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In the Exchange best-selling guidebook and textbook, The Art of Leadership: Managing Early Childhood Organizations, Betty Jones offers this idea for starting staff training with what the staff already know:

“A friend of mine, teaching child development, was trying to figure out how to teach Freudian theory. It occurred to her to ask the class what they knew about it. They knew quite a lot -- some of it accurate, some of it not. But by the time they had it all down, the class had an experience base to build from.

“As an administrator, you can do the same thing; you can assume that the adults are competent. There is, in fact, quite a lot of competence there, and some will be self-fulfilling if you assume it’s there.

“When confronting a new issue or problem, for example, you may want to start with the staff. You will eventually, as a group, start asking quite specific questions. At this point you could bring in an expert to supply specific answers if that’s what’s needed . . . .

“You want people who are working with children to be decisionmakers and to feel competent about their own role. I think you add expertise in little increments as people say, ’I want to know these specific things.’”

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