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Racial equity in early childhood education is focus of new training series

MiRegistry

East Lansing, MI; Feb. 18, 2022 – WKAR Public Media sponsors racial equity training courses for Michigan early childhood education system.

WKAR Director of Education Robin Pizzo and colleagues in the Michigan Early Childhood and Education Racial Equity Leaders Cohort recently launched a series of free training courses focused on increasing racial equity across the early childhood system.

The ECE system has historically created barriers to equitable employment standards and professional development opportunities. These training courses aim to decrease those barriers. Participants receive two continuing education credits upon completion of each course through miregistry.org.

“As the training sponsor organization, WKAR recognized how valuable the trainings are to decrease disparities in the early childhood education system and increase diversity, equity and inclusion best practices. The cohort also understood the importance of providing credits for engaging in this work which allows each participant to increase their quality rating scores and childcare grant payments received from the Michigan Department of Health & Human Services,” explained Pizzo.

MiRegistry supports members of the Michigan Early Childhood and School-Age workforce as an all-in-one resource for tracking professional development, facilitating training, and growing professionally.

The project launched in November 2020 with the selection of the cohort members. Pizzo is joined on the team by Andrea Ryan, licensed clinical social worker and prevention specialist; Karen Hoene, early interventionist for Early On Program of Ingham County Health Department; Ladawn Caldwell, owner and operator of Cradles to Crayons Childcare Center; and Dana Watson, maternal child health educator for Ingham Health Department.

“We engaged in over 300 hours of combined training and planning to develop the courses and I’m thrilled to finally offer them to early childhood and education professionals,” said Pizzo.

Training courses are available at miregistry.org and cover the following topics:

  • 2/12/22 Early Childhood Racial Equity Project 
  • 2/22/22 Calling In: Having Difficult Conversations 
  • 3/5/22 Equitable Voices: Funds of Knowledge 
  • 3/22/22 The Impact of Mass Incarceration on Children, Families, Communities 
  • Summer 22 Racial Equity in Childcare Settings 

Each session is added at MiRegistry for self-paced study following the original live training.
Site visitors to miregistry.org must register to access the complete library of content. Registration is free.

For more station news from WKAR, visit wkar.org/station-news/.

About WKAR Public Media
WKAR Public Media is the Michigan capital region source for award-winning original television and radio, and the best from PBS and NPR. WKAR is part of Michigan State University College of Communication Arts & Sciences and includes WKAR TV, WKAR Radio, wkar.org, WKAR Radio Reading Service, WKAR Family, and WKAR Ready to Learn.

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