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Developing a program philosophy statement for staff is serving as the foundation for our training efforts. Many of you have been involved in developing the document that is printed. Although it is designed to give direction and meaning to our program and our training efforts, the philosophy statement is still emerging. If you have comments or suggestions about the statement, feel free to send them to the Program Development and Training Office. In its final form, it will guide all of our efforts to provide quality child care and early education.
Each child is a unique individual. Therefore, our programs are based on the individual social, emotional, intellectual, and physical development of each child. We believe children are happy and secure when they have plenty of opportunities to succeed each day. Success breeds self-confidence, and self-confident children approach learning as fun and actively search for information and solutions to problems. As a result, develop into well-rounded, capable adults. Much of what we do with children is designed to facilitate the development of self-confidence. Because our programs are developmental, we believe that children’s interest and skill must guide out curriculum planning. Planning efforts respond to the direction of a child’s learning is more important than the content of learning. Because we focus on process learning, activities are designed to emphasize the experience children are having rather than what results from activities. In other words, painting is more important than what is painted, building with blocks is more important than what is built. Helping children learn how to learn is what our programs are about. During the early childhood years, young children are learning to be in charge of themselves. We believe in consistent, understandable limits and in teachers who respond to inappropriate behavior with insight, sensitivity, and skill. When clear, consistent, and age-appropriate limits are present, children increasingly become responsible for themselves. When out-of-bounds behavior does occur, we believe it is important for children to understand why the behavior is inappropriate and how to modify it. To make the philosophy work, we believe our center environment must be clean, safe, and well planned. Our administrators and teaching staff are responsible for insuring a clean, safe, and well-prepared environment. We believe that the teaching team is the cornerstone of our philosophy. Members of the team are carefully selected, trained and evaluated. Team members are aware of the expectations for them and have input into their own professional training and development. We believe program quality must be monitored and evaluated to assure that the programs we provide meet the child care and early education needs of the children and families we serve. The results of our systemic quality assurance program is confidence in the programs we offer to children and their families. We believe parents are the significant adults in a child’s life. We do everything possible to insure parent’s involvement with our programs. Developing strategies for keeping communications flowing freely is a part if each staff members responsibility.
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