Maine Roads to Quality Professional Development Network

On-the-job Training

• Understands the Principles of Child Growth and Development
  • Nurtures relationships with children by engaging in responsive, reciprocal relationships with babies, toddlers, preschoolers and school-aged children and youth. Values each child's individuality.
  • Understands the developmental period of childhood from birth through age twelve across all developmental domains including bilingual/multilingual development.
  • Uses knowledge about each individual child's unique characteristics including developmental levels, learning styles, background experiences, culture, strengths, challenges, and approaches to learning when planning daily routines and activities.
  • Assures continuity of care, spending time engaging with each child each day in addition to care routines.
• Supports Children's Social and Emotional Development
  • Encourages children to express themselves in safe and appropriate ways to promote self-regulation.  Recognizes and labels children's feelings consistently. Fosters sense of security by telling children ahead of time what will happen and through predictable care routines.   
  • Provides a secure, consistent, safe base from which children can explore, experiment, develop relationships and tackle challenging problems that support development.
  • Creates a welcoming environment that is predictable and organized with a selection of learning areas and developmentally appropriate and culturally relevant equipment and materials that can be accessed by all children.
• Advancing Children's Physical and Intellectual Development
  • Encourage and promote physical development activities including daily outdoor play. Provides opportunities to process information through sensory experiences.
  • Provides opportunities to acquire language and literacy skills through interactions with others, materials and the environment. Embeds children's home language into the environment as much as possible.
  • Promotes children's expressive language skills through interactions with others, materials and the environment.  Embeds children's home language into the environment as much as possible.
  • Provides opportunities to promote mathematical language when describing actions and materials, sequencing, size, shape, numbers, amounts of items and spatial relationships.
  • Promotes children's higher order thinking skills through the use of scaffolding, self and parallel talk, concept development, advanced language and open-ended questioning.
• Observing and Recording Children's Behavior
  • Maintains clear and consistent behavioral and developmental expectations through consistent and predictable routines.
  • Uses a variety of formats to document assessment results to learn about each child, plan for a child's current and future learning and communicate with families in a family friendly way without jargon.
  • Assists in using standardized and authentic assessment data to create learning opportunities to advance children's development and goals.
  • Maintains confidentiality in conducting, documenting, storing, and sharing assessment information.
• Planning a Safe and Healthy Learning Environment
  • Active supervision is used consistently, promoting a safe environment and the prevention of injuries.
  • Uses the principles of universal design for learning to initially plan the environment and learn strategies to be flexible enough to accommodate the unique learning styles of a wide age range of children.
  • Partners with families regarding children's food preferences and eating habits. Assists in assuring healthy meals and meal attendance in accordance with Child Care Licensing, Let's Go! 5-2-1-0 and USDA's CACFP. Models healthy eating habits, including wiping infants' gums after feeding and assisting toddlers and preschoolers with tooth brushing. Encourages independence of toothbrushing with school-age children.
  • Follows cleaning, sanitation and disinfectant procedures to promote healthy habits within the home environment.
  • Assists in promoting protective factors to prevent child abuse and neglect; refers families to the Department of Health and Human Services' Child Protective Services as required by law.
  • Assists with completion, accuracy and appropriate follow-up of Health & Safety Checklists.
  • Practices emergency procedures, including monthly fire drills and practice with emergency evacuations.
• Building Productive Relationships with Families
  • Collaborates with families as equal partners in their children's development and learning through respectful, reciprocal relationships and engagement.
  • Connects daily with families and children to make them feel welcomed, safe and respected.
  • Applies information about families' strengths, talents, culture, preferences, experiences, and expectations about child rearing practices and involves them when making decisions about their child's development and care.
  • Demonstrates respectful interest in learning about each family's values, beliefs, faith traditions, cultural influences, family structure and circumstances
• Managing an Effective Program Operation
  • Maintains cooperative, respectful interactions and supports the employer's policies.
  • Creates, implements, and revises program administration and business practices, policies and procedures that support varied literacy levels, abilities, family culture and home language.
  • Demonstrates understanding of and on-going compliance with Child Care Licensing and other regulations or requirements.
  • Maintains a system of financial business planning practices for tracking and monitoring income and expenses based on enrollment and operating expenses.
• Maintaining a Commitment to Professionalism
  • Communicates positively and effectively using appropriate verbal, nonverbal and written messages.
  • Demonstrates effective customer service assuring respect for families' culture and language.
  • Takes responsibility for their own well-being and has strategies to manage the physical, emotional and mental stress inherint in the family child care profession in order to engage effectively and empathetically with children and families.
  • Establishes and maintains professional boundaries including confidentiality and impartiality.
  • Promotes community partnerships and community resources.
  • Completes mandated training and maintains required certifications (i.e., First Aid/CPR.)
  • Seeks opportunities for ongoing professional growth; implements to improve practice.