Giving Compass' Take:

• Rachel Burstein at EdSurge reports on programs that are empowering and teaching parents how to build careers as early childhood educators. 

• How can you support the early education needs in your community?

• Read more about the importance of early childhood care and education.

Dorothy Fredrick first heard of Head Start in the 1990s from a teacher whose children she was babysitting. At the time, Fredrick lived in Ellicott, Colo., a rural community about an hour outside Colorado Springs. Until then she had never heard of the federal program, which provides high-quality early childhood education to more than one million children from low-income families each year.

Twenty-three years later, Fredrick knows Head Start intimately. She is now the curriculum, instruction and training coordinator for the Community Partnership for Childhood Development, the agency administering Head Start programs in the Colorado Springs region. She oversees curriculum development, professional development and new staff training for 69 classrooms.

Fredrick’s journey isn’t all that unusual. It’s in keeping with Head Start’s larger mission to serve two generations, empowering parents to pursue education and careers, often within Head Start facilities. Yasmina Vinci, the executive director of the National Head Start Association, an advocacy and professional support organization for Head Start explains that Head Start’s mission has always been to “to give everyone in the family an education mindset.” To do that, Head Start programs works with families as much as children.

Read the full article about building careers as early childhood educators by Rachel Burstein at EdSurge.