Tri-Valley provides comprehensive child development services to pregnant women, children and families throughout 16 center locations across Minnesota and NE North Dakota, with a total funded enrollment of over 800 children. Their Regional Head Start/Early Head Start and Migrant and Seasonal Head Start/Early Head Start programs promote school readiness and encourage parents to become advocates for their children and for their community.
Christina was confronted with the challenge of training teachers across their 16 sites, when they weren’t all hired yet, and they couldn’t get everyone together in one room for one training. She was also faced with the challenge of many various start dates throughout her centers. They were opening at different times, so she needed to be organized. Christina was determined to make sure that all teachers were fully trained on the program. She scheduled a web training, which Learning Genie recorded and sent to her.
As teachers were hired throughout her centers, she had teachers watch the training video and follow along with their devices, and send back a sign-in sheet to document their participation. In order to get all the families signed up, Christina had her Education Supervisors meet with families as they completed registration, and they walked each family through the app. This ensured that each family saw Learning Genie as an integral part of their EHS/HS program, and Tri-Valley saw great parent response. Christina consistently monitors and follows-up with teachers to support them as necessary.
Here is a screenshot of their agency’s family engagement dashboard, where administrators can see which engagement items are resonating well with families, and where to improve.
“I am excited to see that our centers have been so successful with Learning Genie so far! Although we did have some initial challenges with training our staff, we were able to overcome this challenge with some creative problem solving and amazing teamwork. I am very impressed with the quality of support we receive from the Learning Genie team, and look forward to our continued success!”
Christina Vega, Education and Disabilities Services Manager
When the Learning Genie was introduced to me, I was very excited about sharing with the parents what I was teaching to the children on a more personable level. One of the most valuable features that I used was taking photos of the children doing activities and being able to send the pictures electronically to the parents on a daily basis. The parents were very excited each day to receive their email and see what their child had learned. The parents would use information we provided on a daily basis and talk about what they learned at school. This was a great conversation starter. Most children would come home from school and ask their child what they learned at school today and most would say “nothing I just played”. With the daily information I found that the children showed what they learned at school sometimes teaching their parents some things.