Staff Switch Day

In every issue of Exchange we publish "Success Stories," stories of ideas center directors and other early childhood professionals have successfully implemented to improve staff performance, program quality, or experiences for children and families.  These ideas are also posted on our web site where you, too, can contribute your innovations to share with the world.  In a "Success Story" appearing in the November issue of Exchange, Claude from Northland Pioneer College in Holbrook, Arizona shares this story:

One of the most successful activities I organized, while a Head Start Director for a program serving over 200 children, was to organize a “switch day.”  Some of the classroom staff complained that they didn’t think the office staff and coordinators did “anything.”  So with about a month’s planning, the office staff and coordinators moved into the classrooms for one morning while the teachers became the administrators.  What a glorious day it was!  One of the loudest protestors stated during our discussion meeting after the morning, “I will never complain about ________ again.  She has to wear roller skates to be able to keep up with her job.”  Another teacher who had decided to take on the director’s role was overwhelmed with all of the administrative “stuff” that had been left for him to do.  And the administrative staff loved being able to be in charge of a classroom, even if for just a morning.  Most of the administrators had been classroom staff who had moved up the career ladder.  By the end of the class day, the new “administrators” were standing by the classroom doors clamoring for our attention to respond to “crises” that had come up.  One of them expressed, “We thought you never would come out of the classroom.”  Twenty years later, some of the staff still talk about that day as a wonderful learning experience.

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