374: Why Childcare Directors Need Training Before They Can Lead a Center

Great teachers don’t automatically become great directors. But too often, they’re promoted into leadership and expected to figure it out on their own. Kate Woodward Young and Carrie Casey explore why early childhood administrator training needs to be built around the real work of leading a childcare center, from budgets and enrollment to hiring, payroll, culture, and business operations.

They dive into the National Childcare Administrator credential, practical leadership training, and how shared training can help administrative teams lead with confidence and make smarter decisions. If you’re an early childhood director, owner, assistant director, office manager, or aspiring administrator, this episode offers a fresh look at what it takes to move from excellent educator to effective leader.

Learn more at: directorsuccess.com

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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 TriPlayground.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, and I am so excited. My co-host is joining us today. She's had a very busy summer and she has gotten all kinds of really cool things that she's been doing. But we'll talk about that on another episode. Today, I am really, really excited about one of the things that she's been working on this summer. So most of you know, I would hope, that uh Carrie and I have been doing director credentialing uh since 2002. So yeah, y'all do the math, right? And we've got almost 5,000 directors who've been through our program. Carrie, tell me a little bit about some of the exciting things that you have going on with Director Success Academy. And I know that all of that starts in Texas. So I think even some Texas folks got some big things coming that maybe we'll talk about. If not, maybe we'll talk about another episode.

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Maybe. So, I mean, we've got um the national version of the class is going and people are taking it. It's the National Childcare Administrator Credential, and it's recognized in various states like uh well, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida's about to be done. It might be done by the time this goes up. Um Oklahoma. Oklahoma, yeah. I mean, we've been in Oklahoma since 2004. So, but not every state has a requirement for director training, which confuses me. It confuses the heck out of me because we require in some states, in order to be a teacher as opposed to an assistant, you have to have a CDA, which means you have to have 120 hours of training in early childhood education and managing a classroom. But the person who manages that person, no, they don't need to have any training. They don't need to know anything about early childhood, they don't need to know anything about business. And that bothers me. That bothers me so much.

Kate Woodward Young 2:52

But we also know, and this is one of the things that the folks have listened, they've definitely heard you and I talk about, which is a lot of times these great CDA educators who have been in the field for five years, they get promoted and they're just expected somehow to like know what to do. And so tell me what's in the National Child Care Administrator's credential. Why might somebody want to take it? What's in that training? How long is it? Can they do it online? What tell me, tell me the things. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

So, yes, you can do the whole thing online and you can do it with a cohort or self-paced on your own. There's just a little bit more of a cost if you want to do it with a cohort and have an instructor and all of that. But if you're the kind of person who learns best through discussion, I kind of think the cohort's a good thing for you. But it covers everything that a director would need to know. And there are people who have been directors for five or 10 years who've come through the class and they're like, oh my God, there was so much I did not know that I learned going through this class. So educational philosophy is where it starts. Because, in my view of the world, that's where every program has to start. What do you believe about children, about how they best learn, about how you can best support their development and their learning? So we start there when we talk about knowing yourself. What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? That is, we've got a four-tier, no, a four-legged stool. Um, it's our framework, and it starts with knowing yourself. And the educational philosophy is part of knowing yourself. And you need to know your program, and you need to know your community. And um you need to know your business. You need to know your business, right? And so those are the four things that we cover. And so, what does it mean to know your business? Talking about the numbers. I know people get very scared. Kate and I can get very excited about the numbers, but knowing your enrollment, how many full-time equivalent spots do you have? How many are being paid at your published rate versus your subsidy rate versus the discount you may be giving to employees or to people who fall into a special class, like veterans or something like that, or families who have more than one child. So, how many kids in that classroom are actually paying your listed price? You need to know that and how to manage payroll, hiring, firing, promoting, uh, building the culture at your center. That all of that goes into knowing your business. So all of this is in that course. All of it's in the course, not at the deepest level you could possibly go, right? We could go, all of these things could be their own master's core, you know, master's degree in building the culture at your school, right? But it is the beginning of talking about it. It is let's stop and take a minute to really talk about that. And if you do all of the parts of the course, it takes the average student 60 hours. So it's a pretty intense one week, but most people take about a month and a half to do it. And if you're promoting somebody into leadership, you're promoting them from a teacher to an assistant director or to the office manager. This is the perfect course for them to take. It's great also for people going all the way to director. But if they're starting in leadership, you want them to take a minute and think about what do I need to do to help lead this program? It's very different than leading a classroom.

Kate Woodward Young 6:45

Absolutely. Yeah. So I know that the course is online, but I also know that there's some videos, but there's also, only because it's right behind you, there's a book. There's a workbook. And the book is available as uh a Kindle book, as an audio book, um, and then there's the workbook. So if you know you work best by having things kind of synthesized and talked through, yep, Carrie's got them right there. So if you're watching the video, Carrie's got pictures of them. Um, all of our books are available online, which I think is really great because we've had folks literally buy the book without knowing that it was part of the class. Um, we have folks who use our book as the framework for their own director credentialing courses. We have people who use that same book as the spine for college-level administrative courses. So this is not just about whether or not Kate and Carrie can teach a class or that Kate and Carrie know what they're doing. Um, we wrote the book, the very first book we wrote, when I was actually one of Kerry's directors and Carrie was an owner. Um, we were living it so much by that day. But Carrie, what makes our book a little different? I mean, we've been doing this for 24 years. It's it's it's the same thing, right? Like we haven't updated the content or anything, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:06

No. Um, so Kate said that you know the first version of this book, which had a different title at the time, we started back in 2002. We update it every two years. We change it based on what is best practice in the industry now, because I gotta tell you, there's some stuff that was best practices back then that is not best practices anymore. And educational philosophies, which ones we talk about, change. There wasn't the curiosity approach when we wrote the book the first time. Like that didn't exist. And I'm now um learning a fair amount about um a kindergarten philosophy from Japan that'll probably be in the next version of the book. But everything changes, guys. You can't have a book. I mean, you can, and people do teach classes out of books that are 10, 15 years old. But our industry moves fast. There's a lot of things that change, and so we have to update the book to give you what is current, what is really working in centers today, not what somebody who works in a lab school and has worked in a lab school for the past 15 years thinks is gonna work. I've read those books. I own them, they are on that bookshelf. I own every single textbook I think that is currently being used to teach any admin class in any university in the United States that is a physical book. There's a couple that are um school specific textbooks that I don't own, but I I take inspiration from them and then I go, okay, what else do we need to add? And Kate does it too.

Kate Woodward Young 9:58

I think what's really I think what's really important is we look at it as what do you need to know to make that bridge from awesome educator to awesome director without feeling overwhelmed. Yeah. And one of the things, just as an example, because I think it's a really big one that's that people have definitely seen and know. So in the book, we talk about the environment, we talk about your building, we talk about your space. Well, you know what? There was no, there was almost nothing about green building or environmental friendly or understanding toxins in the air. Um, that wasn't a commonplace conversation in 2002. So we worked with the U.S. Green Building Council and we worked with green building schools, and we have content in there. It's ebbed and flowed sometimes. There for a while we had some really big sections about what that looked like.

SPEAKER_01 10:47

Um because it was a big buzzword, it was a big issue because the U.S. Green Building Council was making it a big issue.

Kate Woodward Young 10:56

Yeah. And so if we and if we have opportunities to talk to people about uh new builds or rehabbed builds, um, it's part of the reason why on our podcast we've had architects on, we've had other people on that can talk about uh that kind of information. So if you happen to be listening and that particular thing caught your attention, send us a message. Um there is a a place on um if you go to our buzzsprout.childcareconversations.com, there's a place where you can send us a message. Um and we just on most podcast players, they can just click a button. Oh, well, there you go. So you can click a button in any of them and just a quick send us a quick message if that is something that you had a question about. Now, Carrie, I've got people I've worked with, and you have people you've worked with that English is not necessarily their first language. So is the only way to take this class in English?

SPEAKER_01 11:50

So we are in the final stages of having the Spanish class um available again. We had we took it down when we updated the book the last time, um, and we've got the edits finished. Well, the person who was editing it got the edits finished. I don't have them back yet. Um, so we need to finish those and get that book back up. And we're actually going to be using um AI to help us with the videos going into Spanish. So that's a capacity that we didn't have five years ago when we first launched the Spanish class. And once we get that up, who knows? If there's another language that you think we need to offer the class in, let us know and we'll see what we can do. I can find a translator who understands the industry in that other language. They can translate the book and then we can have AI help us with the videos.

Kate Woodward Young 12:45

Even better if you happen to be a native speaker in the industry from another language and you'd love to see a book specifically for administrators. So we know that sometimes you will find books for educators and other languages. Um, we know because we've had to um literally source them from um home country universities. So when we went looking for um administrative training in Spanish, even CDA training in Spanish, we went to Mexico City to get that university to get those textbooks versus um, you know, other ways of getting, you know, Spanish language books. So we've worked really, really hard. Carrie has been, she's found some great partners for us to take this into um basically into 2027. And um, so over the course of the last couple of years, we've expanded this class nationally, and we're really excited about uh some of our partner organizations that we've been able to do that with. And so if you have um if you are part of a even a small group of programs and you would like to do a cohort, maybe to get all of your administrators on the same page, like everybody speaking the same language, right, Carrie?

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, that is she knows she's just gotten me on something I can soapbox about for another 45 minutes. So get buckled in, guys. Let's talk. Um we don't have that much time. We can do it. But one of the things that we have seen enormous payoffs for schools is when they have everybody in their administrative team take the class. Because then when they say something like, Hey, I need 10 minutes of tiger time, everybody knows what that means. Or when they say, Hey, what are our KPIs about enrollment? Or when they say, Oh, I'm ducks, get all your ducks in a row, right? Um so when they say something like that, everybody on the team knows what they're talking about. And it makes it so much easier. You don't have the people who are supporting curriculum development fighting for their thing, and the people who are um, you know, advocating for the school age program fighting against them, and then the person who's trying to keep the budget under control in a different direction, you all pull in the same direction when you all have the same basic framework. So that is, yes, please. If you have more than two people involved in administration, meaning your owner and director, have both the owner and director take the class. If you have 10 people, have as many as you can take the class, it will make your life so much easier. And I didn't know this until we started doing this class and have now been doing it for 20 some odd years. And we've seen the difference between schools where one person in the building has done it and the schools where three people in the building have done it. And one of them, it was growing through the roof and the other kind of puttering along, puttering along, puttering along. Okay, I'm gonna get off my soapbox um and let's talk about the CDA expansion. Okay. Absolutely.

Kate Woodward Young 15:56

So both the CDA expansion and our director course is built on our child care leadership administrative, our child care leadership infrastructure framework. Um, and so that is what Carrie talked about as far as our um uh our stool or our stepladder. Um, because framework wasn't a phrase that people used in 2002. Um, but we've always had a four-step process. So we are really key about making sure that you are balanced and stable. So, Carrie, if somebody has taken the administrative course from us, but yet they keep hearing everybody talk about a CDA and maybe they don't have one, what might be some advantages to getting um a CDA? Do they get it with us? Do they get it on their own? Talk to me a little bit about what a CDA is, really brief, in that like 30 seconds or less. And then tell me a little bit about um the CDA overlay program that you have with Director Success Academy.

SPEAKER_01 16:56

Okay, so the CDA is a child development admin, child development associate. It is a nationally recognized and in some parts of Canada, so I guess internationally recognized credential for educators. It was originally designed so that people who, for whatever reason, college was not gonna be was not gonna work for them. It was a way to recognize their professionalism. That's what it started as back in the olden days in the 1900s. What it is now is a credential that many state agencies, many um licensing agencies or um quality improvement rating standards will use as a way to go, aha, you have enough people who actually have training specifically in child development. That's good. We want training specifically in child development. So states and quality improvement boards and accreditations are like we like people who have their CDA or better, is what they tend to say. So a CDA or a degree. So that's what a CDA is. It was more than 30 seconds. I'm sorry, but I can't help it. Um and what we have is an overlay because you may have stepped into administration and have no child development background at all. And so you need to get up to date on child development. And so it's a way to have the additional 60 hours in child development specifically, but from the point of view of the administrator. Most CDA classes are from the point of view of a classroom educator because that's what the credential was designed for. And if that's what it's designed for, that's what most of the classes should be. But if you're an administrator, you don't need the classroom management skills that most people are learning in their child development course. You, as an administrator, need to think about what do I need to know about gross motor development as the administrator of the school? How can I support gross motor development in the classrooms? What are the things we need to have in the classrooms on the playgrounds? Because you're the one making the financial decision about how those dollars and cents are going to be allotted. So if you're not spending any money on gross motor equipment, that's going to affect the children. So we talk about it from what does the administrator need to know about each of those areas? We go over all the things you'll need for the test. So those of you who have test anxiety, don't worry. All of that is covered, but it's covered from the perspective of an administrator. And we're the only class on the planet, so far as we can tell, that teach a CDA prep class for administrators.

Kate Woodward Young 19:52

Absolutely. We know there are people who will bundle things that will, um, but they're still it's it's it's not the same, right? And so um, if you've already taken a director credentialing course with us in the last year, then you can just do the overlay course. If you are sitting here right now thinking, I've got some staff who would be great in leadership, but I can't quite get them there. You know what? Have them take this course first, or even better, put together a cohort of a variety of programs maybe in your community, maybe even just programs within your own organization. So if you're part of a franchise or a multi-site owner, uh, this might be a really, really great idea. And so I'm just gonna give you a hint. Um, we have several franchise and multi-location programs that have worked with us in these cohort settings. So if they do it, it probably would be something for you to consider that maybe this is um maybe best practice is a way to do it, where um everybody kind of works through modules on their own and then they come together and talk about it on how it works in their program. So, with that, Carrie, what would you like to tell folks who are not really sure? They're trying to decide what's the last couple of bits. And then, of course, in the show notes, there will be all of the links to Director Success Academy's programs, the CDA project, and all of that stuff. So if you want more information, you can definitely grab it there.

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Get quality training for administrators. Don't just take the training that was designed for classroom educators. You deserve more, you will grow more, you will be a better owner, director, administrator if you have training that is specifically designed with your needs in mind. And we offer that. So do some conferences. Go out and get the right training for you. Don't just take what is available on the salad bar. Get what you actually want.

Kate Woodward Young 22:02

Yeah, don't get it just because it's free. Absolutely. Well, Carrie, thank you so much for for for jumping on today and telling us more about what you've been up to and all of the great things that you're doing for administrators and for early learning leaders. And with that, we look forward to talking to y'all in a few days.

Childcare Conversations 22:20

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 Child Care Conversations.