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Head Start and Early Head Start programs face increasingly difficult and perplexing challenges that cause burnout and fatigue for staff at all levels. As teachers, family support staff, and center staff struggle to support children with challenging behaviors, their own exhaustion, background, and experiences often stand at the intersection. Center administrators are hard pressed to fully support these staff as they work to meet the operational needs of their centers amidst high turnover and budget constraints. Combined, it is an ongoing recipe for stress and burnout!  

Research tells us that the kinds of support educators and support staff are encouraged to give traumatized children is the very support they themselves need from administrators and coaches. Creating a parallel process with teachers is key to changing the trend toward staff burnout and fatigue. The LUME Approach Essentials offers five key lenses that help early childhood professionals to create this parallel process, resulting in increased resilience for individuals and head start centers.

Five Essentials for Building Resilience and Overcoming Staff Fatigue

As we begin to understand the effects of trauma across the early learning community, we will explore and deepen our understanding of the five LUME Approach Essentials: your own emotional development, the emotional development of others, temperament, family history, and environment. We will learn about how to lead with emotional courage, raising the level of resilience in your early learning community. Through stories and a series of interactive learning processes, you will practice new skills and ways of supporting staff growth and resilience while maintaining emotional boundaries (and still get the paperwork done!) Time for reflection and planning throughout the sessions will allow you time to create a concrete action plan to use the new tools and paradigms we discuss.

Join us as we explore a better way of leading and supporting children, families, and community while building resilience for yourself and others. Through hands-on exercises, self- and group-reflection sessions, and dynamic discussions, participants will:

• Develop, implement and evaluate a site-specific action plan with concrete next steps and new tools to 1) promote staff mental health and overall well-being and 2) better understand and support self and others (or participants may choose a different challenge for the action plan).
• Gain a deeper understanding of the social and emotional groundwork needed to build an organizational culture that supports professional development and enhances organizational community.
• Learn how to effectively support staff to build resilience on an individual and organizational level as a method of enhancing their organization’s service to and impact on children/families.

Reviewing the Results

This online group conversation in May allows participants to share about what they are learning with the group as they implement their action plan and work with the Five Essentials. We will share stories of success and brainstorm new strategies for the unmoving obstacles. Regardless, our stories will be rich learning opportunities for all. Often it is the toughest challenges that prove to be the greatest gifts.

About LUME Institute

At LUME Institute, we believe the power to change society lies in changing the way young children are taught. LUME Institute promotes innovative thinking and programs by translating research and experience into various program offerings. Each of our programs embed the LUME Approach, a transformative framework for providing high-quality early childhood care and education. The LUME Approach evolved from the philosophy and methodologies integrated within LUME’s model school, University City Children’s Center, and is rooted in a deep understanding that children’s emotional development is the foundation for lifelong health, growth, and learning.

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