eConnections

published by the Vermont Association for the Education of Young Children

June 2008

How VAEYC Can Support Accreditation

Sonja Raymond, Accreditation Project Coordinator

I wanted to take the opportunity to introduce myself.  My name is Sonja Raymond and I am the Owner and Director of Apple Tree Learning Centers in Stowe.  I am also the new VAEYC Accreditation Project Coordinator, having taken over for Shelly Henson in October 2007.

My role as Accreditation Project Coordinator is to support providers who wish to become accredited.  The first step for me was to learn about the position and try to determine the best ways to help facilitate support and interest for the new accreditation system.

Having just gone through NAEYC Accreditation, I had some ideas of my own but was very interested in the perspectives of others. It only took a few months to start hearing from centers all across Vermont about the challenges of the new accreditation system.  At the recent Chittenden Community Forum, there were many excellent ideas and suggestions shared; I think we will have a great success implementing some of these.

Over the coming year, I will be working with the VAEYC Board on three goals:

  1. Create a “pool” of mentors that would be able to help providers through the accreditation process.  The idea here is to have a collection of mentors from various settings across Vermont.  This would allow mentors to spend less time driving and more time consulting in a region with which they are familiar.  These mentors would be from centers, schools, or home-based programs that have recently been accredited.  The goal is to have different mentors that can assist with after school program accreditation (NAA) and registered home-based program accreditation (NAFCC), in addition to NAEYC Accreditation for center-based programs.

  2. Create a template for the Program Portfolio which could be put on a CD and made available to programs who apply to be part of the Accreditation Project.  This template would save many centers a lot of time and frustration.

  3. Hold annual trainings for the new NAEYC Accreditation process, so that any program due for re-accreditation or wanting to become accredited will have an opportunity to become familiar and comfortable with the process.

I am excited about my new position as Accreditation Project Coordinator and welcome feedback and suggestions.  Please feel free to send me an email by clicking here.

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