Author Archives: Marcia Hebert

Grace L. Mitchell was my professional mentor, my motivator, my cheerleader, my role model, and my friend. A long, long time ago, she gave me her Ten Commandments for Teachers. It is timeless, and often made it to the bulletin board in our staff room. It is concise, and yet filled with best practices and positive values. Embedded in Grace’s words, you can hear her philosophy, visualize her dramatic flair, and understand the depth and breadth of her teaching. We, who worked with her, were deeply inspired. She ignited our passion of caring for and educating young children and we immersed ourselves in this field – always stretching, always growing. Continue reading →

When we added the “mentor teacher” rung to the career ladder in our early childhood program, we provided recognition to our experienced and skilled teachers. We offered learning opportunities to them, particularly in the areas of peer coaching, reflection, leadership, and adult development. In addition, we offered learning opportunities to our novice teachers (protégés) who were committed to furthering their professional development. And the end result was improvement in the overall quality of our entire program. We learned a lot along the way – to be passed on to you – who might be interested in doing the same thing in your program. Continue reading →

If you are the Director of an early childhood program, I’ll bet you have asked yourself the same question I asked myself years ago – how could we retain our fabulous teachers while keeping them in teaching positions? So often teachers had to become supervisors and directors in order to grow in our field. But, many wonderful teachers didn’t want to move into leadership and management. They were fabulous teachers!!!! So, how could we retain them – and yet, offer them growth and professional development doing what they loved, and were very good at?
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