How Early Childhood Educators Adapted to COVID-19

Kate Stoltzfus

Research indicates that a high-quality education in the first few years of school can increase children's success in reading, writing, and math; close achievement gaps; and set the foundation for healthy and engaged citizenship. This critical early-learning period has been affected, like everything else, by a global pandemic. Quentin Brown, the executive director of Educare Lincoln in Nebraska, had to adapt an early-childhood model that prioritizes using data, parent and caregiver engagement, and wraparound services for children ages 0-5 whose families may come from challenging situations. He spoke with ASCD earlier this fall how about how 2020 has affected education in the early years and what lessons he's learned so far.

What drew you to the work of early childhood learning?

I've spent most of my nonprofit career working in youth service. The global data on early childhood education and the importance of brain development from ages 0 to 5 is highly impressive. We can't ignore the work that happens at this age because without it, we're in trouble. Without quality early education, we're in trouble.

How has Educare Lincoln adapted in light of the coronavirus?

In no way do we even remotely understand what an entire school district may be going through during this time. But over the past months, we have gone through several evolutions that have created many learning opportunities for us (and potentially for standalone facilities that operate similar to how we operate). In March, when we made the difficult decision to close our doors, families needed us to reopen. While we could not operate within our building for a period, we never ceased operations. We took a few weeks to design a virtual operations plan that allowed our educators and family engagement specialists to maintain contact with our families.

When we reopened in July, the challenge was transitioning back a familiar environment in a way that conveyed new and updated health and safety measures. To do so, we heavily relied on our health services coordinator and school director to guide a COVID-19 operations plan—procedures for washing hands constantly, wearing masks, keeping nonessential people out, taking temperatures, changing the building entry process, distancing our teachers, ensuring that if a case comes into the building we can quickly and easily contact trace, and ensuring that we limit contact to small groups of people.

We first reopened to students of working families because we recognized that having more people in the building would increase our risk, and we needed to prioritize serving families with the greatest needs. This slow rollout gave us a month to work with a smaller population and to make adjustments along the way, ultimately allowing us to test our plan responsibly. As for our case count to date, we have only had a handful of cases, all of which were caught early with minimal exposure risk, allowing us to maintain at least 80 percent of our operations at any time.

What do you think are the biggest issues facing early childhood classrooms, especially during the pandemic?

The biggest issues are adapting our social-emotional aspects to meet the changing environment and providing consistent engagement at a time when a building closure or a child/teacher absence could happen any day for an extended period of time. To combat this, teachers have remained up-to-date on professional development opportunities focused specifically on social-emotional learning. Additionally, we ensured that teachers were informed of all of the tools at their disposal and how to use them for remote learning: Zoom, email, phone, and distanced visits through our family engagement team.

Early childhood also provides many services and supports that often go unnoticed—diapers and wipes, learning supplies, engagement activities. This year we coordinated with local partners that helped us to provide items, and we also incorporated drop off and pick up days at the school for parents. A couple times this year, we held a parent parade where parents drove through our parking lot, which provided a chance for teachers and children to see each other and another opportunity to exchange resources. Our local food bank and school district coordinated food distributions, and our food services coordinator provided healthy activities and information.

What should leaders and classroom teachers think about when planning distance or hybrid learning for young learners and their families?

Connecting with families in this "virtual" way hasn't really changed how we support them. Our engagement with parents, for the most part, has always been remote. Besides the occasional visit to our school, a lot of the work with our parents was, and continues to be, done through virtual means. Connecting families to job readiness or basic needs services has been even more important during this time. We have to remain prepared to provide guidance and assistance in a number of ways for those that are at home due to being laid off, furloughed, or other reasons.

As for considerations that need to be made for planning remote learning for this age group, it is critically important to recognize that young learners are not built to take on remote learning like some older children might be. We have to be mindful of how much online time is actually needed and how much is reasonable or even possible. We work around this by identifying activities that students can do with family members, whether online or offline, with basic materials and supplies in the home. This is not innovative by any means, but it is an effort that did not come easily for an organization that had to make this change overnight, like so many others.

Research shows that early childhood education lays the foundation for wellbeing in the years ahead. What components does the Educare model use to support young students?

We stand firm on our “four Ps,” which prepare our children for kindergarten and lifelong success: a high-quality program, partner engagement, a compelling platform, and functional places and spaces. Leading those efforts are team members who have demonstrated, through formal education or work experience, how much they care about early education. 

What safety measures have you put in place for teachers and students?

We're providing protective equipment for teachers and students, like face masks, face shields, aprons, gloves, and filters, as well as trainings with our health services coordinator (cleaning versus sanitizing, using the isolation room, how to ensure we aren't cross-contaminating, and so on). We also hold each other accountable by calling each other out when we are not following the necessary health and safety measures. Another safety measure that we practice is to keep our classrooms separate from one another. This practice allows us to minimize exposure if we find a case in any one classroom.

Anything else to add?

I recommend going back with a plan. I've seen a couple instances where teams have reopened without a written plan in place and things could have turned out better for them. Take the time to create a well-informed plan using the data and best information that you have at the moment, get feedback from teachers and others that are going to have to fulfill that plan, incorporate that feedback, and go forth.

Quentin Brown was interviewed by Kate Stoltzfus, an editor at ASCD. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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ASCD Express, Vol. 16, No. 6. Copyright 2020 by ASCD. All rights reserved. Visit www.ascd.org/ascdexpress.