How Can We Better Train Preschool Leaders?

For more than 125 years, Early Learning Indiana (ELI) has supported preschool learners in the Hoosier State. “That,” says Chief Learning Officer Erin Kissling, “brings a lot of history and a lot of opportunity for innovation.”

ELI operates high-quality preschools in 11 buildings and 94 classrooms, serving about 1,200 children from birth to age 5 every day. They also support early learning across Indiana by advocating for state policy to benefit early learners and their families, and fund professional development to improve leadership and classroom practices at their own centers and at other preschools across Indiana.

To fulfill their mission — to make sure that children acquire essential skills to thrive in kindergarten and beyond — the organization recently focused on leadership and discovered that professional development through Harvard Graduate School of Education’s online Certificate in Early Education Leadership (CEEL) helps their school leaders build critical management skills.

Training for Leaders, Not Just Teachers

“What we understood from our own experience was that there were a lot of training opportunities for early childhood educators available, but not many training opportunities available for the leadership,” Kissling says. “And a teacher who gets a promotion into a leadership role might not be equipped with the skills they need to lead other adults in their teaching practices.”

In their search for professional development, ELI turned to CEEL, a program developed by the Saul Zaentz Early Learning Initiative at HGSE. That’s not surprising: Kissling joined CEEL’s first cohort in 2018, and she saw firsthand how CEEL develops leadership skills.  

Today, CEEL is required for Early Learning Indiana’s school leaders, the equivalent of school directors. “It’s about how we as early childhood leaders ensure that what’s happening in every classroom meets the needs of the children,” says Kissling.

If you talk to ELI leaders, they’ll tell you that CEEL is making a real difference — not only for them, but also for the teachers, children, and families in their schools.

A “Cinderella Story”

Kat Christian, an ELI school leader in Indianapolis, knows CEEL’s impact firsthand. Before her current position, Christian worked at a center where frequent staff callouts and other issues created a school environment that caused some parents to be concerned.

In the midst of these challenges and a rapid shift in personnel, Christian made the leap from classroom teacher to school leader. She says her CEEL training helped her staff turn around the culture of the school and regain the trust of families.

One thing Christian learned in CEEL was the concept of psychological safety: understanding staff, students, and parents as human beings and supporting them with clear communication, support, and expectations. “It makes a big difference when people feel that sense of psychological safety,” she says. “If people don’t understand what’s expected of them, then you don’t know how they will respond.”

Christian worked to make sure her team understood what was expected of them. And she also made it clear that the communication channels were open and she was willing to listen. This meant not only supporting team members through stressful times and helping them learn new skills but having tough conversations about expectations and follow-through.  

Within a year, the center had turned around. Staff members were showing up, and the team was working to improve their teaching skills. Parents were happy, and families felt comfortable, supported, and involved.

“My supervisor called it a ‘Cinderella story,’” Christian says. When she transferred to a new school in January 2025, she brought her CEEL skills with her. That month, her new location experienced more than 20 staff callouts. By July, that number had dropped to seven.

Convenient and Applicable

Monica Carrillo-Klein works as lead preschool teacher and assistant director at St. Bridget Hobart, a private early learning center in Hobart, Indiana. She enrolled in CEEL with the funding support of ELI. According to Carrillo-Klein, CEEL’s online format fit well into her schedule, and what she learned in the program immediately helped her on the job.

Carrillo-Klein found the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) module particularly useful. She says that it helped her develop activities tailored to the needs of each individual in her classroom, including a child with autism: “UDL helped me learn how to successfully modify and adjust my lessons to work better one-on-one with the child.”

Another module that has helped her succeed is Leading Change in Others. “I learned about becoming more of a facilitator to help, mostly by doing a lot more listening and supportive conversation,” she says. “This might include meeting with staff and talking about a different approach to handling parental conflict or conflict among children.”

Input from her CEEL cohort was critical to her learning. “I really liked the fact that there were people from all over the country, from … all over the continent,” Carrillo-Klein says. “The discussion boards were really helpful to bounce ideas off each other and share resources. I liked knowing that other people may have experienced the same challenges and seeing how they handled those experiences. It really made a difference for me.”

With successes like these, Kissling is committed to continuing CEEL training for all of ELI’s school leaders. “It’s really kept our leaders engaged over time,” she says. “The focus is always on something that they’ve experienced in the classroom — a child or a team member with that challenge. [Our leaders] want to go back to CEEL because they know they will get something valuable that they can use right away.”