New Mexico is committed to developing and improving early childhood education and care. To that end, in fiscal year 2022 the Early Childhood Trust Fund was established to provide a transformative long-term investment in the health, education, and well-being of New Mexico’s youngest children. As a result of this funding and following a needs assessment, the Early Childhood Education and Care Department (ECECD) in New Mexico was created to make the vision of providing each and every New Mexico child birth–age 5 with equitable access to quality early learning opportunities to ensure they are ready for success in kindergarten and beyond a reality.
One focus of ECECD’s strategic plan is recruiting and retaining a high-quality early childhood workforce. To achieve this goal requires support of teachers’ ongoing growth and professional development. ECECD has selected practice-based coaching (PBC) as a proven approach to build educators’ skills. PBC is a collaborative professional development approach that is characterized by its interactive and personalized nature that involves observation, feedback, and reflective processes, tailored to individual educators’ needs and goals.
To ensure fidelity of practice-based coaching, which is essential to its effectiveness, ECECD partnered with TORSH to implement the online coaching and professional learning platform, TORSH Talent. TORSH Talent provides a secure environment for coach/teacher teams to create their shared goal and action plans, allows teachers to upload video examples of their practice, and for coaches to provide focused observation with time-stamped comments.
The Central Regional Educational Cooperative (CREC) recently published a whitepaper that outlines New Mexico’s journey with PBC, including their partnership with TORSH, and the impact this innovative approach has had on literacy practices, social-emotional practices, individual student supports, and culturally and linguistically-sensitive practices.
If you’re interested in learning more about using TORSH Talent to support teacher retention and effectiveness for your statewide or regional early childhood program, let us know. Our early childhood experts would love to learn about your goals and discuss ways we can streamline and expand coaching for your educators and practitioners.
