All Ages
Resources for Educators
This is a sponsored post. The sponsoring company compensated me for my time, however all opinions and text are my own. For more information, please see my full disclosure policy.
With the school year winding down, we’re all thinking about the upcoming summer months.
If you’ve been teaching for any length of time, you know that while the break is great for relaxing and recuperating from the hectic pace of the year, this time of year is also perfect for catching up on things you weren’t able to get to earlier this year and prep for next year at the same time.
This is a sponsored post on behalf of ChildCare Education Institute. I am being compensated for my time, however, all text and opinions are my own.
Now, that might mean prepping your lesson plans for the first few weeks of the new school year or rearranging your classroom to better utilize the space that you have or it might mean working on a little bit of professional development.
Every day, we teach young children.
We teach them their letters, their numbers, their colors, and shapes, but just because we’re at the head of the class doing the teaching doesn’t mean that we stop learning ourselves. So, whether you’re looking to learn a few new things over the summer to help you better manage your classroom come fall or you’re looking for courses to fulfill your continuing education or professional development requirements, the summer months present the perfect opportunity to do so.
But where do you find those courses? How do you know which courses are worth your time?
Well, that’s where CCEI, or ChildCare Education Institue, comes in.
What is CCEI?
ChildCare Education Institute® provides high-quality, online training courses and programs, applicable to those who work in an array of child care settings, including center-based care, Head Start, family child care, prekindergarten classrooms, after-school environments and more. Over 150 English and Spanish training courses are available to meet licensing, recognition program, and Head Start Requirements. CCEI also has online certification programs that provide the coursework requirement for national credentials including the CDA and Director and Early Childhood Credentials. CCEI, a Council for Professional Recognition CDA Gold Standard™ training provider, is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission (DEAC), is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and is accredited as an Authorized Provider by the International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET).
- 99 percent of students say they would recommend CCEI to others
- Over 5 million online course hours completed
- Graduated over 13,000 early childhood professionals from CDA and other certificate programs
- Web-based coursework, available 24/7/365
- 30 hours of new content added each year
- IACET CEUs awarded for completed coursework at no additional cost
Great, but are their courses any good?
If you’re looking to get a jumpstart on your ECE summer professional development requirements before the school year starts, save yourself some time, some money, and a whole lot of headaches with the extensive course offerings available through ChildCare Education Institute.
I recently took CCEI’s COG101: Critical Thinking Skills in the Preschool Environment and I was shocked at how simple and easy it was! I personally love that this course not only gives you a deeper understanding of child development but also provides you with real, actionable steps that you can begin to implement with the children in your care as well.
If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about the process that young children will go through as they learn to think more critically and how you can help them achieve that goal, I highly recommend this course!
This particular course, for instance, touches on the stages of Bloom’s Taxonomy within the first few slides. From there, rather than simply glazing over a quick definition of each stage, the course actually spends several slides walking you through and thoroughly explaining each one of those stages so that by the time you have finished the course, you not only know what Bloom’s Taxonomy is, but you fully understand it, and more importantly, can use it with the children in your care.
If that’s not enough, the course also contains a number of videos that provide you with activity ideas that you can take back to your classroom and try out immediately. I highly recommend you try it today!
I firmly believe that children learn best when taught how to look for answers rather than where to look for them. They need to not only know that those critical thinking skills exist but also practice them often.
The COG101: Critical Thinking Skills in the Preschool Environment course from CCEI reinforced all of that and built upon the idea further with reasoning, examples, and some activity ideas thrown in as well and I personally love that this course not only gives you a deeper understanding of child development but also provides you with real, actionable steps that you can begin to implement with the children that you work with as well.
Covering more than 100 slides full of information, videos, graphs, and more, this course completely lived up to my expectations for great professional development.
It’s a breeze to navigate and you’ll know as you work your way through that you’re retaining and understanding the information being presented to you as there are multiple quick assessments that pop up throughout the course.
Just answer the question based on the reading and information that you’ve been given and move on. Get the answer wrong and the course automatically redirects you back to where the information was covered so that you can go over it again.
Basically, you’re guaranteed to master the material before completing the course.
In addition, they offer both individual and center-based subscriptions, provide student support, offer a free trial course, have an activities library, and host a discussion forum. To top it all off, they’re nationally accredited so you can be sure that you’re getting quality courses.
Final Thoughts
From initially getting set up on the platform to actually taking the course and receiving my certificate at the end, the entire process was super smooth and a whole lot easier than I was expecting it to be.
When you’re done and ready to take the final quiz to pass the course, the process is just as easy as taking the course itself.
Just answer a few questions about the material that you covered in the course to demonstrate your knowledge on the topic being covered and instantly find out how you did.
Once you pass the test, you’ll have the option to view a digital PDF copy of your completion certificate and print it right there at home while CCEI takes care of reporting your professional development hours directly to state agencies on your behalf, letting you sit back and enjoy the rest of your summer.
I mean, come on, you can’t beat clocking professional development hours while you hang out at home with a cup of coffee.
It’s definitely a much better alternative to in-person professional development trainings that I remember. Spending half a day inside a stuffy conference room watching long training videos or listening to speakers give speeches that they had already given a hundred times before is definitely not my idea of fun.
With CCEI, on the other hand, you don’t even have to change out of your pajamas if you don’t feel like it and with the sheer number of amazing courses available through CCEI, you might just end up adding a few more professional development pajama days to your calendar for fun! Plus, you get a free trial course, which is AWESOME! They also offer a discussion forum which provides a learning community online that you would get in a classroom — how cool is that?
