Hi,
I'm Jill. I have been enjoying my work as a
teacher for Head Start for many years. I know
I am helping my community both by my work with kids
in the classroom and my advocacy efforts for quality
childcare. Even though I have been working without
a college degree, I watched my knowledge and skill
base continue to build but I could not describe myself
as a degreed professional and there were certain career
paths I could not consider even though I had a lot
of the skills and training.
I started to consider a college degree as I saw how many doors having my degree could open for me and my community. When I learned the Early Childhood Assessment Program's process for helping me have my prior learning assessed for college credit I was very interested. Metropolitan State University has worked with communities to help make access to a college degree easier and I knew that the Early Childhood Assessment Program staff and faculty would understand and help me because they train many child care professionals and have developed their program in collaboration with many child care employers. Early Childhood Assessment Program gave me information on how to apply for college and access to advisors as well as faculty and faculty evaluators who understood my job experiences and training. I learned about college admission and through the Early Childhood Assessment Program got a reduced rate for my experiential learning credits that count towards my degree.
Hi,
I'm Yvette.
I have been working in the field of early childhood
as an assistant teacher for over eight years.
During that time, I participated in several trainings
provided by Child Care Resource and Referral. I also
earned my Child Development Associate. I became
more and more interested in what I was learning about
the education and care of children, so I decided to
go to Metropolitan State University to obtain my bachelor's
degree in Early Childhood Studies. I learned
about the Early Childhood Assessment Program from
my academic advisor. Through this program I
earned six college credits for my Child Development
Associate. I also attended the "Getting
Credit for What You Know in Child Care" workshop
and learned how to get my experiential learning assessed
for college credit. I earned four credits for
my knowledge of emergent literacy and two credits
for my knowledge of health and safety. By having
my experiential learning assessed for college credit,
I was able to save money, graduate a semester sooner,
and obtain a position as a teacher in a preschool
program within a few weeks after graduation.
*These stories are based on real participants,
the people pictured are not ECAP students.
