- Just ahead on "Black Issues Forum," we'll talk about promising educational models that are helping address some of the current childcare crisis issues within the state.

We'll cover one model in particular, at Kate's Korner, that helps early childhood educators restore their identities and reestablish the important roles they play in caring for our children.

Stay with us.

[upbeat music] - [Announcer] "Black Issues Forum" is a production of PBS North Carolina with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.

[upbeat music] ♪ - Welcome to "Black Issues Forum."

I'm Kenia Thompson.

Early childhood education plays a crucial role in the development of all children, including those from Black communities.

Studies prove that the impact of early childhood education on Black youth should be multifaceted, and as a result, can influence various aspects of their lives, enriching their childhood experience as a whole.

Today, we have three guests with us who are dedicated to ensuring equity in early childhood education throughout the state of North Carolina.

And in this first block, I'd like to welcome to the show Kezia "Kate" Goodwin, owner of Kate's Korner, and "Nana" Valerie Uchegbu, licensed clinical social worker and founder of Dominion Insight.

Welcome to the show, ladies.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having us.

- Thank you.

- Of course, Kate, you've been here with us before, and I'm so grateful to have you back again.

We've discussed the impact of expulsion and exclusionary practices that prevent children of color access to an early childhood experience, a good early childhood experience.

Since then, you know, there's been a lot of developments that have enabled you to be able to identify additional contributions to the childcare crisis.

Give us an update of where you are, and tell us about those contributions.

- Yeah, thank you for having me.

Glad to be on the show.

Well, we've done a lot of work in the last few months, mainly through just operation of seeing what works and what doesn't, and relying a lot on the research that's happening in early childhood education for, what is the impact, and why is there a crisis?

So we identified the explicit bias and exclusionary practices that we talked about last time in the show, that comes from a person's personal bias.

Then we also recognize in our crisis that we have childcare deserts, which mean there are not enough childcare centers for children who need care, mainly in urban and rural settings.

And then, additionally, we have a mass exodus, if you will, of a lot of early childhood educators who are leaving the concentration because of different reasons, mainly pay.

And some of the other things that we kind of unveiled during our research is why we created what we call the Kate's Korner Empowerment Model, which directly, I feel like it's the core reason why childcare might have a crisis, is the care and the nurturing of the educators who are actually doing the work on our front lines with our children every day.

So after we have identified this as one of the core issues, we kind of broke down, what does it really mean to have an empowerment model?

What do educators really need to be able to feel like they are valued and seen and heard?

A lot of those things were easily addressed by, as an owner, making a decision that we need to be able to have a compensation that is something that our educators can live on, being able to provide them with healthcare benefits and things like that, which eased their concern.

But it really is in the premise of how early childhood education programs are ran today.

So technically, or typically, you see kind of a pyramid model where the director's at the top, and then the children, and then you concern yourself about the providers kind of lastly.

We believe, in the empowerment model, that that needed to be turned upside-down, that we needed to focus on those who are going to be contributing to the health and wellbeing, the mental stability, health, and wellbeing of children every day.

So how do we do that?

How do we create an environment where their educator, who has taken a lot of their time, energy, and effort to gain degrees or certifications, how do they begin to feel in that environment where, I always call it the cup mentality, right?

So what is in the cup belongs to you as an individual, and then what flows over belongs to those who are around you, who you impact in your community.

But who's doing the pouring?

Where is it coming from?

And what we identified is not a lot of pouring was going on.

There's a concept in early childhood education that, and educators who are watching can relate to this, like, leave your issues at the door.

Come in here and give 110% to the children, and then if children are not here, you know, we're gonna send you home or whatever that contributing factor is in there, the language that's used in early childhood.

- I wanna pause there and bring Nana in because you've been working closely with her on this empowerment model.

- Yes.

- Nana, you've been able to create a unique program for early childhood educators that help reclaim the role that they have in children's lives that they encounter day to day.

I wanna start off by asking you the question, you know, how, and I know this was off the cuff, but how much time do children spend with these childcare providers?

And I'm guessing it's the majority of their time, and so that impact is great.

- Absolutely.

So one thing that's really important to remember is that childcare providers are family.

They are, in essence, the parent away from the parents.

So they're spending a large portion of their day, just as we as adults are spending most of our time at work, so are the children.

And so, knowing that has really inspired us to create this empowerment model where educators can remember that they're a person too.

They're not only to work and to provide education, but it's okay for them to take a pause and learn how to feel inspired, how to learn self-care.

One thing that Ms. Kate just mentioned was the leave everything at the door, right?

Leave your feelings, leave your issues.

That's unrealistic for a human to do successfully, and what happens is burnout when a person can no longer expect themselves to continue to give when their cup is empty.

And so that's when we start seeing burnout, when people are starting to miss work a little more because they're not sleeping well, they're anxious, they're a little sad sometimes, right?

So they're really not able to come at their best.

So we've been able to, one, learn more about the community, what early educators need, and we've developed care at Kate's, which is a holistic approach of really inspiring early childhood educators.

We provide them with yoga so they can learn how to breathe, how to stretch, right?

They're doing a lot of work all day, running with children and playing, right, holding babies.

That's a lot on the body.

So we're teaching them how to stretch and how to move in different ways that's promoting health.

We also have group coaching that occurs to help navigate them to find a self-care plan.

But really, we start with, what is your purpose?

What are your values?

Where did you get those values from?

So we really take time to analyze, where did these values come from?

Is this from society?

Did we get this from our parents?

Maybe a teacher was inspirational to us, and we mimic their behaviors, and those values became our own.

So we really take time to understand values and purpose, and that's how we're able to start this plan of self-care, self-discovery, but also feeling inspired because we're really starting from the root of the person, and not just identifying them as their profession, but we're looking at them from a human perspective.

- So many factors that make up, right, this development.

Kate, when we look at the workforce community that makes up this space, who are we talking about?

- Yeah, in the triangle we represent, 78% of that workforce is African American females.

They either have either a certification all the way to a master's degree in this concentration.

So that is the majority of the contributing, you know, educators in this space.

- I know you focus primarily on women.

I know I was one of that group when I was, you know, coming up in college.

I definitely loved my time working in childcare.

But one thing I didn't notice a lot were a lot of male presence, Black male presence at that.

Can you speak to that a little bit?

- Yeah, it's always been an ongoing struggle in early childhood education, whether it's the viewpoint of parents being uncomfortable with a male caring for their babies, or it's just, you know, "How do I contribute to my family?"

and the financial strain of not making enough in early childhood education.

There's, you know, a number of factors.

I think in our society, we're working through this, and I know Nana can like attest to this, is, you know, the Black role model in our society has to become strengthened.

And it begins, it's just that teacher looks just like the encouragement we give to fathers to be very participating and very present.

And so we've been in lack of male educators, both in K through 12 and early childhood, but it is, you know, something that we have to continue to work on in our recruitment efforts.

- Nana, let's expand on some of those barriers.

A lot of them are social-emotional barriers that exist, preventing Black educators from being connected to their purpose.

Speak on that a little bit, if you could.

- Sure.

So that goes back to the values, right, and really understanding what values are.

But that helps to create your mission.

If you know what your mission is in life, if you understand a little more about your purpose, then you're able to show up differently for people.

And so we're really starting to realize that some people never had space when they were younger to dream, or maybe someone told them that their dream wasn't good enough, and they had to stop.

So what we want to do with early childhood educators is to give them space to dream again, to let them have space for that, that it's safe, and to understand that maybe there was something that occurred, either professionally or in my personal life, that caused me to respond in certain ways to children or to other people.

And so we want to reteach in a safe space.

And so I think that's one way that, even if there are some socioeconomic challenges, by really just looking at the individual, and then allowing them to know that they're part of the community, we can really reshape and reframe some of those challenges.

- Yeah, I love that.

Dreaming again, right?

Everyone should be allowed to dream again.

Kate, I know that many of the issues that exist are not new issues, that some of them are very systemic issues dating back far, far, far time ahead of what we know today.

Let's share some of the historical details of the Black child's experience in education that existed, and that has followed us and continues to impact us today.

- Yeah, I think that we have to remember that early childhood needs were proven by research and development that started with the HighScope experiment and how, you know, post-war, we decided that the early childhood experience was needed.

A lot of the research was based on African American children.

However, what we know as a practice is that enrollment, we expel, and, you know, expel children very early in age.

So what has happened is that we've created an argument for early childhood education, and then we've created a way to expel African American children out of that process.

It is always mind-boggling to me that expulsion happens in early childhood.

It is 10 times greater than middle school students experience, and it's only their brain hasn't developed.

It's zero to five that that development is happening.

So it's a major disruption.

The contributing factor, of course, was bias and remembering that our education system in this country wasn't built for us.

It was illegal for us to learn for a very, very long time.

So when we introduced us into a learning environment, many of those structures did not change for us to adapt to, nor was there a cultural competence that came into play in creating new programs.

So that's been a historical problem.

So now that you get into early childhood education, we know that most of our educators who go into early childhood education might've been told, "It's a easy degree to get.

You're playing with kids all day."

But we know in these years that the brain development research that keeps coming is showing you that zero through five is where the brain develops the most.

And so we are shifting their understanding of this purpose and job, that they have a huge contributing factor to the shape and development of the future.

And what is that gonna look like for African American communities when you can identify when an educator was in those same environmental places and not cared for or taken care of, and then you put them in charge as an educator, how do you get them to contribute in a different and meaningful way?

And we basically understood that that has to change.

If I didn't feel valued as a student, it's very hard for me to value a student.

And so disrupting that mindset and that process by helping them with self-awareness and identifying some of the nine core values that are a part of the empowerment model was essential.

And it helps us be able to come out of, I know it's a trigger word for some people to hear, but I call it slave mentality.

When you are boxed into this idea of who you are, based off of what someone has told you or your experience, and that you start to not only dream again, but then refactor in what is available to us and a knowledge of self.

So the empowerment of, how do I feel emotionally about a thing helps you give space, margin, and room for a child, to be sympathetic with that child and understand what they're experiencing at home with their parents or whatever.

So it is a ongoing need to progress and be better in our communities around early childhood and the educators that contribute to that.

- Yeah, you mentioned you've got nine core factors in this model.

Share those with us, please.

- Yeah, nine core values.

Well, I'll share a few of them with you.

One that is dear to my heart is, it begins with you, right?

So self-awareness.

When you can build margin and know how you emotionally feel about your day, how you started it, you know, some of the things that Nana was referring to, like, you know, you have problems making rent and making things work in your household, being aware of how you're emotionally feeling, and then going into an environment where there is a need that a child has, it builds empathy, it builds a space, it builds spaces for them, as well as, you know, grace.

We often are in environments, you know, I have 100% women that are employed at Kate's Korner.

A lot of mistakes can be made, things can be said out of emotion, you know?

But we have to remember grace.

We want grace, we need grace.

It also builds that margin for you to give empathy to someone's mistakes, and encourage them, and champion that mistakes are lessons learned.

The other, you know, contributing factor for us in our model is making sure that people have an authenticity of how they show up.

You know, I do a check in the morning.

I'm like, "Are you 100%, 75%?"

You know, "What does your co-teacher need to know about how you are and how you're showing up today?"

Children need to be seen, heard, and given attention to, to be able to meet their social-emotional needs.

And that is no different for educators.

And so we know that the pouring that I mentioned earlier is pouring into them before the day starts.

Most of Nana's programming happens at 7:00 AM before the day even starts for them.

So it's setting a tone, it's setting, you know, a culture that, "I am here, I am a contributor, and I'm here to support."

So that's a major contribution.

And the nine core values help us keep grounded, and it helps us keep moving as a team together.

- I love it.

- I would love to add.

- Sure, go ahead.

- With the core values, as Ms. Kate mentioned, this is a culture.

And so with our program, we are teaching the culture, and we know that culture is not just a piece of paper, right?

Like, you have to exhibit, you have to learn, you have to practice, you have to make mistakes too.

And so what we're doing with the core values is that we're really having them to say it in your own words, what does this mean?

We've had exercises where they can draw out the values, they can work together as a team, but now also give examples of what does it look like to have wisdom?

What does it look like to be inclusive?

Let's give examples, and we have, of what that looks like with the children, with the parents, but also with each other.

And that's really a useful part of this program, is that they're not only learning concepts, but how to apply the concepts in their day-to-day professional lives, but also personally too, which leads to work-life balance, which is our goal.

- Such intention there.

Such intention.

Let's move on to talk about the financial impact.

So creating a space like the one Kezia has doesn't come without expenses of time, human resources, and of course, money.

To discuss the financial needs to structure a system like Kate's Korner, we wanna add Cherelle James to the conversation, CEO of My Local CFO, and CFO profit strategist.

Welcome to the show, Cherelle.

- Thank you.

- You've heard the discussion.

Let's talk about what it takes to finance a model like this.

- Yeah, so there's a passion side of this, right?

And then there's a financial side that has to happen to make sure that this works successfully.

And one of the things that I say all the time and I teach all the time is every decision that you make has a financial component to it.

Because I think we have a way of putting financial over here on one side and operations over here on the next side, and not really connecting the two.

With the empower empowerment model, what we're looking at is saying, "Okay, well, we need to make sure that financially professional development has a space, that there's a space for that professional development.

Not in the background, not as an afterthought, but as something that is on the forefront of what we're doing."

So we're talking for-profit, not-for-profit, right?

So what that means is we've gotta make sure that it's sustainable and profitable, but have that fiscal responsibility to say, "If we're gonna put our people first, how do we do that?"

And so some of the ways that we look at doing that with the empowerment model is public and private partnerships.

We have partners that are part of the community, as well as those that are governmental partners, right?

In different ways.

It may be when we talk about the lunch program or the program to feed the kids.

That's a governmental program that may or may not be a part of your childcare in that way, but that either adds dollars or those dollars that you have to figure out, where do you get those dollars from?

So when I talk public and private, we're looking at all the resources that we need for the childcare center to run, but we're also looking at partners such as investors.

There may be investors that say, "Hey, I have, you know, this mission and vision that you have, I buy into it, and so I wanna see how can I help in that way as well."

- Now, not many smaller providers fall into a financial gap that prevents them from thinking that they can create programs like this.

How do you fund your services and make it affordable for providers like Kate?

- Sure, so the first advice I would give is to say it out loud, talk about it.

That's really how this program was cultivated, was by conversation.

So that's really the first piece is to see what it is that you need and start speaking to people.

Start talking to folks within your network.

Share your dream, right, not to keep it inside.

And then things can absolutely move forward.

So on our end, we were able to create this partnership because our vision mirrored.

So finding folks that you can partner with where your vision, your purpose is in alignment, then funding can be found.

But it's really about creating your vision, and then moving forward from there.

And so with us, we love to work with small businesses and entrepreneurs here at Dominion Insight, and we can help providers to either, one, start thinking about their future and what programming they may want, and we can then develop a program for them once funding is available.

So even if it's just to start thinking, we can have sessions to think through those thoughts, and then move forward with program development.

- That's great.

A few minutes left here, Cherelle.

What resources are available to provide those who may want to have this type of programming to support their educators?

- Yeah, as I mentioned before, leveraging your network is number one.

That's a great place to go for resources.

Number two, people like to bank, but just because you're at one bank doesn't mean that that's right for your industry, but finding the bank that works for the child childcare industry, and then partnering with them in that way.

The other is leveraging those community resources that are already there.

You've got the Small Business Center, you have the SBTDC.

There's a lot of free community resources that are already there to help you get off the ground and lift it, and from there, there's other funding that can be connected.

- Kate, about a minute left.

I know you have so many plans and visions for Kate's Korner.

What's next for you?

- Yeah, so with this wonderful team of women that have like-mindedness to get us down the road, we are going to be endeavoring to open a center back at the Durham Technical College.

And so that was a small pilot that we started with President Buxton.

Now we are going to go full-fledged and have a full-service childcare center that will service the East Durham neighborhoods, which has been identified as a childcare desert.

I'm beyond measure excited about that project.

We'll be starting our environmental studies and getting our plans together for that project.

But that is what is on the immediate horizon.

I wanna continue to work with non-profit companies that want to come and contribute in meaningful ways.

That's another structural way that we'll keep pushing, and we'll keep pushing this model.

This model is going to be heard near and far for all those who can understand that this is probably the core of how we rectify what is called a crisis in early childhood education.

- Well, I know I don't speak alone when I say we look forward to seeing the impact that you continue to have in communities.

Okay, Goodwin, Valerie Uchegbu, and Cherelle James, thank you so much for being here with us.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

- Of course.

Well, we invite you to engage with us on Instagram using the hashtag #BlackIssuesForum.

You can also find our full episodes on pbsnc.org/blackissuesforum and on the PBS Video app.

Thank you for watching.

I'm Kenia Thompson.

I'll see you next time.

[upbeat music] ♪ [upbeat music continues] ♪ - [Announcer] "Black Issues Forum" is a production of PBS North Carolina with support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

- [Announcer] Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you, who invite you to join them in supporting PBS NC.