Greetings From Early Childhood Leaders
“At the forefront of early childhood, Maryland stands as a beacon to the nation in its comprehensive quality service provision. Now, with MECLP, Maryland again takes a leadership position…for leaders!! Well-designed and offering a rich repertoire of experiences, MECLP is precisely the kind of experience individuals need as they take on leadership roles in early childhood education and care. As such, MECLP provides a necessary and exciting contribution to advancing early childhood in the state and the nation. Maryland leads, again and again!!”
–Sharon Lynn Kagan, Ed.D.
Virginia and Leonard Marx Professor of Early Childhood and Family Policy
Co-Director, National Center for Children & Families
Teachers College, Columbia University
Professor Adjunct, Yale Child Study Center, Yale University
Nancy Grasmick, a member of the MECLP Advisory Committee, was Guest Speaker at the first class of the SHER 601 course – Leading for Change in Early Childhood Education, on January 11th at UMBC.
Following individual conversations with each of the inaugural cohort members, and offering a brief history of early childhood in Maryland, Dr. Grasmick pivoted to the course focus – leadership in early childhood.
Dr. Grasmick honored the cohort members by calling them “pioneers”, stating, “There’s no great enterprise in our nation, or in this world, that doesn’t have expert leadership.”
During her address, Dr. Grasmick shared the following characteristics of highly effective leaders:
- Self-awareness –the capacity to recognize your strengths and weaknesses. “Not everyone possesses every single quality that is necessary to be an effective leader but if you surround yourself with the people who are complementary to your weaknesses you build a team. I hope that each of you will find the opportunity to build that effective team.”
- Resilience – the ability to fail, to analyze your failure and then to move forward. “We’ve learned a lot through failure, but we had to have resilience to say, ‘It isn’t the idea that’s failing, it’s some of the decisions we made that have caused failure.’ So resilience is extremely important in a leader; you will not be successful all of the time.”
- Execution – the competence to move plans into actions. “You can talk, talk, talk, but if nothing happens with that talk, and you do not learn how to execute, it’s not going to happen. Intelligent execution is critical.”
In closing, Dr. Grasmick stated:
“It’s a privilege to be a leader – you are creating a culture. By your leadership and what you represent, you create a culture and that culture becomes pervasive. It makes things happen when you have credibility and people believe in you and believe in your ideas. Thank you for being Maryland’s early childhood leader pioneers and a part of this wonderful galvanizing opportunity.”