Rethinking Leadership in Early Education: CEEL Series 2

Offered through the Zaentz Professional Learning Academy at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the Certificate in Early Education Leadership (CEEL) is designed to provide leaders with the core knowledge, management skills, and tools necessary to build and advance high-quality early education across learning environments. CEEL consists of three carefully crafted series. Series 2: Rethinking Leadership in Early Education addresses topics that provide early education leaders with concrete leadership and management knowledge, skills, and tools. Series 2 contains four Learn modules and one Plan and Apply module.

Overview

Each of the three series includes four instructional Learn modules that build participants’ core knowledge in key areas, including early learning and development, adult learning, and leadership and management. The fifth module is a Plan and Apply module designed to support participants as they map key learnings and to create and implement a plan tailored to their site and work.

Rethinking Leadership in Early Education integrates innovative work from the Harvard Business School and beyond to focus on content early education leaders need to transform their professional settings and lead for sustainable quality improvement. The four Learn modules plus the Plan and Apply module that comprise Series 2 offer insights into leadership and management that will support improvement efforts.

Participants can begin with any Learn module and take these modules in any order. We recommend participants complete all four Learn modules in a series before they take the Plan and Apply module within that series.

The fee is $245 per module; see the table below for discounts. Participants must complete all 15 modules to earn the full CEEL certificate.

Series 2 Learn Modules

Learn A: Effective Approaches to Leadership 
Learn about adaptive leadership and its vital role in getting to effective, high-quality early learning settings. Gain leadership skills and tools to increase collaborative problem-solving in your professional setting. Learn about common leadership challenges in early education settings and innovative approaches to addressing these challenges.

Learn B: Leading Change in Others 
Leading effective reform for quality improvement ultimately means leading adults in early education settings through change processes. Learn how, as a leader, you create the vision of your professional setting and serve as a model for comfortably, successfully leading and managing change to support adults for improvement in the workplace—and ultimately to support improved policy and practice.

Learn C: Leveraging Diversity for Improvement 
Understand diversity and all its dimensions across the early education system. Discover how to engage with diversity in a way that increases the creativity and relevance of adults’ collaborative work. Learn concrete strategies and tools to effectively address diversity as a strength and opportunity rather than a challenge to overcome.

Learn D: Effective Teams
Explore processes that establish trusting and productive working relationships among team members. Learn how to work with your team—or to organize other teams—to develop a clearly articulated direction and ensure all members are pursuing the same agenda. Discover strategies and tools that ensure that team work is productive and meaningful.

Plan and Apply
Translate the concepts acquired in the Series 2 Learn modules into an action plan. Map out key concepts derived from each Learn module and create an implementation strategy tailored to the goals and challenges specific to your own professional environment. Upon completion of all four Learn modules, if you haven’t registered for the full series, you will receive an invitation to complete this final module. 

Program Details

CEEL is designed to support flexibility. The Learn modules may be taken independently or as part of the overall certificate program. You can begin with any Learn module and complete them in any order. The online activities are asynchronous, allowing you to choose when, within a given week, you complete them. All content is self-paced, including group discussions. Facilitators moderate discussion boards throughout each of the three-week Learn modules.

Each three-week Learn module requires a total of 10 hours of work, and includes a mix of self-paced learning, group discussions, and job-embedded applications. Activities include:

• Brief video lectures from Professors Lesaux and Jones that include insights from current research in early education and related leadership strategies and practices;
• Readings;
• Self-reflection exercises;
• Online discussions;
• Animated depictions of real scenarios drawn from early education practice;
• Facilitated cohort discussions;
• Strategies for practical application; and
• Job-embedded practice where you will apply the concepts and techniques learned.

A central feature of the HGSE experience is cohort learning, and therefore the CEEL curriculum is designed to create a community of practice so that participants can learn with and from each other.

In the four-week Plan and Apply module, participants are provided with scaffolded supports as they map key learnings and create and implement a plan tailored to their own site and work. The Plan and Apply module requires a total of 15 hours of work.

Who Should Participate

CEEL is designed for early education leaders and practitioners, including:

• Directors of early education centers or programs
• Administrators, coaches, and practitioners in public school preK programs
• Leaders of early education service organizations
• State leaders and administrators
• Philanthropists, grant-makers, and advocates

About CEEL

Gain the core knowledge, management skills, and tools necessary to build and advance high-quality early education across learning environments. The CEEL content is aligned and coordinated across its three series to ensure early education leaders have access to the latest research, knowledge, and strategies.

The three series included in CEEL are:

• Series 1: Leading for Early Learning and Development
• Series 2: Rethinking Leadership in Early Education
• Series 3: Supporting Optimal Teaching and Learning Environments

CEEL takes place exclusively online and is designed to offer working professionals in early education an opportunity to deepen their core knowledge and enhance their skills through a flexible, online, and job-embedded learning experience. Materials are interactive and case-based.

Discount and Tuition Assistance

The following discounts are available for eligible individuals and groups. Please contact us to receive your discount codes. Please note that none of the discounts can be combined with another discount code. There is no tuition assistance available for this program at the moment.

*Groups for Series need to register for all five modules at once before Learn A’s registration deadline and pay for the entire amount before Learn A starts.

Fees & Policies