Growing Day Care Directors
Brooklyn Kindergarten Society Trains Successful Teachers to Lead Centers
by Anne Silverstein
Soon after Jim Matison became Executive Director of the Brooklyn Kindergarten Society, which runs five of the city’s highly lauded Day Care Centers, one of his Directors left and he began his search for a top-notch early childhood educator.
A five-month search later, he finally found a replacement. But he never imagined how tough a task it would be. “I found someone and it worked out beautifully.”
But he realized that with the retirement of another Director looming in the near future, he’d soon be back in the same position. “I only hire people who I think will be stars,” he said. Given how difficult his search had been, and given
the number of bright, enthusiastic teachers working in his centers who not only love teaching but have expressed interest in careers in early childhood education, he decided to grow his own Director.
He selected five of his teachers to be the first participants in an in-house professional development program that he would design. “Their classes hum,” he said, as to why these teachers were chosen. All have been teaching between four and 10 years, he explained, and, “They’re all adults – mature, have gravitas, when they speak, people listen to
them. “ And they all were enthusiastic about participating in the training.
They meet for a three to 3 ½-hour evening session once every few weeks to learn about leadership, management skills and communication. Mr. Matison relies on his nearly 40 years of education and management skills for his curriculum; he has been a Principal of a private elementary school in NYC, the CEO of a corporation and has started companies. He also worked in City Hall in the Beame administration on education policy.
During a break from the impossible task of wrestling with city’s new EarlyLearn RFP, Mr. Matison explained some of his thoughts about training Directors. (Editor’s note: EarlyLearn, the city’s vision for early childhood education, has stymied advocates and Day Care staffs as to how to provide better care with millions less in funding.)
One of Mr. Matison’s goals is to demystify management, i.e., these are skills that can be learned.
“We talked about what skills were needed,” he said, listing them: patience, common sense, an understanding of business, a willingness to work hard, and arguably, the most important, the ability to communicate.
His topics have included racism, sexism and class issues, and some of the conversations have been “explosive” but incredibly valuable as his class explores stereotypes and bias.
“Even if you think you’ve gotten rid of all of them, everyone still has them. You have to be sensitive to all these stereotypes and get past them, and help others get past it,” he said.
