About Us
The Wyoming Early Childhood Professional Learning Collaborative’s mission is to elevate the quality of early childhood education in Wyoming by providing free learning opportunities and resources to early childhood educators and caregivers across the state.
About the WYECPLC
The WYECPLC offers professional learning opportunities that earn STARS credit and meet the individual needs of early childhood professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds and programs and in many different professional roles. Our learning experiences are unique because they meet national standards and competencies, focus on individual strengths and interests, provide opportunities to collaborate with others from around the state, strengthen teaching practice, and build leadership skills.
The WYECPLC has six learning specialists living and working in the state. They offer regularly scheduled local classes, monthly online webinars, learning communities matched to educator interests and experience, individualized coaching and mentoring, and more. Learning Specialists are highly trained facilitators that follow adult learning principles and use only the most reputable nationally recognized evidence-based sources.
Grounded in Evidence
As an organization that provides professional learning, we value being grounded in an evidence-base that reflects current research and best practices. There are multiple professional documents and a knowledge base that we rely on which includes:
These standards and competencies outline the essential body of knowledge, skills, dispositions, and practice required of all early childhood educators working with young children across all early learning settings (NAEYC, 2019). NAEYC has additional position statements that are incorporated into our curriculum and these position statements, together with the standards, provide a strong foundation for learning that is grounded in evidence.
The ZERO TO THREE Critical Competencies for Infant-Toddler Educators™
These competencies are for caregivers who work with children ages 0-3 and frame our expected outcomes and goals for infant-toddler caregivers. They reflect current practice and help us find the gaps in practice amongst the different age groups of children.As a family-facing profession, early childhood educators have a responsibility to families. The competencies outlined by the NAFSCE provide the framework for early childhood educator’s work with families.
Early childhood leaders are expected to fill many different roles at any given time throughout their day, week, or month. This framework provides the whole picture for program leadership includes: leadership essentials, administrative leadership, and pedagogical leadership.
Our Partners
The Wyoming Early Childhood Professional Learning Collaborative is the result of an innovative collaboration between the University of Wyoming, The Wyoming Departments of Family and Workforce services, the Ellbogen Foundation, and The Align Team, which houses the Wyoming Statewide Training and Resource System (STARS). Other statewide partners include the Wyoming Early Childhood Behavioral Consultants (WYECBC), The Wyoming Institute for Disabilities ECHO in Early Childhood Education Network, The Behavioral Health Division of The Wyoming Department of Health, the Wyoming Head Start Collaboration Office, The Wyoming Department of Education, and many local community early childhood education programs.
Our History
In 2014 the University of Wyoming Board Of Trustees established the Trustees Education Initiative, with the goal of improving the quality of teacher preparation in the College of Education to support a vibrant and innovative education workforce for the state. One result of the initiative was the creation of the Wyoming Early Childhood Outreach Network (WYECON), a network focused on elevating the early childhood education workforce and improving the quality of learning opportunities for young children in Wyoming. WYECON quickly established an essential partnership with Wyoming Kids First, and collaborative outreach efforts between both entities began to take shape in January 2019. Coinciding with this work, the Wyoming Department of Family Services, WY Quality Counts and Align began to consider a new framework for delivery of early childhood professional development. As leaders involved in both efforts engaged in dialogue, clear linkages between program goals emerged and a collective vision of early childhood professional development in Wyoming solidified. The potential to increase impact by leveraging expertise and funding across agencies and programs became clear, and additional partnerships with existing professional development supports and programs were established, including a partnership with the Statewide Training and Resource System (STARS), to track professional development. In addition, Project ECHO in Early Childhood Education, a distance training model in the Wyoming Institute for Disabilities (WIND), agreed to align training content with Professional Learning Collaborative goals. These partnered organizations working together were able to help each other accomplish their goals by creating the Wyoming Early Childhood Professional Learning Collaborative (WYECPLC) in July of 2019.