VGCC Joins Project To Increase Qualified Area Daycare Teachers

Vance-Granville Community College has been selected to participate in a statewide project to train professional daycare teachers.

Project IMPACT was developed because well-educated teachers are the key ingredient in high quality daycare programs. With growing numbers of children enrolling in daycares, it is more important than ever for daycares to be staffed by trained professionals, said project officials.

Vance-Granville is one of four community colleges across the state chosen to develop and offer two online courses for daycare teachers to improve their qualifications. VGCC was selected because its Early Childhood Associate program has a solid record of achievement in online learning, said Dr. John Beck, VGCC’s chairman of General College/College Transfer.

A group of 100 daycare teachers across the state have been chosen to be the first to take the online courses, which will be offered this fall for the first time. The courses – Child Guidance, and Language and Literacy Experiences – will each provide three credit hours to the daycare teachers should they choose to seek an Early Childhood Associate degree through a community college.

Forty of the students will take both courses online through Vance-Granville, while 20 will each take one of the courses from one of the other three participating community colleges.

Project IMPACT is a statewide effort spearheaded by the Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In online classes, students and teachers communicate via e-mail and an online discussion board, and work is submitted electronically. Project IMPACT chose this method because many of the daycare teachers selected for the project live in rural areas that are not near a college campus.

“We think we’ve developed two excellent courses, and we’re excited about being part of this statewide effort,” said VGCC Early Childhood Program Head Jennifer Johnson, who helped design the classes and put them online. “I think this project will make a real difference.”