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Managing a childcare center is much more than completing administrative tasks: it’s about supporting the quality of educational services and guiding educators in their roles. A daycare or early childhood center (CPE) manager must juggle multiple responsibilities like a true Swiss Army knife, all while staying attentive to the children’s development.

To achieve this, here are four practical tips to put pedagogy at the heart of your management, boost team motivation, and provide a rewarding experience for the children.

Being a Daycare Manager… The Art of Being a Swiss Army Knife!

Your educators can be compared to octopuses, with their many tentacles, as they work with children.

As a childcare manager, you are undoubtedly a true Swiss Army knife. You handle accounting, human resources, building maintenance, ensure everyone’s well-being, occasionally cover for a sick colleague… and so on. Yes, you read that right: and so on.

Keeping the quality of educational services at the heart of your management.

If your staff can compare themselves to octopuses and their tentacles when working with children, you, as a daycare manager, are undoubtedly a Swiss Army knife. You're in charge of accounting, human resources and building maintenance. You make sure that everyone is well, you replace a sick colleague yourself, and so on. Did I say “et cetera”? Yes... but I'll say it again: ET CETERA

Putting the Quality of Educational Services at the Heart of Your Management

In most cases, daycare managers are so overwhelmed that they leave it up to the educators to bring pedagogy to life in their environment. To each his own, as they say! In reality, however, it's clear that pedagogy must also be one of your many Swiss Army knife functions.

Why add this function?

The quality of educational services is what gives meaning to our work. It's what distinguishes child care from the child development environment.

You may have the biggest business in town, the most beautiful playground or the widest range of equipment, but if the people working in your daycare don't value pedagogy, you're in trouble.

In this sense, it's important to know that the higher the quality of educational services, the more educators feel valued in their professional role, and the more they demonstrate strategies for dealing with the developmental challenges of certain children, the less heavy their workload will seem and the greater their motivation to work. And that's no mean feat!

How to Bring Pedagogy into Your Management?

There are several ways to contribute to improving the quality of educational services as a manager. Here are four concrete actions to achieve this:

1.Ensure ongoing staff training

First, keep in mind that your educators MUST be up to date in their knowledge, know-how and interpersonal skills. Ongoing training is therefore essential if you are to remain fit to meet the needs of today's children in today's world. If you hear someone say, “It was easier with the kids before,” it's a sign that there are people in your environment who feel outdated. What's more, this kind of thinking eats up a lot of energy and is likely to harm the positive work climate. With this in mind, provide them with training that will increase their sense of professional competence.

2.Focus work on the children

Encourage your educators to remain child-centred. If some of them are still folding sheets, bibs or towels, tell yourself that they are not available to support toddlers' learning. The risks? Difficulties in writing periodic portraits, an increase in behavioral problems in some children who don't experience enough challenges at the level of their zone of proximal development, etc. Review everyone's roles: perhaps it's better for the caregiver to wash and put away the toys at the end of the day? Maybe it's better to ask the janitor to also take care of disinfecting the equipment? Perhaps the towels to be folded, the broom to be swept, the table to be washed would be activities to be carried out with the children? Think about it.

3.Optimize preparation time

Keep an eye on the educators' preparation time. This time should never be spent cutting things for the children: if they can't do it on their own, then the activity isn't right for them. Nor should preparation time be spent looking for theme-related activities. On the contrary, you need to know by heart where each child is in his development, and take the time available to modify his environment and the materials offered to him, with the aim of taking him a step further in his learning. You should therefore see educators researching children's developmental stages, the materials likely to develop a particular area, listing the observations made during the week and making sense of them, while putting in place educational actions to support each child in his or her learning.

4.Set annual pedagogical objectives

Set yourself one or two objectives per year that will increase the quality of your services, enhance your staff's sense of competence, reduce their mental workload and keep them motivated. Discuss these points at pedagogical meetings held every two or three months at most. Make sure these meetings don't turn into a team meeting where everyone expresses their dissatisfaction! In fact, in a pedagogical meeting, we talk about the quality of educational services and the strategies for achieving it, we commit to putting everything in place the very next day, and we report on the successes and challenges still present at the next meeting.

So, the quality of educational services doesn't just belong to the educators. You too, dear Swiss Army knife, must be involved, in your own way, in the educational life of your community.

Mélanie Coulombe, Writer and educational content creator - Cible Petite Enfance