Seeking Texas Rising Star Recertification
Our Executive Director’s Update provides an overview of the Texas Rising Star certification as Becky Gates Children’s Center prepares for a recertification this year. The assessment process is broken into four categories: director and staff qualifications and training, teacher-child interactions, program administration, and indoor and outdoor environments.
As you might expect, teacher-child interactions carry the heaviest weight. Measures in this category relate to the group size, teacher/ child ratio, and quality of interactions between teachers and children in the classroom. Assessors will visit each classroom, and teachers will be rated on measures demonstrating a warm and responsive style, language facilitation and support, play-based interactions and guidance, support for children’s regulation, and instructional formats and approaches to learning.
A warm and responsive style includes creating a warm, safe, and nurturing environment and using frequent, positive nonverbal behaviors such as smiling often, sitting at the child’s level, allowing the children to sit near or with the teacher, and using reassuring touch. Teachers should be patient, relaxed, and respond promptly and sensitively to children’s cognitive and affective signals.
Language facilitation and support include using positive verbal responses and encouragement to reinforce positive behavior, communicating with children throughout the day, and using descriptive language. Teachers should provide children with frequent opportunities to talk with teachers and to respond to questions. Engaging in back-and-forth conversations, expanding on children’s understanding or initiation by elaborating on what children say or draw, and modeling language for children.
Play-based interactions and guidance are evident when caregivers create opportunities for children to make-believe and make choices based on their interests. It is supported when teachers participate and expand on play initiated by children to reinforce language, ideas, and social development. Providing opportunities for children’s social interaction with peers should be observed.
Child: “Look, I made downtown Austin. We went to downtown Austin to eat. I saw plane 222. We were in a big house and played.”
Support for children’s regulation can be seen when teachers model or encourage emotional expression by allowing children to express their feelings, label feelings, and make connections between actions and emotional reactions for children. Children should receive short explanations to help them understand their feelings. Teachers should explain logical consequences for behaviors. Consistently implementing rules and routines supports self-regulation. Caregivers assist children in their communications and interactions with peers, including resolving conflicts, speaking respectfully, and expanding on each other’s play ideas. Opportunities are provided for children to assist with routines and procedures that build self-help skills.
Instructional formats and approaches to learning are evident when there is a balance of teacher- and child-initiated daily activities. Routines and transition times should be used as opportunities for incidental learning and planned to avoid frequent disruption of the children’s activities. New concepts should be used in different learning contexts throughout the day. Instructional planning results from both a formal and informal child progress monitoring tool.
As we prepare for Texas Rising Star recertification, we are also reviewing the requirements for Cognia accreditation and training for accreditation through the National Association for the Education of Young Children. Needless to say, our program is undergoing a thorough evaluation, and we look forward to sharing the results.
