Sponsor a Teacher’s Professional Development at Boulder Journey School
At Boulder Journey School, we believe that children have a right to curious and competent educators. Supporting educators is a large part of our mission, and we recognize and celebrate our early childhood community as an essential workforce. Our hearts are warmed in the midst of this difficult time by the stories of communities rallying behind small businesses, implementing creative strategies to keep revenue flowing. Additionally, we are inspired by the multiple ways businesses have found to offer free support and services to the populations most impacted by the spread of COVID-19. This new gift program invites you to participate in both supporting the sustainability of Boulder Journey School, and also giving free professional learning opportunities to early childhood educators when they need it most.
Boulder Journey School, like all early childhood education programs right now, is carefully navigating the various complexities that the COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed upon our communities. While we are communicating and collaborating with various public and private agencies in order to make decisions about if and how we can continue to serve children and families within our building, we are also thinking about ways to utilize our place as a leader for early childhood professional development. In compliance with our state’s stay-at-home orders, and in order to ensure the health and safety of our community, we have cancelled all visitors to the school for the foreseeable future and suspended our study tours, symposiums, conferences, and workshops. These difficult but necessary cancellations have reduced our ability to provide professional support for our treasured global community of early childhood educators, in addition to hurting our school’s operations and employee payroll budget.
In a typical year, we serve over 1000 passionate educators from around the world in furthering their professional growth, and we consistently receive feedback that our professional learning initiatives are refreshing, invigorating, and exciting. The disruption to our capacity to provide these opportunities is coming at a time when educators are hungry for, and deserving of, professional support in new and unprecedented ways. At the same time, we know that early childhood professionals around the world will broadly suffer serious financial losses as a result of this health crisis, making ongoing professional learning difficult to afford. In late March of 2020, we launched a series of free virtual dialogues aimed at idea-sharing amongst early childhood professionals surrounding issues related to COVID-19. We were overwhelmed by hundreds of responses from teachers eager to participate in this kind of opportunity, and we have been deeply inspired by the passionate collaborations that have ensued. The dialogues generated the advancement of strategies around building digital learning opportunities for young children, developing new ways to partner with families, and sharing resources to support the social and emotional health of communities. We will continue to offer these free weekly dialogues, but we want to go further by developing new opportunities for virtual learning, and enhancing our face-to-face offerings when we are able to resume typical operations. Right now, early childhood educators teachers deserve support.
You can donate at one of the levels we’ve established, or name your own gift amount. You can donate to our general fund to support any educator who registers for our paid professional learning opportunities, or you can choose to earmark your money by naming an individual or early childhood education organization as a beneficiary. No matter what, Boulder Journey School is committed to the continued support of educators in new and innovative ways. We expect this crisis will continue to push our thinking around the development of even more inspiring and useful professional development initiatives for our early childhood education community now and into the future as the rebuilding phase inevitably begins. To view our professional development offerings, visit our website.
Thank you for your gift, and for your willingness to support early childhood educators!
Policies:
General fund gifts can be used to support any of our paid professional learning opportunities, and can be accessed by teachers beginning May 15 on a first come, first serve basis. The bigger the fund, the more teachers we can offer free opportunities to!
If you earmark your money, we will reach out directly to the school or individual you designate and let them know that they will have one year from the date of receipt of your money to register for professional development with Boulder Journey School. They can choose to attend in-person events once we get those back up and running, or they can choose to participate in virtual offerings, such as webinars and video conferences, that we are already developing. If you choose this pathway, you must provide a valid name (individual or organization), and valid email address. If we are unable to make contact with the individual or organization you earmark within 6 months, or if they do not utilize the gift within one year, your donation will move into the general fund.
Sponsor a Teacher funds cannot be applied to the University of Colorado Denver course, "A Colorado Interpretation of the Reggio Emilia Approach" or Online Master's Degree Program.
Reflections from participants in Boulder Journey School Professional Development
“I will take back: ‘Trust Children More.’” - Professional Development participant
“Teaching is both child and teacher-led and I feel I gained skills in creating an ideal atmosphere for exploration and learning - through speaking deliberately, arranging deliberately, and creating an atmosphere of love, kindness, and growth for everyone involved.” - Professional Development participant
“My mind is full of so many new thoughts and ideas, but immediately, I want to investigate my own community and see how we can deepen our partnership in the learning of our children.” - Professional Development participant