Preparing Teachers to Make All Children Feel Special: The Maryland Early EdCorp Registered Apprenticeship Program

Amanda Schwartz

Christy Tirrell-Corbin

“I was once teaching a class to a group of CDA® candidates about early childhood trauma,” says Christy Tirrell-Corbin, PhD, executive director at the University of Maryland’s Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention (CECEI). “I started by asking the candidates about their favorite teacher and how that teacher made them feel special. Everyone in the room began talking about teachers who believed in them, except for one candidate named Julia. She said, ‘I never had a teacher who really cared about me’—words that made me choke up. I realized Julia was a perfect example of someone who had been disenfranchised by the education system but found a pathway ahead, thanks to the Maryland Early EdCorp Registered Apprenticeship Program.”

Tirrell-Corbin came up with the idea for the program about two years ago with Amanda Schwartz, PhD, Early EdCorp’s associate project director. “The Maryland State Department of Education was offering grants under an initiative called Maryland Rebuilds,” Schwartz recalls. “The goal of the initiative was to solve some of the problems resulting from the pandemic, so we sat together and thought of a way we could make an impact on the early childhood field in the state. A lot of the discussion at the time was about diversifying the workforce to ensure we had educators who looked like the children they were serving. So, we knew we needed to build an alternative pathway. That was through a CDA apprenticeship program that we were able to pilot and leverage into a registered apprenticeship program, based on 160 hours of coursework.”

Early EdCorp goes beyond the 120 hours of coursework normally required for the CDA to include 40 hours that focus on serving children who face challenging issues, like disabilities or trauma. “Amanda and I have deep expertise in the areas of special education and mental health,” Tirrell-Corbin says. “As a result, we were intentional about including extra coursework on these topics when we designed the apprenticeship program. We also have a strong passion for inclusion, so we wanted to ensure educators are prepared to provide high-quality care to all children in the state, especially those from the poorest, most marginalized families.”

Their mission also fits in well with the University of Maryland’s status as a land grant institution. “Land grant status comes with a duty to contribute to the community, and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing,” Tirrell-Corbin says. “Our university is normally a degree-granting institution, but Maryland’s early childhood  community needs a program like this to comply with Maryland law. The Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, administered by the state’s department of education, now requires all para educators/assistant teachers working in publicly funded preschools to have an associate degree, CDA, or extensive experience by the school year of 2027 to 2028.”

Maryland Early EdCorp helps programs meet the Blueprint’s demand by knocking down any roadblocks that educators might face in earning their CDA. Apprentices not only engage in hands-on training but also complete coursework in early childhood education. They receive valuable mentorship from experienced ECE professionals, along with access to career coaching and support services. In collaboration with the Council for Professional Recognition, this program supports participants as they work to attain their CDA. And many did when Schwartz and Tirrell-Corbin launched their pilot project that paid participants a salary so they could earn their CDA in the compressed space of five months.

The goal of the  initial apprenticeship project, as Schwartz explains, was to expand the early childhood workforce by bringing in folks from other fields. “Our participants had jobs like housekeeper, retail clerk and substitute teacher. Some worked in health care, and some were recent immigrants who had been teaching in their country but didn’t have the credentials to teach here. Early EdCorp gave them a pathway to a career that provided more than a paycheck. Working in child care, participants told me, filled them with a sense of passion.”

One participant in the  pilot apprenticeship program was a Hispanic nurse named Flora who was volunteering at a bilingual child care center and wanted to move into the teaching field. “Her director connected her with our program since the center felt Flora needed a CDA to be a teacher,” Schwartz recalls. “The location in Westminster where we were doing the CDA coursework was far from Flora’s home in Baltimore, but she came for 15 days and simply flourished. Her scores increased on the practice CDA exams that are part of our program. She successfully worked her way through the CDA portfolio. Her teaching strategies became much more fluid, and her director told us how much she had grown because of the program.”

So did another participant from Baltimore, a mother with three children in Head Start. “We recruited Lisa through the Head Start program,” Schwartz says, “and the CDA training gave her a new outlook on both her professional and personal life. Every day, she’d leave class and say, ‘I’m a different person today and a different parent because I know so much more about supporting children.’ And she’s used that knowledge in classrooms with children who have trying behavioral issues. They’ve presented Lisa with tough challenges, which she’s taken on with her new-found knowledge of why children act out. Instead of thinking the kiddos are bad, she now tries to find out what’s going on in their lives. Lisa has learned to understand children in a way she didn’t before earning her CDA.”

Schwartz and Tirrell-Corbin also learned a lot from running the pilot apprenticeship program as they moved into their registered apprenticeship program last spring. “We witnessed the issues many participants faced in their personal lives,” Schwartz says. “We have spread most of the coursework over the 12 months of the registered apprenticeship program, which targets people who are already working in child care programs. Besides helping participants strike a work-life balance, we have taken added steps to help them succeed in earning their CDA. One of the ways we have helped measure our apprentices’ progress is by providing regular coaching using components of the comprehensive scoring instrument. The coaches do mini-verification visits and reflective dialogues with apprentices, and apprentices take practice CDA exams during the program,” Schwartz says. “The feedback we’re already getting from program directors includes glowing descriptions of growth.”

It helps that the apprenticeship program provides a wide range of wrap-around supports. “Many early childhood teachers are folks with lower incomes who are struggling,” Schwartz says. “Transportation can be a challenge. So is understanding how to use technology, and we do everything we can to meet these needs. We connect with the Maryland State Department of Education for its help with transcripts from foreign countries. We connect with local workforce departments for transportation. And we have an apprenticeship coordinator who is always looking for solutions to the apprentices’ individual problems so they can pour all their energy into serving children.”

The registered apprenticeship program also has support from local partners like Head Start and Judy Centers, community-based organizations that recruit people for the program in neighborhoods where qualified teachers are needed most. So far, the program has begun training two cohorts, Schwartz explains. “The first started in Baltimore last June. Then in August, we started one to train educators in Silver Spring and Takoma Park, areas with large Spanish-speaking populations. In early November we’ll be starting two in Montgomery County and Anne Arundel County.”

Schwartz and Tirrell-Corbin would like to expand the registered apprenticeship program even more, but funding remains uncertain. “So, I spend a lot of time looking for funding opportunities and networking with policy makers,” Schwartz says. “We have also been meeting with local chambers of commerce, and they’re interested in our program because they know child care is important for business. In addition, we’re working with local workforce agencies to access Maryland State Department of Labor and Maryland State Department of Education funding.”

And one of the ways Schwartz and Tirrell-Corbin are making their case is by showing how much demand there is for the apprenticeship program. “We have a wait list of programs and educators throughout the state who want to participate in the program,” Schwartz says. “And now we are in the process of talking with funders about how to move forward with that list.”

They are also looking for ways for the apprentices to move forward with their careers after completing the program, Tirrell-Corbin says. “The CDA is a clear, lovely pathway to an associate degree and then a bachelor’s degree with certification. Our CDA registered apprenticeship program is a stepping stone toward advancement in the early childhood profession.”

That’s Tirrell-Corbin’s hope for Julia, the apprentice who sadly revealed that she never had a teacher who made her feel special. “I’ve kept up with her progress,” Tirrell-Corbin says, “and I’ve learned that she’s now doing a lot of special education. Her passion is working with small groups and connecting one-on-one with children who are having a hard time learning basic concepts. I see her as someone who would be a great special education teacher, and her director and mentor coach are encouraging her to go in that direction. Thanks to our program, Julia has a chance to go on with her education and serve children who have been disenfranchised by the education system, like she was as a young girl. Julia can become the favorite, caring teacher she never had.”