For Early Care Professionals

For Early Care Professionals

Professional Development to Strengthen Student-Teacher Relationships

The COSC Approach is a two-tier approach to professional development for early care professionals to support secure relationships in the classroom by first equipping educators with learning opportunities and then the application in the classroom through supportive coaching. The COS Classroom Approach to professional learning supports an environment where early care professionals move from behavioral approaches to social emotional learning by seeing the ways attachment needs are communicated through children’s behavior and misbehavior and then finding caring ways to help meet those needs.

Tier 1: COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series

Tier 1: COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series equips early care professionals with learning opportunities, provides a clear model of children’s attachment needs, and highlights the importance of the teacher in responding to these needs. In other words, it makes the theory of attachment accessible. With a COSP Classroom facilitator, early care professionals complete the 8-chapter video-based series which provides a clear model of children’s attachment needs. The learning series also supports educators to look beyond behavioral approaches to seeing the ways attachment needs are communicated by behavior (and often misbehavior). The importance of the teacher as an attachment figure in responding to these needs is highlighted by reflection questions and handouts created specifically for early care professionals.

Watch the video below to hear classroom teachers share their experience of participating in Tier I - COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series.

Tier 2: COSC Coaching

Tier 2: COSC Coaching draws on everything learned in Tier 1. Classroom Coaches offer supportive coaching to early care providers to apply the learning from Tier 1 into the classroom. Building on reflective consultation, classroom coaching addresses the needs of both individual children and classroom structures and procedures.

Through regular coaching sessions, coaches support early care providers to use the Circle of Security to identify children who are struggling to develop secure connections with their teachers, clarify the specific relational pattern that is interfering with the connection, and develop a plan to respond to each child’s attachment needs. The COSC Approach follows an evidence-based coaching framework put forth by the Office of Head Start.