with the community council?

8. What have been the lessons you’ve learned about the community council and its role in the project that you could pass on to others?

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9. What difference do you think it would have made to your project if the community council concept had not been a part of it?

Project Progress Toward Goals

10. What would you say are the outcomes you’ve achieved thus far in your project?

11. What objectives are you currently working toward?

Profiling Site-Specific Work

12. Think back on where you are now compared to where you were when the project started. Looking back, were there any key persons, developments, or events that helped your project progress? Why were they key?

13. How have your objectives evolved during the course of this project thus far?

14. What barriers and facilitators do you perceive as currently affecting your project work?

15. How do you think your project ties to long-term goals in your local areas?

16. What services, resources and/or supports are essential to the effectiveness of your project?

17. Where do you think the project has experienced sidetracks, detours, or dead-ends? How did you recognize them as such? What was the problem?

18. How would you conceptualize what your project has accomplished thus far? What is still being planned and/or implemented?

19. Looking at your project’s accomplishments and goals, what would you say represents completely new or novel work? What represents an exten- sion or expansion of currently existing work?

142 Participant Interview Questions

1. Tell me about the training that you participated in through the Kellogg project.

2. Why did you want to take this training? How did you get involved in it?

3. What did you like best about the training?

4. Was there anything about the training that you didn’t like or that frus- trated you?

5. If someone asked you whether they should do training or course similar to the one you did, what would you tell that person?

6. One of the goals of the Kellogg project is to make sure that early childhood training matches the culture and beliefs of the group where it is offered. How do you think the training you participated in fits with the way children are raised and the beliefs about children in your own community?

7. Have you participated in early childhood training before? If yes, what was the training like? In what ways was it similar to the training you’ve just done with the Kellogg group? In what ways was it different?

8. What difference do you think this training has made or will make for you as you work with children and families? Do you think it will make any difference for you personally?

9. If other people who work with young children and their families participated in training like the one you did, what difference do you think it would make?

10. When you look into the future, what do you see yourself doing in the early childhood field (or do you see yourself doing something different from early childhood)?

11. What do you need to help you get to the vision you’ve just described?

143 The Continuous Journey

12. Can you think of barriers that you’ll have to overcome to get there?

13. Which of the following barriers have you experienced in trying to get early childhood training (a. child care issues; b. transportation issues; c. the cost of courses and books; d. getting courses at times that allow me to keep working my job; e. being scared or intimidated by the idea of doing college courses; f. trying to get registered or get paperwork done; g. having courses held close enough to where I live or work; h. having too much going on in my life to add school responsibilities on top of it; i. not knowing how or where to get started on getting more training or courses)

14. What have you found most helpful to overcoming barriers and reaching your goals for early childhood training?

15. Is there anything else you want to tell me about the training or course that you participated in? Possible Questions for Focus Group Dialogue

1. Teacher preparation is a socialization process. One quote is that all curriculum (including then higher education curriculum) is a mind-altering experience.

What are our goals in socializing teachers of young children?

How do we go about reaching those goals?

How can we fashion the socialization process to be ideally tied to communities? (The embedded question is what is our ideal?)

2. Culture is increasingly being included as an important factor in thinking about early childhood.

How do we consider culture in our work in teacher preparation programs?

144 How have we come to where we are in viewing early childhood programs, young children, and their communities? Where have our ideas come from?

3. The revised DAP statement includes this, “Development and learning occur in and are influenced by multiple social and cultural contexts.”

How do we come to know the child rearing practices and values that our students will meet as they work with children and families?

How do we use that information in designing teacher education programs?

How do students show competence as early childhood educators with context being central in the definition?

4. In the anti-bias approach we strongly recommend that teachers examine themselves for biases and the influence of dominant culture beliefs that are often tacit.

Do we have a responsibility as a field to examine in the same way our beliefs, philosophies, what we advocate to our students?

If so, how do we do this?

Is it possible for people from non-dominant cultural groups to “see themselves” in a traditional early childhood teacher preparation program? What barriers are there to this? How is it facilitated?

145 The Continuous Journey

APPENDIX A

Map of New Mexico

146 APPENDIX B Early Childhood Education Competencies*

PREAMBLE

What early childhood professionals know and can do significantly influences children’s development, learning, and success in school. Since the period of early childhood spans the first eight years of a child’s life, these early care and education professionals are being prepared to work in varied settings that include child care centers, family child care homes, Head Start, early intervention programs, public and private schools through third grade, preschools, and family support programs. Professionals may refer to themselves as teachers, educational assistants, assistant teachers, teacher aides, caregivers, providers. In the final analysis, they all teach and they all provide care.

The competencies that follow are designed to describe what early childhood teachers should know and be able to do at the conclusion of a bachelor’s degree program. They include six core areas: Child Growth, Development, and Learn- ing; Health, Safety, and Nutrition; Family and Community Collaboration; Cur- riculum Development and Implementation; Assessment of Children and Evalua- tion of Programs; and Professionalism. Teachers who demonstrate these competencies can work effectively with young children in a variety of settings.

I. CHILD GROWTH, DEVELOPMENT AND LEARNING

RATIONALE

Foundations for all learning are established during early childhood. Biologi- cal-physical, social, cultural, emotional, cognitive, and language domains are inherently intertwined in growth and development. Early childhood professionals must understand this process of development and the adult’s role in supporting each child’s growth, development, and learning.

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A. Incorporate understanding of developmental stages, processes, and theories of growth, development, and learning into developmentally appropriate practice.1

B. Demonstrate knowledge of the interaction between maturation and environmental factors that influence physical, social, emotional, cognitive, and cultural domains in the healthy development of each child.

C. Demonstrate knowledge of the significance of individual differences in development and learning. Demonstrate knowledge of how certain differences may be associated with rate of development and developmental patterns associated with developmental delays and/or specific disabilities.

D. Demonstrate knowledge of the similarities between children who are developing typically and those with special needs.

E. Provide a variety of activities that facilitate development of the whole child in the following areas: physical/motor, social/emotional, language/cognitive, and adaptive/living skills.2

F. Apply knowledge of cultural and linguistic diversity and the significance of socio-cultural and political contexts for development and learning and recognize that children are best understood in the contexts of family, culture and society.

G. Demonstrate knowledge of the many functions that language serves in the cognitive, social, and emotional aspects of development in the formative years.

H. Demonstrate knowledge of the developmental sequence of language and literacy, including the influence of culture and home factors.

I. Demonstrate knowledge of how children acquire and use verbal, non- verbal, and alternative means of communication.3

148 J. Demonstrate knowledge of the relationship among emotions, behaviors, and communication skills to assist children in identifying and expressing their feelings in appropriate ways.

K. Use appropriate guidance to support the development of self-regula- tory capacities in young children.

II. HEALTH, SAFETY AND NUTRITION

RATIONALE

Early childhood professionals promote physical and mental health and appropriate nutrition and provide an emotionally and physically safe environment for young children in partnership with their families. Sound health, safety, and nutritional practices provide the foundation for development and learning. Good nutrition is appropriate and important to the total development of young children and their families. Meals and snacks encourage good nutrition and eating habits. A safe environment prevents and reduces injuries for young children who are only beginning to recognize dangerous situations.

A. Recognize and respond to each child’s physical health, intellectual and emotional well-being, and nutritional and safety needs.

B. Appropriately plan, maintain, and facilitate the use of the indoor and outdoor leaning environments to promote each child’s physical emotional well- being.

C. Use appropriate health appraisal and management procedures and make referrals when necessary.

D. Recognize signs of emotional distress, child abuse, and neglect in young children and use procedures appropriate to the situation, such as initiating discussions with families, referring to appropriate professionals, and, in cases of suspected abuse or neglect, reporting to designated authorities.

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E. Establish an environment that provides opportunities and reinforce- ment for children’s practice of healthy behaviors that promote appropriate nutrition and physical and psychological well-being.

F. Provide a consistent daily schedule for rest/sleep, as developmentally appropriate.

G. Implement health care and educational activities for children and families based on health and nutritional information that is responsive to diverse cultures.

H. Assist young children and their families, as individually appropriate, in developing decision-making and interpersonal skills that enable them to make healthy choices and establish health-promoting behaviors.

III. FAMILY AND COMMUNITY COLLABORATION

RATIONALE

Early childhood professionals are committed to family-centered practices. They maintain an open, friendly, and collaborative relationship with each child’s family, encouraging family involvement, and supporting the child’s relationship with his or her family. The diverse cultures and languages representative of families in New Mexico’s communities are honored.

A. Seek and maintain a collaborative relationship with parents, guardians, families, community agencies, and other professionals to meet the needs of each child.

B. Create and maintain a safe and welcoming environment for families and community members.

C. Establish frequent contact with parents and guardians through a variety of communication strategies, including communication in the home language of each child to provide ongoing, relevant information to families about child growth, development, and learning.

150 D. Demonstrate knowledge of and respect for variations across cultures,4 in terms of family strengths, expectations, values, and child-rearing practices.

E. Demonstrate understanding of the complexity and dynamics of family systems.

F. Demonstrate understanding of the effects of family stress on the behavior of children and other family members.

G. Demonstrate the ability to incorporate the families’ desires/goals for their children into classroom and/or intervention strategies.5

H. Develop partnerships with family members to promote early literacy in the home.

I. Involve families and community members in contributing to the learning environment.

J. Establish partnerships with community members in promoting literacy.

K. Demonstrate ability to communicate to families the program’s policies, procedures, and those procedural safeguards that are mandated by state and federal regulations.

IV. CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION

IVa. DEVELOPMENTALLY APPROPRIATE CONTENT

RATIONALE

Early childhood professionals demonstrate knowledge of child development and learning, as well as content knowledge, both in terms of academic disciplines and interdisciplinary integration. Their approach to curriculum content emerges from multiple sources, such as play and exploration, and is appropriate for the ages and developmental levels of the children with whom they work. Content includes, but is not limited to, the arts, literacy, mathematics, physical education,

151 The Continuous Journey

health, social studies, science, and technology. Children’s initial experiences with these content areas form the foundation for later understanding and success.

A. Demonstrate knowledge of relevant content for young children and developmentally appropriate ways of integrating content into teaching and learning experiences for children from birth through age eight.

B. Demonstrate the integration of knowledge of how young children develop and learn with knowledge of the concepts, inquiry tools, and structure of content areas appropriate for different developmental levels.

C. Demonstrate knowledge of what is important in each content area, why it is of value, and how it links with earlier and later understandings within and across areas.

D. Demonstrate knowledge of the of reading and writing components of literacy6 at each developmental level.

E. Develop, implement, and evaluate an integrated curriculum7 that focuses on children’s development and interests, using their language, home experiences and cultural values.

F. Adapt content to meet the needs of each child, including the development of Individualized Family Service Plans (IFSP)8 and/or Individualized Education Plans (IEP)9 for children with special needs through the team process with families and other team members.

G. Provide and use anti-bias10 materials/literature and experiences in all content areas of the curriculum.

IVb. LEARNING ENVIRONMENT AND CURRICULUM IMPLEMEN- TATION

RATIONALE

Teaching and learning with young children is a complex process embedded in relationships. These teaching and learning relationships provide the scaffold

152 for jointly constructing meanings about self, others, and the world. Early childhood professionals use their child development knowledge, their knowledge of developmentally appropriate practices, and their content knowledge to design, implement, and evaluate experiences that promote optimal development and learning for all children from birth through age eight. In addition, their use of observations is grounded in a thorough understanding of children’s families, cultures, and communities. Early childhood professionals encourage young children’s problem solving, critical thinking, and academic and social competence within a supportive and challenging learning environment. These challenging teaching and learning experiences build children’s confidence in themselves as competent learners.

A. Demonstrate knowledge of varying program models and learning environments that meet the individual needs of all young children, including those with special needs.

B. Create environments that encourage active involvement, initiative, responsibility, and a growing sense of autonomy through the selection and use of materials and equipment that are suitable to individual learning, developmental levels, special needs, and the language and cultures in New Mexico.

C. Demonstrate knowledge and skill in the use of developmentally appropriate guidance techniques and strategies that provide opportunities to assist children in developing positive thoughts and feelings about themselves and others through cooperative interaction with peers and adults.

D. Create and manage learning environments that provide individual and cooperative opportunities for children to construct their own knowledge through various strategies that include decision-making, problem-solving, and inquiry experiences.

E. Demonstrate understanding that each child’s creative expression is unique and can be encouraged through diverse ways, including creative play.

F. Plans blocks of uninterrupted time for children to persist at self-chosen activities, both indoors and out.

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G. Demonstrate understanding of the influence of the physical setting, schedule, routines, and transitions on children and use these experiences to promote children’s development and learning.

H. Use and explain the rationale for developmentally appropriate methods that include play, small group projects, open-ended questioning, group discussion, problem solving, cooperative learning, and inquiry experiences to help young children develop intellectual curiosity, solve problems, and make decisions.

I. Create and manage a literacy-rich environment that is responsive to each child’s unique path of development.

J. Use a variety of language strategies during adult-child and child-child interactions and facilitate dialogue of expressive language and thought.

K. Demonstrate a variety of developmentally appropriate instructional strategies that facilitate the development of literacy skills.

L. Demonstrate knowledge of developmentally appropriate uses of technology, including assistive technology.

M. Demonstrate the ability to work collaboratively with educational assistants, volunteers, and others to individualize the curriculum and to meet program goals.

N. Demonstrate effective written and oral communication skills when working with children, families, and early care, education, and family support professionals.

V. ASSESSMENT OF CHILDREN AND EVALUATION OF PRO- GRAMS

RATIONALE

Early childhood professionals must develop knowledge of diverse assessment approaches, including observational skills. They use appropriate on-going

154 documentation and report information to families and professionals. Appropri- ate early childhood assessment is responsive to cultural and linguistic differences. It includes information from multiple sources, e.g., observations, checklists, interviews, and both formal and informal standardized measures in diverse settings11 for making educational decisions about children. The assessment data gathered from multiple sources that has a major impact on children should be made by a team of family members, teachers, and other professionals. In addition, early childhood professionals engage in systematic, on-going evaluation of their programs.

A. Demonstrate knowledge of assessment and evaluation12 practices that are valid and appropriate.

B. Demonstrate knowledge of maintaining appropriate records of children’s development and behavior that safeguard confidentiality and privacy.

C. Demonstrate knowledge of the educator’s role as a participating member of the assessment process as described and mandated by state and federal regulations for Individual Family Service Plans (IFSP) and Individual Education Plans (IEP).

D. Demonstrate understanding of the influences of environmental factors, cultural/linguistic differences, and diverse ways of learning on assessment outcomes.

E. Involve the family and, as appropriate, other team members in assess- ing the child’s development, strengths, and needs in order to set goals for the child.

F. Share assessment results as appropriate with families in clear, supportive ways.

G. Involve all stakeholders in program evaluations.

H. Demonstrate knowledge of a variety of techniques and procedures to evaluate and modify program goals for young children and their families.

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I. Develop and use formative and summative13 program evaluation to ensure comprehensive quality of the total environment for children, families, and the community.

J. Use both self and collaborative evaluations as part of on-going program evaluations.

VI. PROFESSIONALISM

RATIONALE

Professionalism is built upon individual integrity, responsibility, and ethical practices that demonstrate a profound respect for all children and their families. Early childhood professionals embrace a multicultural perspective that is responsive to individuals in culturally diverse communities in New Mexico. Profes- sionals make decisions based upon knowledge of early childhood theories and practices that recognize diversity of ability, developmental level, and family characteristics. Early childhood professionals advocate for excellence in early childhood programs and participate in on-going professional development to enhance their knowledge and skills.

A. Consistently adhere to professional codes of ethics and conduct.14

B. Demonstrate knowledge of federal, state, and local regulations regarding programs and services for children birth through eight years of age.

C. Demonstrate understanding of conditions of children, families, and professionals; current issues and trends; legal issues; and legislation and other public policies affecting children, families, and programs for young children and the early childhood profession.

D. Articulate a personal philosophy of appropriate early care and education that responds to practices that support inclusion15 and cultural and linguistic diversity through actions and attitudes.

E. Demonstrate critical reflection of one’s own professional and educational practices from community, state, national, and global perspectives. 156 F. Demonstrate understanding of the early childhood profession, its multiple historical, philosophical, and social foundations, and how these foundations influence current thought and practice.

G. Demonstrate a commitment to advocacy for excellence in programs and services for young children and their families.

H. Demonstrate knowledge of other professions that provide related services for young children and their families.

I. Participate in professional organizations and in on-going professional development to enhance knowledge and skills in working with young children and adults.

J. Demonstrate knowledge of basic principles of administration, organi- zation, and operation of early childhood programs, including supervision of staff and volunteers.

GLOSSARY FOR EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION LICENSE

1 Developmentally Appropriate Practice results from the process of professionals making decisions about the well-being and education of children based on at least three important kinds of information or knowledge:

What is known about child development and learning—knowledge of age-related human characteristics that permit general predictions within an age range about what activities, materials, interactions, or experiences will be safe, healthy, interesting, achievable, and also challenging to children.

What is known about the strengths, interests, and needs of each individual child in the group to be able to adapt for and be responsive to inevitable individual variation; and

Knowledge of the social and cultural contexts in which children live to ensure that learning experiences are meaningful, relevant, and respectful for the participating children and their families.

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Furthermore, each of these dimensions of knowledge–human development and learning, individual characteristics and experiences, and social and cultural contexts–is dynamic and changing, requiring that early care, education, and family support personnel remain learners throughout their careers.

Bredekamp, S., & Copple, C. (Eds.). Developmentally appropriate practice in early childhood programs (Rev. ed.). Washington, DC: National Association for the Education of Young Children, pp.8-9.

2 Adaptive/Living Skills Adaptive development refers to development in several skill areas. Included are areas such as 1) living skills: eating, dressing, toileting; 2) independence/safety skills: crossing the street properly and avoiding dangerous situations such as hot stoves and hot water; and 3) environmental adaptation skills: adapting behavior as a function of the limitations or demands of a particular environment, such as being quiet in a library or hospital and walking, not running, inside school hallways. (Adaptive behavior means the effectiveness or degree to which the child meets the standards of personal independence and social responsibility expected of comparable age and cultural groups.)

From Diane Turner, Consultant, NM State Department of Education (Santa Fe, NM, 1992).

3 Alternative Means of Communication Other forms of communication, particularly non-verbal, such as the use of sign language with and without speech; communication boards; or other technological aids such as computers and speech output devices.

From Diane Turner, Consultant, NM State Department of Education (Santa Fe, NM, 1992).

4 Variations Across Cultures/Cultural Diversity The curriculum, environment, and learning materials are reflective of distinct groups that may differ from one another physically, socially, and culturally.

From Ann Trujillo, Consultant, NM State Department of Education (Santa Fe, NM 1992) 158 5 Intervention Strategies Various techniques used in teaching a child a particular skill such as physical and/or verbal prompts/cues, visual aids, model- ing, imitation, repetition, task analysis, environmental or stimulus cues/prompts. These strategies are attempts to facilitate learning when the presentation of information or the arrangement of an environment is insufficient in assisting the developmental learning process. The proper design of intervention strategies requires careful observation, individualization, and data keeping. The goal of this approach would be to systematically fade the particular technique/strategy used as the child demonstrates abilities to practice, initiate, and generalize the skill.

6 Literacy See the following sources for the components of reading and writing skills, the continuum of literacy development, and what children should know and be able to do at each developmental level:

Neuman, S., Copple C., & Bredekamp, S. (2000). Learning to read and write. Washington, DC:NAEYC.

Strickland, D., & Morrow, L. (Eds.). Beginning reading and writing.

National Research Council. (2000). Starting out right. A guide to promoting children’s reading success. Washington, DC:National Academy Press.

Learning to read and write: Developmentally appropriate practices for young children. (1998). A joint statement of the International Reading Associa- tion and the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

7 Integrated Curriculum An integrated approach to curriculum recognizes that content areas in instruction are naturally interrelated, as they are in real-life experiences. In the resulting integrated curriculum, learning is regarded as a process rather than a collection of facts. Learning about math, science, social studies, health, and other content areas are all connected through meaningful activities.

8 Individualized Family Service Plan (IFSP) Plan describing the delivery of services to a child with a developmental delay or at risk for a developmental delay (birth through two years of age) and the child’s family. Components of 159 The Continuous Journey

the plan include: a descriptive statement of the child’s level of functioning in the developmental areas; major outcomes, including criteria, procedures, and timelines to determine degree of progress and revision of the plan; specific services needed to achieve outcomes; other services needed by the child and family; name of service coordinator; transition plan; and an optional statement of family concerns, priorities, and resources.

9 Individualized Education Plan (IEP) Plan describing the delivery of services to a child with a disability, ages three through twenty-one. Plan serves as “communication vehicle between parents and school personnel and enables them, as equal participants, to decide jointly what the child’s needs are, what services will be provided to meet those needs, what the anticipated outcomes may be, and how the child’s progress toward meeting the projected outcomes will be evaluated.”

From the New Mexico State Department of Education’s Standards for Excel- lence Compliance Manual. (Additional requirements of the IEP are described in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA], Part B, as amended.)

10 Anti Bias Actively confronting, transcending, and eliminating personal and instructional barriers based on culture, race, sex, or ability.

11 Diverse Settings include “natural settings”, defined by federal law as “. . . settings that ear normal or natural for the child’s age peers who have no disabilities.” (SEC.303.18).

“Children and families participate in a variety of community activities that are natural for them, including those that occur in their home. Natural groups of children are groups that would continue to exist with or without children with disabilities. Groups that are not ‘natural groups’ include playgroups, toddler groups, or child care settings that include only children with disabilities. How- ever, even the most ‘natural’ of groups is not a natural setting for a particular child if it is not part of that child’s family’s routine or community.”

“Service settings that are not ‘natural settings’ include clinic, hospital, thera- pists’ offices, rehabilitation centers, and segregated group settings. This includes

160 any settings designed to serve children based on categories of disabilities or selected for the convenience of service providers.”

From Federal Law, SEC, 303.18.

From Part C Coordinators’ Association’s Position Paper on Natural Environ- ments (4/3/2000).

12Assessment is the process of determining a child’s traits, developmental level, or behaviors. This determination is best done through observation of the child in natural settings over time, although it is sometimes done through the use of multiple standardized measures.

Evaluation is the formal process of determining the quality, effectiveness, or value of a program, project, or curriculum. This process includes the establishment of appropriate standards, the collection of information, and the application or comparison of the standards to the information gained.

13Formative and Summative Evaluation Formative evaluation is the on- going evaluation of a program. Summative evaluation is the summary or results of the program evaluation.

14Codes of Ethics and Conduct, for example, those developed by the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC), the New Mexico State Department of Education, and Head Start.

15Practices that Support Inclusion “Full inclusion means that children must be educated in supported, heterogeneous age-appropriate, natural, children-focused classrooms, schools, and community environments for the purpose of preparing them for full participation in our diverse and integrated society. . . Teaching practices in a full inclusion school utilize cooperative learning, peer tutoring, community-referenced instruction, multi-modality instruction, meta- cognitive instruction, diverse and dynamic learning environments, individual attention to each learner’s needs, and supportive learning.

Such practices would support including children with disabilities in the natural classroom by 1) individualizing activities that are also developmentally 161 The Continuous Journey

appropriate; 2) adapting the curriculum; and 3) adapting teaching and intervention strategies.

State Superintendent Alan D. Morgan’s Position Statement on Inclusion (Santa Fe, NM, December 16, 1991).

162 APPENDIX C

Articulation Legislation ARTICLE 1B Post-Secondary Education Articulation

Sec. Sec. 21-1B-1. Short title 21-1B-4. Utilization of transfer 21-1B-2. Definitions. module, transfer of credits 21-1B-3. Articulation plan; development; 21-1B-5. Oversight of articulation programs; implementation; establishment complaint procedures. of transfer module. 21-1B-6. Reporting.

21-1B-1. Short Title Sections 1 through 6 [21-1B-1 to 21-1B-6 NMSA 1978] of this act may be cited as the “Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act.” History: Laws 1995, ch. 224 contains no effective date provision, but pursuant to N.M. Const. art. IV, § 23, the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act is effective on June 16, 1995, 90 days after adjournment of the legislature. See Volume 14 NMSA 1978 for “Ad- journment Dates of Sessions of Legislature” table. 21-1B-2. Definitions. As used in the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act (21-1B-1 to 21-1B-6 NMSA 1978]: A. “articulation” means the transfer of course credit from one institution to another; B. “commission” means the Commission on Higher Education; C. “institution” means a public post-secondary educational institution operating in the state; and D. “module” or “transfer module” means a standardized list of courses or skills established by the commission for which credit is accepted for transfer from one institution to another. History: Laws 1995, cir. 224, § 2. Effective dates.–Laws, 1996, ch. 224 contains no effective date provision, but pursuant to N.M. Const., art. IV § 23, the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act is effective on 163 The Continuous Journey

June 16, 1995, 90 days after adjournment of the legislature. See Volume 14 NMSA 1978 for “Adjournment Dates of Sessions of Legislature” table. 21-1B-3. Articulation plan; development; implementation; establishment of transfer module. A. The commission shall establish and maintain a comprehensive statewide plan to provide for the articulation of educational programs and facilitate the transfer of students between institutions. B. In establishing a statewide articulation plan, the commission shall define, publish and maintain modules of lower-division courses accepted for transfer at all institutions and meeting requirements of lower-division requirements established for associate and baccalaureate degree-granting programs. The commission shall ensure that institutions develop transfer modules that include a minimum of sixty-four hours of lower-division college-level credit. C. Transfer modules shall include a common general education core component of not less than thirty-five semester hours. This general education core shall include a comprehensive array of lower-division college-level courses designed to demonstrate skills in communication, mathematics, science, social and behavioral science, humanities, fine arts or comparable areas of study coordinated for the purpose of providing a foundation for a liberal education for all programs normally leading to a baccalaureate degree. History: Laws 1995, ch. 224, § 3. Effective dates.– Laws 1995, ch. 224 contains no effective date provision, but, pursuant to N.M. Const., art. IV, § 23, the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act is effective on June 16, 1995, 90 days after adjournment of the legislature. See Volume 14, NMSA 1978 for “Adjournment Dates of Sessions of Legislature” table. 21-1B-4. Utilization of transfer module; transfer of credits. A. Each institution shall accept for transfer course credits earned by a student at any other institution that are included in a transfer module. Transfer credits shall be accepted to meet lower-division graduation requirements of an institution’s degree- granting programs. B. A public post-secondary institution shall not increase requirements for degree- granting programs as a result of the utilization of a transfer module. An institution may specify additional lower-division or upper-division requirements for one or more programs of study provided that those requirements apply equally to transfer students and students originating their study at the institution. C. The commission shall establish and maintain procedures to identify additional lower- division credit courses in specific disciplines of study such as business, engineering, technology, education, health and arts and sciences that will be transferable among institutions and applicable to requirements for completion of baccalaureate degrees in specific programs of study. History: Laws 1995, ch. 224, § 4. Effective dates.– Laws 1995, ch. 224 contains no effective date provision, but pursuant to N.M. Const., art. IV, § 23, the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act is effective on 164 June 16, 1995, 90 days after adjournment of the legislature. See Volume 14, NMSA 1978 for “Adjournment Dates of Sessions of Legislature” table. 21-1B-5. Oversight of articulation programs; complaint procedures A. The commission shall establish and maintain a process to monitor and improve articulation through frequent and systematic consultation with institutions. Institutions shall monitor the progress of each transfer student and provide appropriate information to the student’s originating institution. B. The commission shall establish a complaint procedure for transfer students who fail to receive credit for courses contained in a transfer module taken at another institution. The commission may set standards for determining bona fide complaints, including a requirement that students follow institutions’ internal procedures for resolving complaints prior to submitting them to the commission. The commission shall investigate all articulation complaints and render decision as to the appropriateness of the actions of the participants. C. Prior to December 31 of each year, the commission shall summarize all articulation complaints filed with the commission and the decisions of the commission with regard to those complaints. For those complaints for which the commission finds merit, the commission shall calculate the number of credits refused at the receiving institution and recommend a corresponding reduction of legislative funding to the next session of the legislature. History: Laws 1995, ch. 224, § 5 Effective dates.– Laws 1995, ch. 224 contains no effective date provision, but pursuant to N.M. Const., art. IV, § 23, the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act is effective on June 16, 1995, 90 days after adjournment of the legislature. See Volume 14, NMSA 1978 for “Adjournment Dates of Sessions of Legislature” table. 21-1B-6. Reporting A. Prior to December 31 of each year, the commission shall report to the Legislative Finance Committee, the Legislative Education Study Committee and the Governor regarding the status of articulation programs and the transfer of students between institutions. B. The report developed by the commission shall include an analysis of the number of students transferring between campuses, the number of credits being requested and accepted for transfer, institutions denying transfer of credits and reasons for denial, the progress of transfer students at receiving institutions and a summary of student complaints regarding articulation. The report shall include data and other information obtained on both a statewide and individual institution basis. C. The report shall identify each institution against which a meritorious complaint has been filed. The report shall summarize the recommendations of the commission with regard to funding reductions at those institutions. D. All institutions shall provide articulation information required by the commission for the development of the annual report prior to September 30 of each year.

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History: Laws 1995, ch. 224, § 6. Effective dates.– Laws 1995, ch. 224 contains no effective date provision, but pursuant to N.M. Const., art. IV, § 23, the Post-Secondary Education Articulation Act is effective on June 16, 1995, 90 days after adjournment of the legislature. See Volume 14, NMSA 1978 for “Adjournment Dates of Sessions of Legislature” table. *Revised, 2001; final adoption by State Board of Education pending. Original competencies approved by SBE July 1, 1993.

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