Trust the Process: Team Building is Not an Event

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.”

There is this basic value that whatever you do, you do for the community and the family. It is not about you as an individual. Yes, it is important to do well, but because it will enable others to do well. Even in the midst of dire circumstances, people will say “let me see if I can help.” – Anna Escobedo Cabral

Months ago, I was asked about how our team navigates team building. I thought, “We value the outcomes of team building, and I can write about it.” Then COVID-19 hit Chicago, and team building was the furthest thing from my mind!

Currently on a shelter-in-place order, I am filled with a mix of anxiety and gratefulness. I am grateful for my work team – our relationships, connections, collaboration, and dedication. Ah, I am thinking about our team, built on the foundation that relationships matter. Interactions matter. Learning environments for children and adults matter.

Most of our work has always been remote, and we have been transparent and intentional about creating an environment of trust and support from the beginning. The Leadership Freak, Dan Rockwell, shares “Positive environments are never an accident.” I knew that a time would come when we had a particularly challenging day, and the only people who could really understand were those on our team. Yes, family and friends could offer support, but the acknowledgment of, “I hear you, and I get it” would come from us. I never would have thought that our foundation would carry us through a pandemic! Our first virtual team meeting, after our university went on full remote status, was a heartwarming reflection of a connected team.

In Salsa, Soul, and Spirit Leadership for a Multicultural Age, Juana Bordas (2012) describes that in collectivist cultures “…leaders are expected to listen, integrate the collective wisdom, and reflect the group’s behavior and values. Leaders charge people up, facilitate their working together, and help them solve problems. As they empower others, a community of leaders evolves.” In this time, I’m grateful our environment is grounded in a collective orientation.

The process of strengthening our connections has been directly tied to the development of our professional outcomes in support of early childhood teachers and administrators. Some strategies we use to build our team include:

Starting with Why: As a diverse team (education, experience, race, ethnicity, and age), sharing why we do this work is our way of exploring each other’s cultures and passions and discovering our common purpose in working together. Learn more from this TED Talk, Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Action.

Sharing Joys & Concerns: Our team meetings start with an opportunity to share who we are before discussing what we do. We build relationships that have sustained us through the joys and challenges that are an inevitable part of life. Shout out the McCormick Center’s very own, Linda Butkovich, for instilling this practice!

Breaking the Ice: New team members lead the ice-breaker at the next meeting when they join our staff. We learn so much about a person through the activity they choose, and integrating them into the team early is an intentional part of our process.

Being Critical Friends: We reflect on our work and critique each other from a place of growth and learning. In our professional learning community (PLC), we struggle with the discomfort of disagreeing with a colleague, but we’re coming to appreciate the value of learning and growth that results. Learn more about Deepening Critical Reflection.

Having Team Teach-Outs: We don’t have to be experts, but we all have expertise. Learning with and from each other is valued. Team members rotate leading much of our professional learning.

Leveraging Technology: Dan Rockwell, says, “Energy is social” and considers every interaction to be an energy exchange. We strive to exchange positive learning energy when we come together in person and virtually. We use various technology tools to manage our work and maintain our connection (e.g., Zoom, Google Docs, and Trello).

Trusting the Process: Fred Rogers reminds us, “Human relationships are primary in all of living. When the gusty winds blow and shake our lives, if we know that people care about us, we may bend with the wind, but we won’t break.” Our team has its share of challenges, but we reflect on our strong foundation to get us through the difficult times…together.

Melissa Casteel, EdD, is the Director of Quality Assessment for the City of Chicago contracts at the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership. In this role, she supports a team charged with providing data used to improve teaching practices and inform professional learning. As a national reliability anchor for the Program Administration Scale (PAS) and the Business Administration Scale for Family Child Care (BAS), she coordinated and facilitated training on various early childhood leadership topics. A first-generation college graduate and daughter of a family child care provider, Dr. Casteel is a 2019-2020 Barbara Bowman Leadership Fellow.

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Examining the Role of Employer Benefits and Turnover in Center-based Child Care

By Robyn Kelton, M.A. • June 27, 2025

INTRODUCTION Turnover rates in child care are among the highest in education, with over 160,000 workforce openings predicted annually (Bassok et al., 2014; Doromal et al., 2022; Joughin, 2021; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). While some turnover is expected and even necessary, the levels of turnover experienced in the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) are not only alarmingly high but deeply problematic. In 2021, a national survey conducted by the National Association for the Education of Young Children found that over 80% of child care centers were experiencing a staffing shortage, with the majority of those programs reporting one-to-five open roles, but 15% reporting between six and 15 open roles (NAEYC, 2021). Staffing shortages result in lost revenue, financial uncertainty, and program instability, often forcing administrators to operate below capacity and/or under reduced hours (NAEYC, 2021; NAEYC, 2024; Zero to Three, 2024). Limited enrollment slots and classroom and program closures lead to increased waiting lists (Zero to Three, 2024; Carrazana, 2023). In turn, families are placed in a highly vulnerable position of needing to leave the workforce to stay home with their child or turn to potentially unsafe or unregulated child care. Moreover, increased turnover in classrooms interrupts continuity of care and disrupts the relationships built between children and their educators (Reidt-Parker, J., & Chainski, M. J. (2015). Research has begun to highlight some of the programmatic and personnel characteristics predictive of increased staff turnover in ECEC programs. Low wages are most commonly identified as a strong predictor of turnover (Amadon et al., 2023; Bryant et al., 2023; Fee, 2024; Guevara, 2022; Totenhagen et al., 2016). However, workforce advocates and some researchers have begun to expand conversations on compensation to explore the impact the profession’s general lack of benefits such as paid time off, access to health insurance, and retirement benefits has on retention (e.g., Amadon et al., 2023; Bryant et al., 2023; Fee, 2024; Lucas, 2023). While informative, this body of work has typically approached benefits as binary variables (i.e., have or do not have) rather than reflect the spectrum on which benefits are commonly offered (e.g., the number of days off, the percent of insurance covered by the employer, and levels of retirement matching funds). This Research Note aims to expand on previous work investigating the relationship between benefits and turnover by exploring the possibility of a more nuanced relationship between the variables to determine if the level of benefits offered impacts turnover rates. METHOD This study used data collected via formal Program Administration Scale, 3rd Edition (PAS-3) assessments conducted by Certified PAS-3 Assessors between 2023 and 2025. To become certified, PAS-3 assessors must first achieve reliability (a score of at least 86%) on a test conducted after four days of training on the tool. Next, they must conduct two PAS assessments within three months of reliability training. PAS-3 national anchors reviewed the completed assessments for consistency, accuracy, and completeness. The study analyzed data from 133 PAS-3 assessments collected during the certification process across 12 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Mariana Islands. Measures Data for this study were collected using the PAS-3, a valid and reliable tool used to measure and improve Whole Leadership practices in center-based programs (Talan, Bella, Jorde Bloom, 2022). The PAS-3 includes 25 items, each composed of 2-5 indicator strands and scored on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = inadequate, 3 = minimal, 5 = good, and 7 = excellent). Item scores are averaged to determine a mean PAS-3 score. Of particular interest to this study is Item 5: Benefits. Item 5 measures employee access to health insurance and considers what percentage of the cost is paid by the employer, the total number of paid time off days within the first and fifth years of employment, access to a retirement plan, and the percentage at which the employer will match the employee’s contribution. Last, Item 5 explores provisions made to cover the costs of staff’s professional development. Non-applicable is allowed as a response for indicators related to health insurance and retirement if there are no full-time staff employed by the program. Sample Program enrollment ranged in size from four children to 285, with a mean enrollment of 65 and a median of 55. Total program staff for the sample ranged from two to 44 staff, with an average of just under 14 staff (13.93) and a standard deviation of 8.80. Table 1 below provides a detailed breakdown of staff by role and full-time and part-time status.