Teaching Our Professional Staff (TOPS)

Our Teaching Our Professional Staff (TOPS) program offers an Associate’s Degree program tuition free through Northern Essex Community College to preschool staff from child care centers and family child care from Andover/North Andover/Methuen and Lawrence. Currently 70 early childhood staff whose agency is a member of the Greater Lawrence Community Partnerships for Children Program are taking courses under the TOPS program. In addition through an articulation agreement between Leslie College and Northern Essex Community College, students can take Leslie courses at Northern Essex credit rates up to 90 credits before matriculating to Leslie for a Bachelor’s Degree. Opportunities exist for additional staff to obtain their Associate’s degree through Northern Essex Community College’s Building Bridges program funded through a Department of Education grant. These funds provide coursework free of charge to staff who have never taken a course beyond high school. The Building Bridges grant through Salem State is offering a Bachelor’s Degree program also to area residents. For more information regarding our TOPS program or the Building Bridges Program call our office. Dept. of EEC also offers scholarship assistance to EEC staff. The application is online at the EEC website.

Workshops

Community Partnerships for Children Program offers workshops for parents and staff from all member communities every year. Workshops have included topics such as: Helping Children Survive Their Environment; What does Developmentally Appropriate Practices Mean? Diagnosis, Treatment and Medication in young Children; The Power of the Parent; Training on the Early Childhood standards and Guidelines.

Trainings

Trainings on Enhancing Emergent Writing in young children builds teacher capacity to observe, evaluate, and foster children’s emergent reading and writing skills.

Conferences

We also partner with other agencies supporting conferences and attendance of our early childhood staff in the communities’ at these conferences such as the Early Childhood Director’s Collaborative Conference and the Literacy and Leadership Conference.