During one of Teachstone’s regional trainings, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had a father-daughter team in my training; the mother was also in attendence but in a different session. I know they say that the family that prays together stays together, but perhaps it’s also true that families who code together stay together! 

Meet Samantha St. Clair, probably the youngest certified CLASS observer I know.

Today's post is the fifth in our "Tips for Enhancing Your Training Skills" blog series. In these posts, we will delve deeply into the fundamentals of essential training skills. This blog series, filled with tips from our training team’s collective years of experience delivering CLASS observation trainings to diverse audiences from around the country and the globe, will provide you with tangible ideas about how to be a more successful trainer.

This month’s spotlight is on Julie Robichaux from Seattle. Julie is the CLASS Assessment Lead for the Early Achievers Program, Washington State’s QRIS, which is administered through the Childcare Quality and Early Learning Center for Professional Development (CQEL) at the University of Washington. Early Achievers staff conduct CLASS and ERS observations, as well as file reviews for participating programs, which range from family childcare, privately run childcare programs, publicly funded pre-school programs, and Head Start. 

Today's post is the third in our "Tips for Enhancing Your Training Skills" blog series. In these posts, we will delve deeply into the fundamentals of essential training skills. This blog series, filled with tips from our training team’s collective years of experience delivering CLASS observation trainings to diverse audiences from around the country and the globe, will provide you with tangible ideas about how to be a more successful trainer. 

Today's post is the second in our "Tips for Enhancing Your Training Skills" blog series. In these posts, we will delve deeply into the fundamentals of essential training skills. This blog series, filled with tips from our training team’s collective years of experience delivering CLASS observation trainings to diverse audiences from around the country and the globe, will provide you with tangible ideas about how to be a more successful trainer. 

Today, we are introducing our new series, Tips for Enhancing Your Training Skills. In these posts, we will delve deeply into the fundamentals of essential training skills, including:

• Know the CLASS measure well and anchor your training in the manual
• Insist on detailed justifications and specific observations
• Have confidence in the master codes
• Be patient and limit defensiveness
• Ask participants to help you justify codes.

This month's Affiliate Trainer spotlight is on Marilyn Rice from Richmond, Virginia. Marilyn is a veteran CLASS observer, originally certifying in 2006 after Virginia adopted the CLASS as a part of its Quality Rating and Improvement System. She became an Affiliate Trainer in 2008.

I recently completed a Train-The-Trainer program with an enthusiastic and well-prepared group of CLASS observers. Yet, despite their status as certified CLASS observers, several of them were identifying basic conversational exchanges as feedback loops. 

At some of our recent Lunch and Learns, Affiliate Trainers indicated that they would be interested in learning more about their fellow ATs and the kinds of things they are doing with the CLASS outside of training. In response, we are introducing a new feature we are calling our “Affiliate Trainer Spotlight!” We agree that it would be a fun for all of us to learn more about our Affiliate Trainers and the kind of work that they are doing to promote the use of the CLASS in their communities. If you would like to be featured, or if you would like to nominate a colleague for this spotlight, please get in touch with us at contact@teachstone.com. 

Today’s spotlight is on Kari Price from Lincoln, Nebraska.

Recently, I conducted a TTT program and one of my participants, a veteran Affiliate Trainer on another age level, asked me where her participants could find the practice videos. She knew that it was important for them to review the videos as they prepared to test, but she wasn’t sure how to help them find them.