1. Orientation to the Self-Assessment Process in Head Start
Use this PPT to give a brief (30 minute) overview of the Head Start, your program, the Self-Assessment Process, and what the SA team can expect as they embark on their work.

2. Welcome! Thank you for joining our Self-Assessment team!
Thank the Self-Assessment team as a group, and then allow for individual introductions of each member of the team.
Ask each member to state:
Name
Organization (and location, if necessary)
Position
How many times they have served as a member of the SA team
What drew them to be a member of the SA team

3. Beginnings of Head Start and Early Head Start
In 1965, Head Start began as a program for preschoolers - began as part of War on Poverty
In 1995, expanded to include Early Head Start (ages 0-3)
Head Start /Early Head Start programs support comprehensive services including mental, social, and emotional development of children from birth to age 5
Provide an overview of how Head Start and Early Head Start began.

4. What is Head Start?
Comprehensive services responsive to each child and family's ethnic, cultural, and linguistic heritage
In a nutshell, this is one of the ways Head Start is defined– it is what makes this program unique to other early education programs.

5. Video: Nation’s Pride Click here to watch!
Show the video: Nation’s Pride -
(For this Hyperlink above to work in your presentation, you need to have access to WiFi in the location where you present this.)
After the video, invite comments or questions.
Click here to watch!

6. Head Start Core Values
Link to this document is found here, should you choose to distribute:
- Core values are ideals that we strive for
- Core values are used to guide our behavior
- Core values create a reinforcing cycle
Head Start services follow the tenets that children grow and develop in the context of their family and culture and that parents are respected as the primary educators and nurturers of their children.
To support the overall goal of improving social competence and opportunities for school readiness success, Head Start embraces a set of core values that include commitments to… (below is a shortened version of each Core Value. Refer to handout above for full citations.)
Establish a supportive learning environment…
Recognize and respect the many cultures of Head Start families and staff…
Empower families…
Embrace a comprehensive approach to promoting health…
Respect individual development….
Build a community which respects individuals, as well as each individual’s membership in a community…
Foster a relationship with the larger community including fostering community partnerships…
Develop a continuum of care for education and other services before, during, and after a family’s participation in Head Start…
(Adapted from Head Start Program Performance Standards: Introduction page 1)

7. About Our Program Our history Locations, size and demographics
Program design and services
Share the following about your own program:
Getting our start: Our History: Why, How, When, Who was involved in start up?
Location, size and demographics: What are the program size, population served, and service area?
Program design and services: Why do we have those: for instance: center-based, home-based, family child care, delegates, child care partners? What do they provide to our children and families? What is our design? Do we have an agency that operates our program?
Partners: Who are our partners? What is unique about our program?
Growing, changing and learning: Describe the change and evolution of the program over the years. What have we learned from these changes?
Our partners
Growing, changing, and learning

8. The Act and the HSPPS Offer this information:
Self-Assessment is a requirement in the Head Start Program Performance Standards. Its importance was reinforced in the 2007 Head Start Act. Head Start programs must conduct a Self-Assessment annually.
Neither the HS Act, nor the HSPPS have ever required programs to conduct their Self-Assessments in a particular way. It is a decision made by the program requiring approval of Policy Council and governing body.

9. Recommended Practices for Self-Assessment
What?
A process for reviewing progress on goals and objectives, being accountable for what you proposed in your application, and determining if resources are used effectively
Why?
Leverage strengths and look for areas of improvement and innovation
Who?
Program staff, parents, Policy Council, governing body, outside-the-program community leaders, content experts, and other interested people
Share the points on the slide, emphasizing the following:
These recommended practices lead to both a streamlined and meaningful Self-Assessment process.
This graphic summarizes the key ideas of who is involved, what happens during the process, and how and why Self-Assessment is done.
When?
How?
Annually
Follow the five phase Self-Assessment process

10. Role of a Self-Assessment Team Member
Remain open-minded and strength-based
Analyze data
Engage in dialogue with team
Value others’ opinions
Recommend
Ensure that parents have a voice at the table to share their unique perspectives
All members of our team will be asked to do the following:
Share bullets on slide.

11. Phases of Self Assessment1 3 5
Design
Process
Engage Team
Analyze & Dialogue
Prepare Report
PRE
Recommend
POST
Share the basic 5 steps of the SA Process:
Design Process: Director and management team will prepare the plan and timeline, which need approval from Policy Council and governing body.
Engage Team: What we are doing right now! Getting the team together and establishing roles and responsibilities.
Analyze and Dialogue: The team will take a big picture look at data that the program gathered as part of its ongoing monitoring system. It will consider put together information from multiple sources of data, and look at data over time. Team members will ask good questions and dialogue about successes, patterns, and discoveries made through the data. This is the heart of the process and takes the most time.
Recommend: The SA Team will make recommendations based on their discoveries.
Prepare Report: The Director will review the recommendations and prepare the report, which need approval from Policy Council and governing body. The recommendations in the report set the stage for the program’s planning and goal setting. 2 4

12. Role of a Team Leader Assist team members as they review data
Use a strength-based process and encourage curious dialog about information presented
Support team members who may be reluctant to share their thoughts or ideas
Build team consensus around recommendations
Prepare a summary recommendation report to be shared with the full Self Assessment team
Hyperlink to “job descriptions”
We may break into smaller teams, or “subgroups,” each with a specific area or areas.
These are some of the responsibilities of either the Self-Assessment team leader or of a subgroup team leader.

13. Why Start with Strengths? In order to…
Learn from what is going well
Appreciate the progress made on goals and objectives
Investigate systemic issues
Move toward “Innovations”
Improve outcomes for children and families
Summary of some key points about taking a strengths-based approach to planning.
Relate this to being a parent in a Parent/Teacher conference and the teacher leading with: “OK, here are some problems we are having with your child.” versus: “Let’s start our meeting with sharing some of the things your child enjoys doing and where she finds success.”
We need to learn from our successes instead of jumping right in to “What’s Wrong?”

14. Analyzing the Data What do we know? What is the data telling us?
What don’t we know? Is there a way to find out with review of additional data?
What questions does the data pose?
What patterns and trends do we notice when we compare year to year data?
What do we learn from looking at multiple sources of data regarding one topic or issue?
The team will spend time looking at data and asking good questions about what they see.
The National Center on Program Management and Fiscal Operations has developed two interactive online modules about using data. They are available on the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center (ECLKC.) This link will take you to the Data module on the ECKLC if you want to share a resource to learn more about how to look at data.

15. Types of Head Start Data (just to name a few)
PIR
Community assessment
Ongoing monitoring
ERSEA
Attendance
Child outcomes
Family engagement
Health, mental health, and nutrition
Transportation, fiscal, and facilities
These are some of the types of data we may be discussing.

16. Dialoguing with Team Establish ground rules Hear everyone’s voice
Stay focused on the “big picture”
Work together to
get “unstuck”
Value the group process over individual opinions
Dialogue is, arguably, the most important part of a successful Self-Assessment. The team digs in to the data and asks meaningful and relevant questions about what they see.
Review the points one at a time. If you want to have some interactivity, you could ask the group to brainstorm some ideas about how they will best dialogue with each other.
Otherwise, you can mention some of these suggestions:
Establish ground rules: On a flipchart, ask P’s to share what ground rules would be important for the SA team. Be sure to include things like “not interrupting”, “not judging or making comments personal”, “hearing from everyone”, “avoiding distractions like phones and other technology”, etc.
Hear everyone’s voice: Do round robin where the facilitator calls on everyone for a comment or thought; ask P’s to write down their questions or comments if they aren’t comfortable sharing; Create a parking lot for ongoing questions that come up during the process for which you need to seek an outside response or collect more data.
Stay focused on the big picture: Create a signal or way for members to identify when they think the team is going off track and needs to get back on track; Avoid side-bar conversations; Keep a list of “to discuss more later” when a topic seems to derail the larger focus.
Getting unstuck: Table a discussion to try again later, ask the team “What is the heart of the matter here?” and try to separate positions (I think we should do this!) from interests (These matters seem to all relate to health and safety…)
Try to keep focused on the group process instead of getting caught up in a lot of “I think…” comments and mentality.

17. Making Recommendations
Look at all the discoveries together
Focus on suggestions versus solutions
Stay focused on systems versus the details
Categorize based on:
progress on goals and objectives
systemic issues
possible innovations
After good dialogue, the SA team will make recommendations. These are some points regarding recommendations.

18. How is the Self-Assessment Used?
Director creates final report from the recommendations
Policy Council and governing body approve the final report
Self-Assessment report and recommendations are used in future planning and goal setting
Here is how the SA report will be used moving forward in planning.

19. Benefits of Self-Assessment
Help see the big picture
Bring fresh perspective
Understand the possibilities and challenges that the program faces
Cultivate new ideas
Build stronger community partnerships
Maximize use of existing resources
Share some of the benefits of Self-Assessment.

20. Only with your help can we make this process a success!
Thank you!
Only with your help can we make this process a success!
Our children, their families, and our community
at-large will benefit from our high quality services and the achievement of our goals!
We appreciate your passion, dedication, and time devoted to this Self-Assessment process.
Thank the team for their time, and thank them in advance for their contributions to the SA team!
Allow time for questions/answers.