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Logan Jackson
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Child Care Services Association’s T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® National Center Hosts 2023 Early Childhood Education Workforce Convening

The annual Convening will be held on April 26-27, 2023, at the William and Ida Friday Conference Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Chapel Hill, N.C., March 22, 2023: The T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood^® National Center, a division of Child Care Services Association (CCSA), will host the 2023 Early Childhood Education Workforce Convening on April 26-27, 2023, at the William and Ida Friday Conference Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This annual event brings together professionals from across the country who are working on advocacy, policy, funding, strategy development and systems building toward implementation and sustainability of programs, as well as strategies and funding that support early education systems nationally and in states and communities across the country. Attendees will include staff of T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® and Child Care WAGE$® programs, state and national nonprofit organization professionals, higher education faculty, state and national governmental agency personnel, funders and other partners.

Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in 34 workshops during six breakout sessions and keynote and plenary sessions on topics related to the early education workforce and systems building, including advancing equity and diversity in the field and emergent leadership development of T.E.A.C.H. and WAGE$ Program staff. 

The National Center is a one-stop shop for national, state and local policymakers and funders looking for proven strategies to support the longstanding challenges facing the early childhood workforce. The National Center licenses and supports a single nonprofit organization in 23 states to operate statewide, individual T.E.A.C.H. scholarship and Child Care WAGE$ programs. The T.E.A.C.H. Scholarship Program provides educational scholarships to early care professionals and those who perform specialized functions in the early care system.

The Child Care WAGE$® Program provides education-based salary supplements to low-paid teachers, directors and family child care providers working with children between the ages of birth to 5. Participants achieve gains in their education and compensation and are retained in their worksites at higher rates.

The plenary panel will be composed of three national early childhood leaders who will discuss new federal resources and opportunities in support of the early care and education workforce and ongoing national efforts to professionalize the early childhood teaching field: Katie Hamm (Deputy Assistant Secretary for Early Childhood Development, Office of Early Childhood Development, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), Kim Burgess Simms (Acting Director of Policy and Strategy, Office of Early Childhood Development, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and Lauren Hogan (Managing Director of Policy and Professional Advancement, NAEYC). The welcoming keynote, From Tiny Seeds Grow Mighty Trees: The Power of Early Childhood Education, will be presented by the 2020 National Teacher of the Year, Tabatha Rosproy.

Registration for the 2023 Early Childhood Education Workforce Convening ends on Friday, March 31, 2023. For more information, go to   https://www.teachecnationalcenter.org/resources/convening/. 

To view the program, go to https://www.teachecnationalcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/2023-Early-Childhood-Education-Workforce-Convening.pdf.

Child Care Services Association

Founded in 1974, the mission of Child Care Services Association (CCSA) is to lead efforts to strengthen accessible and affordable quality early care and education by providing supports for families, communities and the workforce. To that end, CCSA provides free child care referral services to families, financial assistance to low-income families seeking child care and professional development and technical assistance to child care programs. Through spoonFULL, CCSA also provides nutritious meals to children at child care centers, where they may eat 50-100 percent of their meals. Throughout North Carolina, educational scholarships from CCSA’s T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood^® Scholarship Program give child care professionals the means to obtain a debt-free education, while CCSA’s Child Care WAGE$^® and Infant-Toddler Educator AWARD$^® programs supplement their meager salary. CCSA also licenses T.E.A.C.H. and WAGE$ across the U.S. through the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood^® National Center at CCSA and conducts early childhood systems and homelessness research and policy development statewide and nationally. For more information, visit childcareservices.org.

T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® National Center

The T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood® National Center, a division of Child Care Services Association, provides leadership for the early childhood education field for states across the country and for our nation’s policymakers on the critical importance and value of an educated, well-paid and stable early childhood workforce to ensure the long-term success of our nation’s children in school and life. This is reflected in the National Center’s evolving 50-state strategy to support the advancement of the Early Childhood workforce toward equitable access to education, fair compensation and workplace retention. The National Center offers consultation, technical assistance and resources to an array of partners looking for solutions to solve long-standing, entrenched workforce issues. Those partners include funders, policymakers, business and industry, early Childhood Partner Organizations, colleges/universities, community colleges, early childhood education programs and the early childhood education workforce.

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