Supporting school readiness and success for African American boys requires thoughtful commitment and focus to offer high-quality learning environments. The ongoing professional development of education staff — like coaches, education managers, and supervisors — is key to this effort. Education staff can use these strategy guides for their own self-directed learning or leaders can support communities of practice for learning together.

This resource offers planning and implementation guidance for the six essential strategies:

1. Build relationships
2. Communicate high expectations for learning
3. Promote social and emotional development
4. Create learning environments with a focus on play and active learning, including literacy
5. Implement developmentally appropriate curriculum and instruction
6. Strengthen home-program partnerships

Each section:

• Describes a strategy
• Discusses why the strategy matters
• Asks the reader to reflect on their own practice
• Names practices that promote the strategy
• Gives an opportunity to plan to use a strategy
• Lists resources to deepen your learning
• Includes alignments to the:
  • Head Start Program Performance Standards
  • Multicultural Principles for Early Childhood Leaders
  • Head Start Early Learning Outcomes Framework

Explore one strategy at a time, or in bundles. Making time to think about each strategy and to plan for how you’d like to do it is well worth the effort.

Download the PDF

Last Updated: December 2, 2022