Today's Family on unlocking professional growth tools for educator engagement

Today's Family is a leading provider of early learning and child care programs for up to 6,000 children and families in Hamilton, Halton, Haldimand-Norfolk, Oxford and surrounding areas in Ontario.

Recognized innovators and members of the Quality Early Learning Network and the Home Child Care Association of Ontario, they have recently adopted Storypark’s suite of Professional Growth Tools across their group.

Why Today’s Family chose Storypark

“We decided to use Storypark’s platform to support a number of strategic priorities” says Brenda Ferguson, Chief Executive Officer of Today’s Family.

These include:

1. Strengthening each educator’s sense of belonging to the organization, including reinforced onboarding processes
2. Supporting their Registered Early Childhood Educator’s Continuous Professional Learning Process
3. Creating a more personalized annual review process in which every educator gathers evidence on an ongoing basis to support a more effective appraisal process
4. Helping educators engage with their peers within a Community of Practice, including sharing resources and practice between centres
5. Enriching family involvement in programming and ensuring they are more aware of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging work.

“Storypark’s platform provides a unique solution that’s designed specifically for early childhood educators” says Dan Wise, Director of Programs at Today’s Family. “The ability for educators to easily record evidence of and reflect on their practice is fantastic, and when coupled with our new online community of practice and real-time analytics this unlocks a lot of new opportunities for us to better personalize and support each educator’s career development.”

“For example, we are going to use the community of practice to help team members build their capability in desired pedagogical areas, while also enabling ‘lend and learn’ amongst centres, such as risky play, nature-based pedagogy knowledge transfer, to ensure everyone is growing and learning together” says Dan.

“Storypark specifically designs tools for multi-site operators as they have a different set of challenges to individual centres” says Peter Dixon, Storypark Co-Founder. “We have been chosen by quality focused multi-site operators with everything from 3 to 700+ locations. Our modular tools can easily sit alongside the existing software ecosystem, and our real-time analytics offer insights that help craft the experience for both educators, families and children.”

“Customization is also critical in ensuring processes, resources and practices reflect the philosophies and brand of our partners.”

“Storypark’s Professional Learning and Development team and proactive account management help customize the Storypark experience under the guidance of each of our multi-site partners” says Peter. “This results in meaningful implementation on increasing impact over time.”

Learn more about Storypark’s Professional Growth Tools. 

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