360: The Most Crucial Ingredient for Quality Childcare Staffing Revealed

Ever wonder what lifeguarding has to do with running a child care program? Turns out — a lot! In this episode of Childcare Conversations, Kate shares how becoming a lifeguard at 15 shaped everything she believes about training, preparation, and staffing in early childhood education. 

The big takeaway? Training must come before responsibility. She draws eye-opening parallels between lifeguard certification and how we onboard childcare staff, making a compelling case for intentional career pathways in our field.

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Transcript

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Childcare Conversations 0:00

Welcome to Child Care Conversations, the podcast where early childhood leaders like you get real-world strategies, honest talk, and a whole lot of support. Whether you're running one center or many, we're here to help you lead with confidence and clarity. This episode is brought to you by this quarter's sponsor, Playground, the all-in-one child care management software. We're all about managing monkeys and saving you time at your center. With this platform, you can. We're proud to partner with a team that's as committed to your success as we are. Learn more at tryplayground.com. Now, let's get into today's conversation. One we think you're really going to love.

Kate Woodward Young 0:47

Welcome back to Childcare Conversations. And it is the middle of summer. And I have to tell you, I'm having a little bit of nostalgia, but it also gave me an opportunity to really kind of identify why and how some of my beliefs have come into existence when it comes to the importance of quality staffing in early childcare. So when I was 15, I used my own money to become a lifeguard. Now, this is not a Baywatch story. I was a teenager, right? I needed my own money. I wanted to be able to buy a car. And of course, who doesn't love a good tan? I was outside the entire summer and I got paid to do that. However, what surprised me was how much I loved the responsibility. I liked knowing that being alert, being prepared, showing up on time, and knowing what I did mattered to someone else. That is where I learned something that I still believe today. I absolutely believe that training has to take over before fear does. Now, let's think this through. I became a water park lifeguard. I became an ocean front lifeguard. On more than one occasion, I responded to near-drowning incidents with children and adults. What does that mean? It means I actually kept them from drowning. This wasn't a drill. It wasn't just some kid splashing. It really was a life and death situation. I had to figure out how to do my job without being frustrated with the adults because the number of distracted adults who were at a swimming pool during the summer is absolutely huge. We'd have some kids that would come to the pool as young as six and seven, who would be there all day and never have a parent. So those parents, on some level, trusted us to be able to take care of their child the entire day. Sometimes the parents would be asleep. Sometimes the parents had a little more, um, let's just go with beverages than they should. But they were definitely children without adult supervision. Families didn't need me to be cute in a swimsuit. They needed me to be ready. Now, if you've never been a lifeguard and all you've done is ever seen them sit by the pool and you think, oh, that lifeguard has a whistle or that lifeguard has a little funny red thing. Let me talk to you about how they're trained and how they're trained before they actually ever have to take responsibility. So you cannot be a lifeguard until you are 15. This is a nationally required age for the training. Okay, I get that. But you pay for the training. So you pay to get the certification. So you are making a financial investment in that education from the beginning. You are trained before you take any responsibility. You know the job expectations. You know the uniform matters. Without the appropriate uniform and equipment, people don't take you seriously. As a lifeguard, you have staff meetings every day. You have refreshers every week. You have drills every week. You are in charge with supervision, accountability, checklists. You are required not only for the health and safety of the children in the pool, out of the pool, but also the water itself. Have you ever been to a pool and you can't go swimming and you don't really know why? Well, there's a lot of health and safety issues. And if a child comes into the pool and has an accident, well, fecal matter means that the pool is closed. It means that they have to do, and it varies depending on the type of pool and that kind of stuff, but they have to do some sort of management on the spill, on the safety issue, right? So you also are very aware, your staff is very clear, your managers are very clear of what the consequences of are if you don't show up or if you're not paying attention. There, this is not an option to just sit there with your earbuds and just kind of play, or to tell the managers when you're coming in. Again, the pool is a health and safety situation. By the time you're ready to sit in the chair or to stand in your spot, you have been prepared for serious responsibility. Now I want you to think about that. In early childcare, are we already making sure that before the staff come into the classroom that they're prepared? But every day there are so many youth across the country who are prepared for serious responsibility. And we don't think anything about it. And we do it every single day. Now, I'm gonna take this one step further because what I didn't share with you is that I actually became a CPR and first aid instructor at the age of 16. Why? Because I knew that the more that I did that, the better I would be, right? So if you're only learning CPR once every couple of years and you're only using it on a mannequin, when the time comes, are you prepared? By the time I was 17, I was actually the youngest trainer of trainers that the American Red Cross had, because 17 was the age. You couldn't be any younger. By 18, I was a lifeguarding instructor. So I trained lifeguards for the next several years at local swimming pools, at YMCAs, at university level, all the way through my mid-20s. And I did it twice a year. Spring break and the first week of summer. It just was when that happened. But I taught people who came for a job, but they left with the responsibility. And they knew that when they were coming in. Now, I wasn't just training lifeguards. I was teaching people at the beginning of their work story. That is probably why I care so much today about how we train adults. You cannot hand somebody a manual assume they know how to teach, coach, or heaven forbid, perform under pressure. Now, part of the reason I'm doing this episode today is because to me, there is a huge, huge disconnect. When I started thinking really hard about childcare and why some programs just can't seem to get it. Because I hear directors and owners say things like, we just need a warm body in the classroom to make ratios. And so they hire somebody really, really quick. And that person, well, they get their forms, they get their policies, they might even get some online training modules. Maybe even they shadow a shift or two, and then they're placed into ratio. They are put in a responsible situation, and people hope that they figure it out. Now, strong teachers get promoted into director roles, and then these directors are expected to know how to manage a budget, manage staff, manage marketing, manage parents, and they're supposed to know how adults learn. They were such a great teacher. They probably know everything you ever wanted to know about the age group they worked with. They probably had hundreds of hours of training to work with that age group. But somehow they're miraculously supposed to know how to train adults, how to manage parents, how to manage staff, how to manage a budget. You know what? That's not a staffing problem. That is a preparation problem. There are other industries that have struggled with this. We are not the only industry that sits here and goes, oh, but I have staff who leave because they can make more money over here. Okay. But what are we doing to make sure that they feel supported and trained and prepped for the responsible job we're giving them? Okay. I already talked to you a little bit about lifeguarding, but I want you to think about hospitality, right? So even in fast food restaurants, you can be hired from the very first day and know that you are in the manager and training track. So from the first day, from the first time you are making that taco, if you're at Taco Bell, right? As soon as you're learning about all of the health and safety components that go into hospitality industry jobs, right? So if you're working as a manager and training at a Taco Bell, making 60 grand a year as a manager in training, you're learning all of the roles. You're learning all the health and safety components, right? So here's the thing they're going into that job, know that they're going into leadership. But in childcare, nobody knows they're going to go into leadership. They don't come to the job to be the manager. They come to the job because they have kids, love kids, want to be near kids. They have a passion for children. Why not create a manager and training track in your program? How many of you have had an assistant director who doesn't want to be promoted? Or a teacher or a lead teacher who doesn't want to be promoted? So we have this same situation in retail industries. People are hired not just to fold shirts, but they're hired in as the manager and training. They know their goal is to be in charge of a store. Again, same thing with CNAs, right? So um certified nursing assistants for photomists. Phototomists, also, right? So these are roles where we have folks who are in entry-level healthcare position. And do you know what they do? They actually pay for their training. A lot of times they take the course so that they can go be certified. Imagine if we got people excited to take the CDA course as a course to take a 120-hour course so that they can do their job in childcare. Certified nursing assistants a lot of times don't necessarily make more than those who work in childcare, but they're trained for the job from the beginning and they know that this is what they want to do. Now, I am not saying that childcare needs to become lifeguarding. Children are not widgets. Children in childcare cannot be copied and pasted from another industry. So I don't want you to think that that's what I'm saying. What I'm saying is we can learn from other industries. We can understand that clear entry points, training before responsibility, repeated practice, role clarity, supervision, and growth pathways are without a doubt the most important part of our industry. And that other industries do the same thing. Before someone carries responsibility, they need clarity. What does this role require? What does good look like? Who do I ask for help? Practice? Show it? Let them try it. Watch them do it. Give feedback. Belonging. Do they know where they fit? Who supports them? And how do they ask questions? Is there a path? What comes next? How can they grow? Can they become excellent without being pushed into a role they don't want? At a swimming pool, at a water park, at an amusement park. Training has to take place before fear does. In childcare preparation has to happen before the classroom, before the parent concern, before the staffing crisis, and before the emergency. Children are not widgets. The adults who care for them are not interchangeable. We cannot build a stronger childcare profession by hoping people will rise to the role. We have to create intentional ways for people to enter, to learn, to grow, and to stay. Now, your job as a director or owner, teacher, passionate human. I want you to sit with this episode. I want you to go back. I want you to listen to it again. And I want you to think about what you can change in your program to start to implement maybe pieces. Maybe you just sat here and went, I never really thought about that. Maybe you've been in a workshop at one point in time and you've heard me talk about my favorite place to recruit. Do you know where my favorite place is to recruit? Have you heard this story? Now you actually understand the origin behind the story. I do a ton of recruiting at swimming pools at the end of July and the first of August. Even if I only get these employees for six months, because they're college students, for six months in the fall or a few weeks during the spring or summer, it shows them that I value the training they've already had. I'm not their first boss, but I'm taking the skills they learned, their CPR, their first aid, their understanding of a uniform, their ability to kind of look at chaos and to know that they are aware of a job that they have had where they do not get to have a cell phone, they do not get to have their earbuds in, and they must be paying attention. They must be able to see and hear the swimmers at all times. You know what? I can't wait for you to join us in the next few days for our next episode. Thank you for joining.

Childcare Conversations 15:39

Thanks for tuning in. We love bringing you real talk and fresh insight from the world of early childhood education. Be sure to follow us on social media to stay connected and catch all of the latest episodes. And if you're planning a conference, training, or special event, Kate and Carrie would love to speak to your audience. You can learn more about their keynote sessions and workshops at kateandcary.com. If you learned something today, share the show and leave us a review below. We'll see you next time on Childcare Conversations.