Training for COSP Facilitators

Training Pathways for COSP Facilitators

COS Classroom Approach: A Two-Tier Model for Early Care

There are further training opportunities for COSP Facilitators interested in helping early care professionals in early care settings to apply attachment theory using the Circle of Security. For more information on training opportunities and the steps to endorsement as a COS Classroom Coach, click on each topic below to learn more.

COSP Classroom Facilitator Course

The COS Classroom Approach is a two tier approach to bring theory into practice. Practitioners who attend the COSP Facilitator training are introduced to Circle of Security Parenting with a primary focus on how to facilitate COSP with parents/primary caregivers. To Implement COSP with fidelity to early care professionals, we require registered COSP Facilitators to get further training in facilitating COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series to learn to reflect on COSP principles with early care professionals.

We now offer an additional online Facilitator Course that focuses specifically on facilitating Tier 1: COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series with early care professionals. Gain insight both in ways to help providers use COSP Classroom to manage relationship struggles while holding multiple Circles in the classroom, to organize their understanding about the complexity of relationships in working directly with children while partnering with parents, and to consider ways to use COSP Classroom principles to create relationship friendly classrooms.

The COSP Classroom Facilitator Course is an online asynchronous training that utilizes theory and knowledge of human behavior from attachment theory, social learning, family systems theory, and early childhood development, while it prepares Registered COSP Facilitators to deliver COSP Classroom and bring to early care professionals the knowledge, practice, and skills of young children’s social-emotional developmental needs into group care settings.

Registered COSP Facilitators who complete the Facilitator Course will receive access to additional facilitation materials including a revised COSP Classroom facilitator manual and handouts developed specifically with educators in mind. You will also receive additional endorsement as a Registered COSP Classroom Facilitator.

You will have 60 days to complete the course from the time you first log on. The course has been approved for 16 Continuing Education credits, and you should anticipate that it will take approximately 16 hours of work to complete the content to become an Endorsed COSP Classroom Facilitator.

Three key things that help facilitators bring COSP CLASSROOM to early care professionals:

Make it Personal

COSP is specifically designed to engage each participant's attachment system. For any carer, the surest way to get them experiencing what COSP has to offer is to have them focus on their own experience within close relationships, either as a parent and their relationships with their own children or in other close personal relationships. It may seem counterintuitive that early care professionals should focus on themselves personally in relationship (rather than their "professional self") but we're so convinced that filtering the COSP program through the personal lens is critical, that we've written this into our contract for Registered COSP Facilitators.

Teachers as Attachment Figures

There are some common misperceptions of attachment. First, that attachment is an absolute state characteristic of the relationship to the mother. Or that it’s only in the child, or only in the parent. But in fact, we know that it’s in the relationship. And that it happens with more than one relationship. The study of attachment is about that child, that someone, and how they are together. Being an attachment figure is integral to the job of parenting yes, but are teachers attachment figures?

Attachment relationships are hierarchical. When available, children will always pick their number one person to turn to. But when that number one person isn’t available, the child can’t suspend their need for their go-to-person. Just like we don’t wear a seatbelt only on the days when we have an accident, children always need an attachment person there, just in case. If young children go to school and don’t have that just in case person, it’s hard to learn.

Teachers are not parents, that’s true. And so, for a teacher, being an attachment figure is more a choice to the job. So that’s why as facilitators there needs to be an emphasis that it’s to the advantage of the teacher to be an attachment figure. These conversations can be difficult and the COSP Classroom Facilitator Course offers facilitators ways to explore these topics with confidence.

A Continuing Commitment

We ask a lot when we ask parents of multiple kids to apply COSP at home. Applying COSP with a classroom full of three-year olds is even more challenging. Not only that, but the degree to which early care settings value and support providers to be creative in prioritizing young children's attachment needs varies widely. We've learned that getting COSP to "take root" in any preschool setting requires more than completing the 8-chapter COSP program. What's needed is a "Circle-informed professional" who can both interface with key leaders in the preschool and meet regularly (following the 8-chapter program) with the teachers. We're now endorsing COSC Coaches.

COS Classroom Coach Training

After completion of Tier 1, COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series, teachers are ready to participate in Tier 2, COSC Coaching for guided implementation of COS concepts in the classroom. COSP Classroom Facilitators who complete the COSP Classroom Facilitator Course and are interested in providing coaching with early care professionals in the preschool setting require further training and endorsement as a COSC Coach. Endorsement comes after participation in the COS Classroom Coach Training where Coaches-in-Training learn to use COSC Classroom coaching tools and protocols to reflect and explore with early care professionals. The COS Classroom Coaching Training combines a blended learning experience that includes both synchronous and asynchronous training for coaches-in-training over the course of one year.

The big picture of Tier 2 with teachers is to look at:

We use specific approaches such as Primary Groups, Sanctuary Time, and the Coming and Going in Childcare to help establish this structure. Tier 2 helps teachers shift from understanding children’s relationship needs in theory to how a specific child’s relationship needs are not being met. We talk about COS as a behavior translation approach where we translate what seems to be dysfunctional or problematic behavior into communication about unmet needs. In theory this all makes sense, but practically, when a child is pouring the pitcher of milk over another child’s head, it is difficult to sort out the underlying need.

Listen to the teachers in the following video as they use the language of the Circle of Security to organize their understanding of relationship needs of children in the classroom and how it brings clarity to a plan of action to meet those needs.

COS in the Classroom

So how did the teachers in the above video learn to, as they put it, "build deeper relationships" and manage the "monumental task" of being the first person outside of the family to create a trusting relationship with a young child? COSC Coaches not only facilitate COSP groups with teams of childcare providers and/or teachers, they follow up with their group members in their classrooms for ongoing Practice Based Coaching. Using tools first tested by our COSC learning collaborative, the Classroom Coach helps teachers begin to filter their understanding of children that they are struggling with through the lens of the Circle of Security. Assessing "behavior problems" by looking at the attachment needs "behind" the behavior can offer fresh perspectives about strategies to "manage behavior." From review of short video clips of provider-child interactions to real-time analysis of key transitions like the morning drop-off, the COSC Coach learns to help providers "diagnose" children's struggles using the Circle. At the same time, providers are asked to look beyond the "problem children" to identify those whose attachment needs might be hidden. Coaching tools and classroom assessments help providers develop plans that support the development of secure attachments with children in their classrooms.

Practice Based Coaching

A benefit to a group of teachers who have participated in the COSP Classroom Professional Learning Series is that there is now a shared understanding and common language when reflecting together on children’s behaviors. This shared language begins a journey toward a deeper understanding of the needs of children. As an attachment model, there is a circularity in this process. How do we know if early care providers are learning to be more aware of how they are feeling, to recognize how they feel affects their behavior with children, then to see the effects this has on the children’s behavior, which then affects how teachers feel? Practice Based coaching with an endorsed Classroom coach expands the score from teaching practices/learning outcomes to all aspects of caregiver/child relationships.

Practice-based coaching (PBC) is an evidence-based approach with early care professionals designed to support teachers’ use of effective teaching practices that lead to positive outcomes for children. It is a cyclical process that includes three components: collaborative partnerships, shared goals and action planning, focused observation, and reflection and feedback. Explored in this collaborative context, the Classroom Coach uses the COS Classroom Approach to increase the providers understanding of behavior and move toward attending to the attachment needs of the child.

Recognizing Patterns

Reflective consultation follows the Practice Based Coaching model and supports teachers to develop focused observation skills to identify children in the classroom who are struggling with attachment needs. There are necessary ingredients for the reflective process to thrive. Providing a dedicated, predictable, and consistent time for reflection creates learning opportunities. A key role of the COSC Coach in reflective consultation is to create a safe learning environment and to then explore at a deeper level the Circle of Security. Teachers use this time to learn more about classroom behaviors that are associated with struggles on the top, bottom, and Hands on the Circle. The consultant explores each interactional attachment pattern and helps teachers to identify a child who seems to fit a pattern. The group discusses each example and considers other possible interpretations of the child's interactions and behaviors. Teachers make further observations between meetings and then report back to the group. With this feedback loop that includes focused observation and time for reflection and feedback, the coaches and teachers work together to create shared goals and action plans to meet the relationship needs of children.

It's in the Relationship

The group discusses each example and considers possible interpretations of the child's interactions and the behaviors. The teachers use the reflective process to increase their observational skills. Teachers continue to build observation skills during the weeks between consultations and then report back to the group for further processing and reflection. COSC Coaches use classroom observations and video review to help teachers organize their understanding of children's behavior and create action plans. The process itself is designed to model many of the characteristics of secure relationships. The COSC Approach is grounded in creating trusting relationships and provides opportunities for learning how to become more skilled at understanding the needs underlying challenging behavior. It also serves as a powerful self-reflection tool for knowing oneself better as an early childhood professional.

Upon completion of the COS Classroom Coach Training, endorsed COSC Coaches receive an instruction manual that contains specific COSC coaching tools and protocols to help educators create classroom structures and routines that support relationships with individual children and relationship friendly classrooms.