Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children

January 28, 2013

Written Narrative

Grant # 03440-30044-13

TO: Jan Walker

Child Development Division

103 South Main Street, 2 North

Waterbury, VT 05671-5500

Service Description: To promote and deliver a conference open to all early childhood professionals that will enhance their knowledge and skills and inspire colleagueship and professionalism.

Performance Measure: Report the number and type of providers who participated. Target: 400 Vermont Childcare/ECE providers attend the conference and VAEYC and CDD know how many are registered family child care providers and how many work in licensed centers/homes.

The annual fall conference and retreat took place this year in Burlington, VT at UVM’s Davis Center. This year, we offered three full days of programming on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, October 18th-20th. Attendance this year was record breaking for Burlington, with approximately 283 attendees on Thursday, 392 attendees on Friday and 111 on Saturday for a total of 522 unique conference attendees. Based on data collected via the evaluation, of the professionals attending the conference: 59% were center-based, 22% were home-based (up from 8.7% last year!), 2% were school based and, 7% worked for organizations supporting the profession. Overall, evaluations were positive.

Performance Measure: Report on goals, outcomes and specifications. Target: 100% are fully met.

Service Goals and Outcomes:

1. Goal: Provide high quality learning opportunities that complement and are integrated in the overall professional development system.

Outcome: all presenters are of high quality and meet NAEYC standards and Vermont standards as described in the Principles of the VT Professional Development System.

VAEYC is an approved sponsor of professional development through the Northern Lights system. As an approved sponsor, we have agreed to utilize instructors from the Vermont Instructor Registry as our workshop presenters. For the 2012 Fall Conference this included:

· A place on the RFP for proposals to indicate their current or willingness to participate in the VT Instructor Registry

· Working with Northern Lights to identify accepted presenters not on the registry and, working with those presenters to have them complete their application.

This year we improved greatly on this process, including fewer instructors needing to join the registry (most were already part of the registry) and an early deadlines for instructors submission of their application. We will continue to work with Northern Lights to improve on the process for the 2013 conference.

Our evaluation system this year again included a survey monkey following the conference as well as utilizing for the second year a system for “real-time” evaluation of individual workshops at the conference. We added a component of intentionally observing “new to VAEYC” instructors using the Northern Lights instructor evaluation tool. For consistency, we had one board member, Laurel Bongiorno, complete all of the observations and she provided the results to the instructors. Results of all three evaluation methods showed overall high satisfaction with workshop participation. 5 presenters will not be invited to provide workshops again until they can demonstrate they have improved their instructional practice.

2. Goal: Workshops are verifiable in the CDD Bright Futures information system for all participants

Outcome: Participants receive approved DPD forms and their Quality and Credentialing account can reflect this participation

VAEYC utilizes the system for promoting and documenting our professional development offerings developed by the Northern Lights Career Development Center. For the 2012 Fall Conference this included:

· Listing each learning opportunity/workshop in the CDD Bright Futures Information System Course Calendar

· Working with our presenters to provide for each learning opportunity/workshop the appropriate documentation of professional development, linked to the core competencies for Vermont early childhood professionals.

· Providing for each learning opportunity/workshop an attendance sheet to be signed by participants and forwarding those sheets to Northern Lights for entry into Quality and Credential accounts.

Specifications:

1. Provide a vendor table for CDD and recognize CDD as a sponsoring partner for the conference in conference materials, including the brochure.

VAEYC provided a vendor table for CDD.

2. Promote the participation in, and awareness of, the Child Development Division Bright Futures Information System.

During the welcoming remarks each day AND at each workshop, workshop hosts described the attendance sheet and DPD process, including information about how the attendance sheets linked back to individual accounts on BFIS.

3. Promote the participation in, and awareness of Vermont’s quality recognition system that includes: National Accreditation, the Step Ahead Recognition System (STARS) and grants for college courses and bonuses for degrees and credentials

VAEYC’s promotion of program accreditation, STARS, and grants and bonus’ took many forms, both at the conference and beyond, including: ensuring workshops and information were available/promoted at the VAEYC conference and other VAEYC events, incorporating information about these in our Newsletter: e-Connections, providing information and links to programs who support these on our website, educating legislators about the relationship between these and quality programs for children, working with Northern Lights around instructor qualifications, holding an Accreditation train the trainer workshop, etc.

On each day of the conference, during lunch, VAEYC publically recognizes those participating in these systems be asking people to stand for each level of the career ladder AND for the number of STARS and/or Accreditation achieved by their programs. Comments include mentioning the availability of grants for college courses and bonuses for degrees and credentials.

As a part of this year’s Conference, VAEYC collaborated with Champlain College to offer a 3-credit course that was a hybrid of the conference experience and 8-weekd of an online format. VAEYC included information about CDD grants for college courses in all materials that were distributed.

4. Send a narrative and financial report on or before Dec 5th, 2011

Narrative report dated: January 28, 2013

Final Financial report submitted: Nov 9, 2012

5. Develop and evaluate the outcomes of a CDD/VAEYC survey of participants

Survey was developed based on the 2011 survey. The survey results are shared with the VAEYC Board at our January meeting where the information is evaluated.

Overall, the conference evaluation showed high satisfaction with the conference experience. Most of the constructive feedback centered around the site and/or the hotel, some of which we can’t control (the hotel rooms weren’t clean) but we do provide this feedback to the Davis Center and the Sheraton Hotel.

6. At least 4 CDD staff members allowed to participate without additional charge to the CDD.

VAEYC admitted the 4 CDD staff who registered without additional charge to the CDD (Value: $585).

Performance measure: Distribute CDD/VAEYC approved survey to participants regarding the conference and the participant’s awareness of the CDD professional development survey and STARS. Target: 50% of participants complete the survey and 100% of these respondents indicate at least one way the conference has improved their knowledge and skills.

60 people completed the evaluation (11.5% of the unique conference attendees). 100% of respondents indicated at least one way the conference improved their knowledge and skills.

A sample of quotes from the survey:

“I attended a lot of workshops on kids with challenging lives and I feel that my sensitivities are reawakened”

The level of presenters continues to impress and VAEYC board does a wonderful job of ensuring there is something for everyone in a very professional setting. Keep up the good work!!!

Love the conferences, love the guest speakers (especially Lisa Murphy!), love the time to chat with other educators and professionals. I will be attending VAEYC conferences for many years to come!

I was very happy to be able to attend the conference on Saturday. Thank you so much for having a Saturday session this year for home childcare providers.

I took two Conference Plus sections - I loved them! Really gives me a chance to implement what I have learned and then get feedback! Great idea keep it going next year and do more if possible.

Results of the questions on the professional development system components and survey:

94.6% of 2012 respondents indicated they understood the attendance sheet process for the conference. This is down slightly from 2011 where 100% of respondents indicated they understood the attendance sheet process.

58.1% of respondents used their BFIS numbers on attendance sheets in 2012. This is up slightly from 2011 where 55% of respondents used their BFIS numbers.

98.2% of 2012 respondents completed their “real-time” workshop evaluations. This was a small increase from 2011 where 96.2% of respondents indicated they evaluated each of their workshops. This is a positive trend because we did not offer raffle tickets in exchange for completing evaluations, like we did last year.

Overall, the 2012 conference was a success and we look forward to improving on it for our 41st conference in 2013! We appreciate CDD support and contribution as it enables us to keep registration rates down.

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