Maximizing Time, Impact, and Motivation While Working at Home

A woman wearing glasses and a suit is smiling in front of a flag.

Sim Loh is a family partnership coordinator at Children’s Village, a nationally-accredited Keystone 4 STARS early learning and school-age enrichment program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, serving about 350 children. She supports children and families, including non-English speaking families of immigrant status, by ensuring equitable access to education, health, employment, and legal information and resources on a day-to-day basis. She is a member of the Children First Racial Equity Early Childhood Education Provider Council, a community member representative of Philadelphia School District Multilingual Advisory Council, and a board member of Historic Philadelphia.

Sim explains, “I ensure families know their rights and educate them on ways to speak up for themselves and request for interpretation/translation services. I share families’ stories and experiences with legislators and decision-makers so that their needs are understood. Attending Leadership Connections will help me strengthen and grow my skills in all domains by interacting with and hearing from experienced leaders in different positions. With newly acquired skills, I seek to learn about the systems level while paying close attention to the accessibility and barriers of different systems and resources and their impacts on young children and their families.”

During this extended time of social isolation, organizing your time, managing interruptions from family members, and staying motivated can be a challenge. If you have never worked from home, it can be anxiety producing and even annoying to feel stuck while managing professional obligations. To create a thriving home base for work, you’ll need explicit planning to make the most of your unique situation.

Our team of quality assessor and training specialists at the McCormick Center works remotely to bring professional evaluation to early childhood programs. They have many proven methods to achieve needed goals with a high level of impact while working at home. If you are working from home for the first time or simply need fresh inspiration, the following tips will help you be more effective:

WORKING EFFICIENTLY

Set your alarm for the same time each morning. Get started early.
Follow a morning routine. Get dressed, make your bed, and prepare for a regular work day. A steady routine reduces stress and increases focus and energy.
Share your daily schedule with others in your home, giving specific times for virtual meetings and phone calls. If young children are near, use a red light/green light sign to let them know when you need a few minutes (for example, when on the phone). For teens and others, use a sign that says, “I can talk at 10:00.”
Begin work in a prepared space at a specific time.
Keep a daily schedule and utilize your Outlook or Google calendar. Assign time blocks for tasks. A planned day yields a productive day with fewer surprises.
Organize each day with written goals and a “to-do” list. Be realistic and prioritize time-sensitive tasks. Check off completed items.
Be prepared for technology issues ahead of time. Post phone numbers for IT support. Learn how to manage your home internet and router and troubleshoot connectivity issues before you have a problem.
Situate your workspace near a window to get natural light. Connection to the outdoors reduces isolation and provides perspective. Open curtains, blinds, or windows for fresh air and connection with nature. Try a full spectrum light.
If you do not have a separate office, set boundaries for your work space. Keep office items, supplies, and resources in a portable, organized container for easy access and storage.
Schedule time to organize papers, digital files, and e-mail documents.
Practice intentional eating. Set a specific time to eat lunch away from your workspace. If children are home with you, enjoy this time with them. Pre-plan and portion snacks for the day (for them and for you) and drink plenty of water.
Set a definitive time at the end of the work day to turn off your computer and separate from work tasks. Take a walk, play a game with your children, work out, or cook dinner with your family.
Charge up. Take time each night to charge your computer and phone. This gives you more flexibility in the morning. When the weather permits, you can start your day outside with a fully charged laptop to work on a patio, porch, or balcony.

COMMUNICATING WITH COLLEAGUES

Send encouraging messages to team members by e-mail, phone, or text. Positive quotes and notes of affirmation can overcome disconnection and isolation.
Connect with colleagues to motivate each other, share goals, and ask for feedback.
Talk with an accountability partner to brainstorm problems and ideas, as well as to discuss planning strategies and accomplishments.
Respond to work e-mails, calls, and texts promptly.
Connect with supervisors to communicate questions, concerns, updates, clarifications about projects, or schedule changes.
When using e-mail, keep it professional. Use a conventional greeting and sign off. If you need to discuss more complicated matters, schedule a phone or video conference. This will help you clarify issues and get feedback without misunderstandings. Follow up phone calls with an e-mail to review follow-up items.
If you are responsible for supervising or supporting others, connect individually with a video call at a set time each week. Review work goals, discuss how things are going, identify challenges and successes, and reflect on overall perceptions about progress. Keep notes so that you can revisit action steps next time.

STAYING CALM AND HEALTHY

Remain sensitive to your physical comfort. Refocus away from the screen to rest your eyes. Elevate your laptop and use an external keyboard. Keep balanced posture while sitting to protect your neck and hand joints from strain.
Plan activity breaks to walk through your home or run up and down the stairs. Rev up your heart beat at least once an hour. Use simple stretching exercises or hand weights. Use break time to unload dishes, switch laundry, or reengage children. Refresh and revive with fresh tea, water, or coffee.
When feeling stressed or overwhelmed, take a mental break. Meditate or breathe deeply. Try a diffuser or ionizer with essential oils or light a candle. Warm a light-weight, heated neck pack.
Listen to ambient music (without words) or other calming or energizing music to help you focus.
Plan weekly dinners to include comfort foods in addition to healthy choices. Eat meals at the same time daily.
Schedule a walk daily and maintain your regular exercise schedule. Regular activity will yield better sleep and balanced emotions.
Bring your pet to work! The purring on your lap or happy paw on your foot can lower your blood pressure and increase your well-being.

Even without a commute, it may seem your work time passes quickly and the workload has multiplied. Tasks that were taken care of with a quick drop-in to a colleague’s office can now seem complex and unwieldy. It’s important to keep things in perspective and take things a day at a time.

Be patient with yourself and with others in your home. Extended physical closeness during uncertain times can place a strain on relationships. Take ownership for your needs and boundaries. Don’t expect others to guess your expectations. Don’t wait until you are frustrated to ask for what you need.

If you share a home office with a partner, roommate, or family member, touch base with each other at the start of the week. Talk about your expectations, ask for support you may need, and clarify understandings.

Make communication specific. “I need time with my office door closed. Then I’ll take a break at 11:00.” “I don’t mind some noise, but between 11:00 and noon, I need quiet to make phone calls.”

The more others know, the more they can support you. They will appreciate knowing your needs up front when you are cheerful and calm, rather than learning after the fact – when you feel discouraged or stressed. Clear communication will help minimize potential conflicts.

Finally, remember that you are not in this alone. The tendency to isolate when you are already isolated is a pattern you may need to counteract. Instead, call a friend and connect virtually with family members. Drop off food at a community food bank. Offer to pick up a dozen eggs for someone else while you are getting groceries. Check on at-risk neighbors. Lifting others’ spirits in practical ways puts compassion into action. Celebrate special moments and lessons learned. Stay anchored in the values and people you treasure most.

This is a perfect time for personal and professional growth. Keep a journal and write goals, ideas, and plans. Check out the extensive practical resource, Building on Whole Leadership: Energizing and Strengthening Your Early Childhood Program. You’ll find tips for personal and professional growth that will jumpstart your thinking and motivate your work. Review ideas to manage social isolation while caring for children. We also invite you to explore the McCormick Center Leadership Academies and other helpful professional resources. Reach out to connect and let us know how we can support you.

Marie Masterson, Ph.D. is director of quality assessment at the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership and author of books and articles related to high-quality teaching, parenting, and leadership. The following McCormick Center staff contributed to the tips: Esmeralda Arroyo, Pam Costakis, Wendy Connell, Celeste DeGuzman, Angela Hendricks, Jo Ann Hermanek, Sharon Lewis, Phillis Mills, Cara Murdoch, Nasser Nabhan, Catherine Rader, Sherry Rocha, Paula Steffen, Katherine Schmidt, Susan Schulhof, Migdalia Young, and Yvonne Williams.

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Measuring Organizational Conditions for Improving Quality

By McCormick Center • May 13, 2025

Leaders, policymakers, and systems developers seek to improve early childhood programs through data-driven decision-making. Data can be useful for informing continuous quality improvement efforts at the classroom and program level and for creating support for workforce development at the system level. Early childhood program leaders use assessments to help them understand their programs’ strengths and to draw attention to where supports are needed. Assessment data is particularly useful in understanding the complexity of organizational climate and the organizational conditions that lead to successful outcomes for children and families. Several tools are available for program leaders to assess organizational structures, processes, and workplace conditions, including: Preschool Program Quality Assessment (PQA) 1 Program Administration Scale (PAS) 2 Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (ECWJSI) 3 Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) 4 Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES) 5 Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL) 6 The Early Education Essentials is a recently developed tool to examine program conditions that affect early childhood education instructional and emotional quality. It is patterned after the Five Essentials Framework, 7 which is widely used to measure instructional supports in K-12 schools. The Early Education Essentials measures six dimensions of quality in early childhood programs: Effective instructional leaders Collaborative teachers Supportive environment Ambitious instruction Involved families Parent voice A recently published validation study for the Early Education Essentials 8 demonstrates that it is a valid and reliable instrument that can be used to assess early childhood programs to improve teaching and learning outcomes. METHODOLOGY For this validation study, two sets of surveys were administered in one Midwestern city; one for teachers/staff in early childhood settings and one for parents/guardians of preschool-aged children. A stratified random sampling method was used to select sites with an oversampling for the percentage of children who spoke Spanish. The teacher surveys included 164 items within 26 scales and were made available online for a three-month period in the public schools. In community-based sites, data collectors administered the surveys to staff. Data collectors also administered the parent surveys in all sites. The parent survey was shorter, with 54 items within nine scales. Rasch analyses was used to combine items into scales. In addition to the surveys, administrative data were analyzed regarding school attendance. Classroom observational assessments were performed to measure teacher-child interactions. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System TM (CLASS) 9 was used to assess the interactions. Early Education Essentials surveys were analyzed from 81 early childhood program sites (41 school-based programs and 40 community-based programs), serving 3- and 4-year old children. Only publicly funded programs (e.g., state-funded preschool and/or Head Start) were included in the study. The average enrollment for the programs was 109 (sd = 64); 91% of the children were from minority backgrounds; and 38% came from non-English speaking homes. Of the 746 teacher surveys collected, 451 (61%) were from school-based sites and 294 (39%) were from community-based sites. There were 2,464 parent surveys collected (59% school; 41% community). About one-third of the parent surveys were conducted in Spanish. Data were analyzed to determine reliability, internal validity, group differences, and sensitivity across sites. Child outcome results were used to examine if positive scores on the surveys were related to desirable outcomes for children (attendance and teacher-child interactions). Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to compute average site-level CLASS scores to account for the shared variance among classrooms within the same school. Exploratory factor analysis was performed to group the scales. RESULTS The surveys performed well in the measurement characteristics of scale reliability, internal validity, differential item functioning, and sensitivity across sites . Reliability was measured for 25 scales with Rasch Person Reliability scores ranging from .73 to .92; with only two scales falling below the preferred .80 threshold. The Rasch analysis also provided assessment of internal validity showing that 97% of the items fell in an acceptable range of >0.7 to <1.3 (infit mean squares). The Teacher/Staff survey could detect differences across sites, however the Parent Survey was less effective in detecting differences across sites. Differential item functioning (DIF) was used to compare if individual responses differed for school- versus community-based settings and primary language (English versus Spanish speakers). Results showed that 18 scales had no or only one large DIF on the Teacher/Staff Survey related to setting. There were no large DIFs found related to setting on the Parent Survey and only one scale that had more than one large DIF related to primary language. The authors decided to leave the large DIF items in the scale because the number of large DIFs were minimal and they fit well with the various groups. The factor analysis aligned closely with the five essentials in the K-12 model . However, researchers also identified a sixth factor—parent voice—which factored differently from involved families on the Parent Survey. Therefore, the Early Education Essentials have an additional dimension in contrast to the K-12 Five Essentials Framework. Outcomes related to CLASS scores were found for two of the six essential supports . Positive associations were found for Effective Instructional Leaders and Collaborative Teachers and all three of the CLASS domains (Emotional Support, Classroom Organization, and Instructional Support). Significant associations with CLASS scores were not found for the Supportive Environment, Involved Families, or Parent Voice essentials. Ambitious Instruction was not associated with any of the three domains of the CLASS scores. Table 1. HLM Coefficients Relating Essential Scores to CLASS Scores (Model 1) shows the results of the analysis showing these associations. Outcomes related to student attendance were found for four of the six essential supports . Effective Instructional Leaders, Collaborative Teachers, Supportive Environment, and Involved Families were positively associated with student attendance. Ambitious Instruction and Parent Voice were not found to be associated with student attendance. The authors are continuing to examine and improve the tool to better measure developmentally appropriate instruction and to adapt the Parent Survey so that it will perform across sites. There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered. Since the research is based on correlations, the direction of the relationship between factors and organizational conditions is not evident. It is unknown whether the Early Education Essentials survey is detecting factors that affect outcomes (e.g., engaged families or positive teacher-child interactions) or whether the organizational conditions predict these outcomes. This study was limited to one large city and a specific set of early childhood education settings. It has not been tested with early childhood centers that do not receive Head Start or state pre-K funding. DISCUSSION The Early Education Essentials survey expands the capacity of early childhood program leaders, policymakers, systems developers, and researchers to assess organizational conditions that specifically affect instructional quality. It is likely to be a useful tool for administrators seeking to evaluate the effects of their pedagogical leadership—one of the three domains of whole leadership. 10 When used with additional measures to assess whole leadership—administrative leadership, leadership essentials, as well as pedagogical leadership—stakeholders will be able to understand the organizational conditions and supports that positively impact child and family outcomes. Many quality initiatives focus on assessment at the classroom level, but examining quality with a wider lens at the site level expands the opportunity for sustainable change and improvement. The availability of valid and reliable instruments to assess the organizational structures, processes, and conditions within early childhood programs is necessary for data-driven improvement of programs as well as systems development and applied research. Findings from this validation study confirm that strong instructional leadership and teacher collaboration are good predictors of effective teaching and learning practices, evidenced in supportive teacher-child interactions and student attendance. 11 This evidence is an important contribution to the growing body of knowledge to inform embedded continuous quality improvement efforts. It also suggests that leadership to support teacher collaboration like professional learning communities (PLCs) and communities of practice (CoPs) may have an effect on outcomes for children. This study raises questions for future research. The addition of the “parent voice” essential support should be further explored. If parent voice is an essential support why was it not related to CLASS scores or student attendance? With the introduction of the Early Education Essentials survey to the existing battery of program assessment tools (PQA, PAS, ECWJSI, ECWES, ECJSS and SEQUAL), a concurrent validity study is needed to determine how these tools are related and how they can best be used to examine early childhood leadership from a whole leadership perspective. ENDNOTES 1 High/Scope Educational Research Foundation, 2003 2 Talan & Bloom, 2011 3 Curbow, Spratt, Ungaretti, McDonnell, & Breckler, 2000 4 Bloom, 2016 5 Bloom, 2016 6 Whitebook & Ryan, 2012 7 Bryk, Sebring, Allensworth, Luppescu, & Easton, 2010 8 Ehrlich, Pacchiano, Stein, Wagner, Park, Frank, et al., 2018 9 Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008 10 Abel, Talan, & Masterson, 2017 11 Bloom, 2016; Lower & Cassidy, 2007 REFERENCES Abel, M. B., Talan, T. N., & Masterson, M. (2017, Jan/Feb). Whole leadership: A framework for early childhood programs. Exchange(19460406), 39(233), 22-25. Bloom, P. J. (2016). Measuring work attitudes in early childhood settings: Technical manual for the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS) and the Early Childhood Work Environment Survey (ECWES), (3rd ed.). Lake Forest, IL: New Horizons. Bryk, A. S., Sebring, P. B., Allensworth, E., Luppescu, S., & Easton, J. Q. (2010). Organizing schools for improvement: Lessons from Chicago. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Curbow, B., Spratt, K., Ungaretti, A., McDonnell, K., & Breckler, S. (2000). Development of the Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 15, 515-536. DOI: 10.1016/S0885-2006(01)00068-0 Ehrlich, S. B., Pacchiano, D., Stein, A. G., Wagner, M. R., Park, S., Frank, E., et al., (in press). Early Education Essentials: Validation of a new survey tool of early education organizational conditions. Early Education and Development. High/Scope Educational Research Foundation (2003). Preschool Program Quality Assessment, 2nd Edition (PQA) administration manual. Ypsilanti, MI: High/Scope Press. Lower, J. K. & Cassidy, D. J. (2007). Child care work environments: The relationship with learning environments. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 22(2), 189-204. DOI: 10.1080/02568540709594621 Pianta, R. C., La Paro, K. M., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Talan, T. N., & Bloom, P. J. (2011). Program Administration Scale: Measuring early childhood leadership and management (2 nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Whitebook, M., & Ryan, S. (2012). Supportive Environmental Quality Underlying Adult Learning (SEQUAL). Berkeley, CA: Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California.