Giving Head Start Teachers a Head Start
Client: Metro Nashville Action Commission Head Start Professionals
June 2020
Professionals in the education field are absolutely essential to ensuring that students achieve academically. On average, teachers work for about 10 hours and 40 minutes a day, which means roughly 53 hours a week. Based on research, many educators and professionals who work these tiring hours DO NOT set out time for themselves throughout the day to align their thoughts, actions with their purposes, personalities, personal characteristics, or even mental/physical health.
Since 2013, Aspire has specialized in highly interactive workshops and presentations geared towards the dreams, bodies, and aspirations of dreamers of all ages and classifications. At Aspire, we utilize research-based goal-setting methodologies while incorporating life experiences.
The Metropolitan Action Commission Head Start Program of Nashville and Davidson County provides pre-school/pre-K education at no cost to income eligible families with children ages 3-5 years old. There are 7 Head Start Centers throughout Nashville. The Head Start and Early Head Start program serve 1,485 children, making Metro Action the largest provider of early childhood education for children birth to five in Davidson County.
This service ensures that all Head start teaching staff receives required trainings and professional credentials in Early Childhood Education. Teacher also receive general support and mentoring assistance. This service also provides assistance to center managers regarding accreditation and licensing visits.
Objectives
- Introduce mindfulness tips for stress relief and conflict resolution.
- Introduce Dream BLDRS concepts for career readiness, and workload management
- Provide essential tools for self-awareness, school climate, and parent engagement and conflict resolution
- Build soft-skills amongst metro Nashville professionals.
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IDEA
Aspire Institute, powered by the #DreamBLDRS curriculum is composed of interactive activities that professionals of Nashville’s Metropolitan Action Commission were able to engage in for a one day experience with 2 separate cohorts. The two 6-hour sessions were presented through curriculum-based modules, led by nationally renowned author, speaker, and chief Dream BLDR, Patrick Walker-Reese with a #MindBLDRS segment for Mindfulness Connection led by Team USA athlete and International coach, Christina V. Raiford. Through Aspire Institute, Metro Nashville professionals created personal vision statements, identified their passions through world issues, learned how to navigate through their journey towards success, and listed/identified their strengths through our nationally acclaimed character assessment.
Introducing Mindfulness to the sessions enabled Metro Nashville professionals to feel present and aware of the space they were in through thoughts and emotions in their bodies. Mind BLDRS is intended to further help them clarify their vision, goals, and routine towards a more proactive path.
Experience Highlights
- One day, 6-hour virtual workshop
- Mindfulness: Connection experience- intro to Aspire Institute, #DreamBLDRS
- #DreamBLDRS- composed of 4 sessions
- Digital interactive workbook
- Virtual Typeform Data Collection
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INSIGHT
It was important that we made the Aspire Institute program with Metro Nashville and experience effective enough for those who attended to have adequate tools to pull from. We wanted this presentation to captivate the minds of the attendees for 6 hours to ensure that they fully grasped the concept of the leading human development company.
Over 67 metro Nashville professionals participated in this 6-hour dream building workshop for each week. We knew that if we made the experience 6 hours, they would have enough information and guidance to help them transform their goals and aspirations from dreams to reality by the end of the session. Of the 67+ professionals in attendance, 75% of them rated the session with 5 out of 5 stars. However, 90% of the respondents were females while only two respondents stated to be males.
Before we dove into Aspire Institute, #DreamBLDRS, Coach Christina Raiford introduced the participants to Mindfulness. Here, they were able to align their respective minds, bodies, and souls with their everyday surroundings. When asked how participants felt, the average answer (10 being the greatest) was 7.5. This data allowed us to understand the overall energy of the space within the professionals we were working with.
At the end of the session, many of the participants asked insightful questions in the comment box. Each participant left the virtual workshop with more than enough tools to use for self-improvement in their respective jobs/duties as well as new routines for meditation.
ASPIRE INSTITUTE
IMPACT
Our virtual session with Metro Nashville revealed a conglomerate account of information of the professionals we were working with. Through our Mindfulness data that Coach Chris generated, it showed us that many of the professionals experience anxiety for achieving success but seem to still manage to help fix 8 major issues in the world today. As expected, many professionals participating help in education. In fact, over half of the professionals work in fixing education. Poverty was another world issue that many professionals worked towards fixing. With the stated information, it was very important to equip them with the necessary skills and tools to thrive in working to fix those issues.
Our strengths assessment is by far, the most popular activity throughout the many modules we contain in our curriculum. We understand that the ability to identify one’s strengths and weaknesses are essential when attempting to turn dreams into reality. Due to the fact that self-awareness is arguably the most important trait for anyone with dreams and aspirations, the strengths assessment helped metro Nashville professionals gain a heightened sense of self and understanding of their coworkers. The majority of them are identified with the owl's strength, leadership style. This means that they collaborate or problem confronting conflict management styles. In other words, they view conflicts as problems to be solved finding solutions agreeable to all sides. Participants agreed that this assessment is beneficial for student leadership in workspaces and in life.
- 50% of participants feel the most tension in their bodies through anxiety. In light, the majority sought improvement in increasing success out of the 6 other areas of improvement.
- According to session data on vision, Education was the main focal point at 56%. Healthcare followed behind as the next top focus at 16%.
- During the strength session, 63% of professionals identified as owls--- a collaborative management style. With only 15% identifying as gorillas--- a competitive conflict management style.
- Based on session data, the most common self-identified strength was “supportive” at 90%. 25% of the strengths were “decisive”. The participants understood that being is a strength that needs to be worked on for simpler decision making amongst each other in the work field.
