292: Professional Development Made Easy (and Free!): Exploring Early Childhood Investigations with Hannah

In this episode of Child Care Conversations, you’ll sit in on a warm chat with Hannah, the head of Early Childhood Investigations (ECI) webinars. She shares how ECI brings top-notch, research-backed training straight to educators—no matter where they are. You’ll hear about their interactive webinars, tips for navigating state requirements, and how ECI is making professional development more accessible. 

The hosts sprinkle in real-world advice and encouragement, making this episode a great resource for anyone leading or working in childcare. Don’t miss the practical tips and friendly support! 

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Transcript

Kate Young (00:47)
Welcome and today we are so excited to have Hannah join us and Hannah is with what we call ECI webinars, which is early childhood investigator. Investigations ⁓ webinars and they've been around for a really, really long time. They were started by Fran Simon, what feels like over a decade ago. How long has it actually been Hannah?

Hannah (01:00)
investigation.

It's been since 2009.

Kate Young (01:15)
So okay, yeah, decade and a half. There we go. 16 and a half plus. And ⁓ we know that things have changed over the course of the last year with ECI. And so we're really glad for you to join us. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself and then we'll kind of talk about ECI as a training tool for programs and go from there.

Hannah (01:38)
Yeah, so I had early childhood investigation. So I started earlier this year, hired by playground. And so what happened was I was previously at a different company for five ish year, a little over five years. And it was one of those things where you love your job, but you don't necessarily love what who you're doing it for kind of thing. And

That was probably not the most elegant way to say it. But what I realized was missing from my life was just the mission and the passion of what I wanted to be doing. like, what have I two very dichomatic loves and passions in my life, which are oceanic conservation and ⁓ education in America. And so when Playground acquired ECI or early childhood investigations, they

ended up providing this incredible opportunity of meeting someone who was going to lead the entire team. And so when they were hunting for someone, they ended up finding me and I could not have been more excited for this opportunity because it was, do what you enjoy doing of getting to market, getting to do market research, getting to constantly learn and then also get the opportunity to teach other people. And I was like, I get

to have a job where I get to nurture those who get to train the next generation. So I like, I felt like I just stepped into the perfect, perfect role. And so that's how I ended up starting as head of ECI earlier this year. And now it's just been a phenomenal journey of getting to learn under Fran Simon and then her officially passing over the baton maybe like five months ago.

And now it's just been myself and a few strong members leading the team along with Sasha, who's our co-founder at Playground. And we've just been on this journey of exploring hundreds and hundreds of authors, researchers, experts in the field and bringing them forth to ⁓ be able to present them to the rest of the industry as their own personal teachers that they otherwise wouldn't have gotten the access to because of time. ⁓

⁓ not having the chance to go to conferences, like cost ends up playing a really big factor. So now here we are marrying together everything of like, let me give you a resource of a teacher that you didn't get access to. And now here we are. And so it's been a beautiful opportunity and I'm just like super excited to be in this position in this role.

Carrie Casey (04:16)
Yeah,

I mean, if somebody lives in a rural community or they're in, don't know, one of the largest states in the country, it can be very hard to get to a conference or something else to get professional training, professional development training by an actual, I shouldn't say by an actual person. All of the big training companies, there are people there, but there's something different between

⁓ having somebody talking and there being a chat there that you can interact with. We provide online training. We're not saying online training is not good, but there is something about having all of your training where it's just you and a cocoon, where with the ECI, you've got that chat feature, you've got the ability to have a little bit of interaction with the experts that you wouldn't.

necessarily get otherwise and you get new ideas about different types of play and different ways to set up classrooms and you've had architects and ⁓ theorists and authors and I think you've got a great mix.

Hannah (05:22)
Thank you. Yeah, I think that's been one of the goals. It's like we have an industry full of incredible researchers, authors, experts like your guys, who've been in the field for years. And now people have the opportunity to get a chance to connect with you. And it to your point, like, does everyone have a chance to travel? Does also your school have the ability to let you go off to a conference? It's like

let's bring all of that to you so that way you don't get a miss out on this opportunity to continue your growth. Because as we know, professional development in any industry is extraordinarily important for your own personal career, but it's also so important for being in the educational field where now as a teacher, if you gotta keep growing, then that gets relayed onto the kids that you get to teach as well.

Kate Young (06:15)
So I have a question. You mentioned something when you talked about all the great things that you get to do in your job. And one of the things that you said was research. What does that look like when in your role at ECI, what are you doing that somebody might go, yeah, that really is research. And it's not just, you, you you go find your friends and have your friends deliver content.

Hannah (06:38)
Yeah, yeah. So I think one of the best parts about this role is I have to be on top of the ball with what is coming out in early education. And so I have to be aware of what are those research papers that are coming out? What are the different ways that people are trying to engage children? And so I'll go out into different universities, keep in mind of like, what are the different research papers that are?

being published and whether that's like in a paper versus a book and then understanding that like, what are they taking from their field and doing a deep dive of, okay, I'm looking into what's happening from how to teach STEM. It's like, what makes STEM engaging? What's a different way to make it broken down to that way if you're a teacher who are, that wasn't your field.

how do you make it approachable and then how do you present that into an approachable way for your children or for your kiddos in your classroom and the different age segments that they belong to. So like from my job of needing to be a researcher myself, which is like, how do I vet out those who are also in the field? Just like I'm looking for folks who are actively getting their doctorates or in their like.

are a doctor leading research in the field and then seeing if I can connect with them and then bring them on. So it's been a world of research that like, feels like an ouroboros of information of like, okay, this part and then this part and it's rotating and we're helping and just like, what can I do to be a part of this and then launch it out to the public.

Kate Young (08:20)
Absolutely. So with that though, do you also go try to find new topics like, or, or do you look at the demographics of the folks that's coming? Cause I mean, we've been, we've attended some as participants we we've been ⁓ on as trainers. And I mean, I know that there are some that you guys literally get thousands of folks from around the globe. This is not just

you know, in the US or continental US, you've gotten folks from all around the globe that tune in live even to watch the episodes. I mean, do you hear from folks going, hey, we want more of this or how about this? Or do you notice that some topics like, you know, max out your capacity? I don't know. I mean, is some of that part of what you're doing as well?

Hannah (09:05)
No, that's a great question. That's, ⁓ that's actually one of the ways that I try and figure out what topics are needed is so during all of our sessions afterwards, in order to stay in, in beat with your, with your industry, you have to understand like, what do they need? And so having those constant active conversations are really important. And so I'll do that by being in the session and hearing what are people asking during every session we have a live Q and a, and so like, try and notice.

I'll take note of all the themes that continue to pop up. And then after our sessions, we also have a survey that say, hey, what did you think of the, what did you think of the content? What did you think of your speaker? Are there any particular ⁓ areas that you're really interested or looking for? And so we have two very specific questions that are like, if you're an administrator.

Do you, what do you want to hear? What do you need to learn? And then we'll have a variety of suggestions that they can select from. They have an opportunity to write down specifically what they're asking for. And then we'll have a question that's specifically for teachers that say, as a teacher, what do you need support in? What do you want to grow in? And then that gives us a ton of data of, okay, here are the little trends after 300 webinars that we just hosted.

And now we're aggregating all of that to say like, all right, here are the threads, here's the theme, here's what people are asking for. And then I'll use that to deep dive into, all right, who's gonna be some of the best presenters to bring on ⁓ next year or next quarter so that way we can, well, we bake out our schedule six months in advance. So a lot of that comes from all of this data that we're gathering and then say like,

All right, people have been asking for, I need more help on social emotional learning for my students in class, or hey, I'm a new director, but I came in from being a teacher and I grew my career and now I'm officially a director, amazing opportunity, but I didn't have a chance to learn about what it means to read a financial book and how do I project what my team, how I'm gonna pay my team, how I'm gonna run the house, what am I gonna do? So it's just like.

Being able to be in tune through both the analytical side of like taking this genuine data and then also taking in the anecdotal pieces super helpful for being able to understand like what do people need and then going back and then they're like, all right, let's find the people who are gonna teach this. ⁓

Kate Young (11:34)
There's a lot more to your job than just press and start and create a registration page, right? So, ⁓ yeah. So I know you've got some stuff coming up. ⁓ Tell us a little bit about some of the things that you guys have coming up currently or might be coming up in the future. ⁓ It's currently about the second week of November. So yeah, so we film these in advance. So if you're wondering.

Hannah (12:00)
⁓

So we if we're speaking in the future, ⁓ right

Kate Young (12:07)
No, now,

it is theoretically November 11th-ish.

Carrie Casey (12:13)
Please

Hannah (12:13)
started a whole admin series on what is it how to run a best in class childcare program. And so this is a five part webinar series that we're running that goes through five specific ⁓ topics that every childcare director owner or administrator really needs to know. And so it runs through like, what's the first stage of what do you need to do to bring people into your program? And that's like, how do I

connect with my community and how do I reach everyone in your zip code who needs childcare? And so that's like the enrollment piece of what are you doing to bring people in for interest? then two, is it, what does that like, not sorry, what does it look like from an enrollment policy to help people so that way once they're in the door and they're signed up, what do they need to do to have your program completely.

ready so that way your policy, your handbook is designed for your program to grow and that like leads into okay what does what does it mean to also then remain compliant as you're getting people in what does that look like in terms of okay my I don't need I do need a thousand different pieces of paper how do I digitize that how do I make it so that way it's easy for me to report on when the time comes and I can tell you every child that has

different allergies, how many folks are in my classroom at what time, and so going through the compliance portion of ⁓ your program and how to keep it so that way you're totally inspection ready. And then the fourth session is on with you guys, which is coming up on December 2nd, which I highly suggest not missing, but this is a little bit of a, what are those pieces that people don't always, are like.

directors that always get the chance to learn just from school because they weren't prepared to, but what do you need to know beyond tuition? What are those three specific numbers that every director must master? And so that goes into, as you guys will be, our engineers for of what does it look like to read a financial report? How do I forecast with confidence? How do I use classroom level data to make smart staffing decisions for the future or for like current?

what's happening this week, next week, and so forth for my program. And then afterwards, the last and final, ⁓ the final program or series in the program is going to be on billing and tuition. So what are you going to do to build like the backbone of your policy that's going to help protect your program from delayed payments and ⁓ setting things up for success to that way if, if by the end you're, you're

to essentially you're looking for strengthening your relationships with your parents and your teachers for consistency. How do you handle financial conversations? How do you establish the systems that support the financial stability and just running smooth operation? So that's the whole series that's cut that we're currently on. And that if you guys are listening to this now, I would suggest definitely jumping into Kate and Kerry session on December.

Second, I believe, but it started last on November 4th, and it'll go through December 16. So that program's running every Tuesday ⁓ for a couple of weeks and then we'll, we'll launch that program completely for next year. So you guys have the chance to continue to learn from these 2.

Kate Young (15:46)
I just want to add so in case for some reason you've missed an episode you can always go back and watch episodes on ECI right and the other thing that's really really great because you know they've got awesome guests a lot of their teachers and guests have actually been guests on our podcast so ⁓ what we might do I don't know wink wink nudge nudge is in the show notes of this episode Carrie write this down so I remember the show

Carrie Casey (16:14)
I hate you ⁓

Hannah (16:17)
She brings out her pen!

Kate Young (16:19)
Show

notes of this episode. I will have the links to the episodes that other members of that five part series who have been guests with us their episode link and the episode content is different. So in other words, if you've really liked what they had to say on ECI, know that we've got some additional, not the same additional content from them over here on childcare conversation. So.

Thank you for letting me do that plug. sure I know that our podcast person is going to be thrilled with me. ⁓

Hannah (16:54)
No,

I'm so grateful for you both also being the folks who are going to help launch this program. So like I said, the program is designed to help other directors and owners get the chance to cover their bases. So it's going to be really important. And this was also learned from all of that, like data that we, the survey data that we have of like, what do you guys need? This is one of those many topics. I'm like, please help. Like, yes, here we are putting it into a package for you.

Five things you need to know to run a best in child care business.

Carrie Casey (17:25)
It is so important to have administrative training because so many of us who start a program or step into the leadership role did not go to business school before stepping into that leadership role. And if you didn't go to business school, then you may not have had exposure to things like amortization schedules and reading balance sheets or

projecting into the future, what are my needs gonna be six months from now? You can think about it, but having a structured way to do that is really helpful. But you don't know how to do it until you know how to do it. So I think it's wonderful that you're gonna have this series and hopefully do it several times so that if people missed one week because they were having to go drive the van for the school-age kids.

They can pick it up again in a month or two.

Hannah (18:20)
Man, now I'm curious how often you guys had to go pick up kids.

Kate Young (18:24)
fortunate but yes there there were some who did and ⁓ for those who are listening who maybe haven't heard all of mine and Carrie's story ⁓

Just to kind of give folks an idea, this has been a hot passion of mine and Carrie's. Mine personally since 1994, I taught my very first how to run your childcare center like a business for the Ohio Small Business Development Center. ⁓ And so that's been a little while. And so we still run across folks who...

get the child because they care for kids, right? Like they love children, this is their passion. They did not wake up that morning and go, woohoo, I get to look at a cash flow statement. Like this is not something that wakes them up and gets them excited and- ⁓

Carrie Casey (19:10)
Or maybe they didn't wake up going, ⁓ yay, I get to review my policies.

Kate Young (19:19)
Or my rental agreement or yeah, we could go all day long on that. But I'm so glad that ECI is here as a resource that you guys are actually listening and trying to figure out how to help the people who are coming on and listening to your to the guests that you have that are saying, hey, I want more. And I think that is just.

incredibly awesome that you guys are trying to be responsive and responsive within about six months or so. This is not like, we'll get around to it. ⁓ You guys are actually, and you're doing the research looking for people. It's not just, want to come and be on. There's a little vetting that goes on. You got to make sure that they're up to snuff and that they fit with what folks want to listen to. So Carrie is making a face.

Carrie Casey (20:09)
No, that's because my phone made a noise. I don't know why it made noise. It's supposed to be on silent.

Kate Young (20:16)
Well, I do have one question, Hannah. How many, and maybe you do know this, maybe you don't, how many unique, different people have come to ECI in just the last six months or so?

Hannah (20:28)
Ooh, in the last...

Kate Young (20:29)
For

the last year, since the beginning of 2025.

Hannah (20:32)
Yeah, so I would say probably around, so just this year, so over the past 16 years, it's been three million educators. This year, I want to say it's funny because I recently looked at this number, it's 300, 6,700 something.

Kate Young (20:50)
So those are those repeats or those unique like

Hannah (20:54)
or those are unique folks who are new to ⁓ new to ECI. And it was it was one of my goals of how can I help grow and continue to reach more educators and just those in our industry. So that's been an active goal of mine is like, how can we continue to share this free resource because who doesn't love free and we don't we want to make sure that people know they have access to free content that is

extremely and well thorough like research that or as you like to as you set it up to snuff.

Kate Young (21:31)
Not

sure that's I think that's old.

Hannah (21:34)
I absolutely love that. I'm gonna pocket this one, but they have been snuffed out so thoroughly so that way when they're on it's because they we've gone through extreme diligence of have you how long have you been in the field? How long have you? Have you presented this topic? Is this going to be new? Or did you just come out with your book and you're on your book tour schedule and now like you're jumping in virtually for this? So it's it's a lot of

hard work that goes on the back end to make sure that what we're bringing to the table to folks is of high quality. So that way when you are as a teacher or in your classroom, you can say like, I was just listening to this professor from Illinois that just went through like all this national research project and I got to learn about it like from their own mouth.

Like that's that's a part of what we want to be doing is is sharing their their learning so that way you can bring it into your classroom.

Kate Young (22:33)
Also in the show notes that there's a way for people to subscribe to get your update so that they know what's coming ⁓ So definitely make sure that you guys are looking for that as well because we'll definitely Make sure that's in the show notes and if you get our show notes or you listen to us and you are not subscribed to our Newsletter then you may be missing a lot of content because we send out a podcast newsletter twice a week So carry your makeup

Hannah (22:57)
Nice.

Carrie Casey (23:01)
I'm looking at my face guys. Nobody except the two other people on this call can see my face, Kate. ⁓ I was just gonna say, I hope that we didn't lose people early on because they thought we were talking about another thing they had to pay for. We didn't say free early enough. I think we need to have said free 15 times in the first five minutes because. Yeah, maybe.

Kate Young (23:24)
We'll make it in the title.

Carrie Casey (23:29)
depending on your state in some states to get credit for the training with ECI, they want you to watch it live and others want you to fill out like a questionnaire. And if you're the questionnaire states, they do give you a questionnaire so that your licensing rep can see that you actually learned something from the workshop.

Even if you're in a state that has high requirements for PT, PTPD, you can still use this. And even if it doesn't count for licensing, you can still learn some stuff. ⁓

Hannah (24:08)
Yeah, and I love that you said that to you because one of the other projects that I'm working on is actually becoming. ⁓ Training sponsored organizations with each state registry, so I'm actively going through every state and getting us officially ⁓ becoming an official TSO in each day and then all of our content is going to be.

up as a professional development course, the event will be there and then that will allow you to attend either live, but also you can watch the recordings later. And because we do certificate programs for everything, you will be able to send back all of that data. So that way their professional development hours actually get accounted for. And again, with the research, a lot of it also comes from like, what do each state require?

Carrie Casey (24:59)
I think you might have some problems in Nevada. But other than that, I think you'll be in good shape because they want every workshop to be approved through their registry before you do.

Kate Young (25:10)
Well, and in Minnesota, you have to take some college classes.

Hannah (25:13)
Yeah, yeah, and CEUs are definitely a future project.

Kate Young (25:18)
yes, no, we're just talking about on the trainer registries. So those change, every state's different. We've gone down some of your rabbit hole. We got stuck and we went, no.

Hannah (25:30)
There have been times where I'm like, this will be priority two. You just kind of get the low hanging fruit first, which has been quite a amount of many states. then we just got approved in Michigan, Wisconsin.

We've been with California, Arizona, and there's just a plethora of states that we already work with. And now it's just like, how do we get the rest? And so it's been quite a journey on doing the approvals, getting our courses up, getting them all that data sent back over. Cause you're right. It's like every state does have different requirements. And on our website, we have a full page about each state and what your requirements are, how to earn them, what your top.

what your course topical areas are. So if you are watching this from any state, you can go onto our site under professional development and look up what your requirements are needed, then how either ACI can help or how you can go do it on your own or in some other aspect. So hopefully that will be a wonderful resource for everyone.

Kate Young (26:38)
I that is, mean, just knowing it's all in one place and because you guys do have over 300,000 new subscribers in the last year, ⁓ which is great. And if folks don't know where to find you, you're at conferences. If you happen to see Playground at a conference, you might see Hannah at a different booth. So although ⁓ ECI is now owned and operated by Playground, they are still.

functioning as their own entity. so Hannah's got her own boots. And so make sure if you're at a conference and you see Hannah say hi, and we are so excited to continue to build this partnership and collaboration with ECI and with Playground. And with that, Carrie, what else do they need to do?

Carrie Casey (27:22)
Well, if you enjoyed this show, then you need to share it with somebody else who needs to know. And of course, make sure that you are following or subscribe depending on your podcast player of choice. And, you know, if you want to go over to YouTube, since Hannah and Kate kept saying, see me, you can YouTube. If you haven't ever seen our crazy faces in real life, you can go on to YouTube and watch us there. And definitely.

Give us your ideas of what you want us to talk about, because we got plenty of time to talk about what you need in your program. See you in a few days.