Do you feel dizzy after reading that title? Me too, after writing it, but this week on the show we did indeed speak to a trainer of the trainers who train trainers of little humans! Meet Maya Johnson, a 3rd year PhD student in the School of Human Development and Family Sciences. For her research, Maya studies early childhood education policy and the childcare system within Oregon, with a pretty applied policy focus. Alongside doing her research, in her capacity as a graduate research assistant at OSU, some of what Maya does is to write trainings and coaching systems for individuals who train early childhood educators (hence the trainer of trainers who train trainers).
Check out our interview with Maya wherever you get your podcasts, including on our KBVR page, Spotify or Apple Podcasts! We cover a whole range of topics related to early childhood education, such as the HeadStart program, the childcare crises, why we don’t know a whole lot about the education stats of children under the age of 6 in Oregon, and what Maya is doing to hopefully change that problem!
If you’re interested in learning more about some of the topics discussed, check out the following resources:
- A “policy brief” that Maya put together for a final project in a social policy class she took: Toward Just and Livable Wages: Early Educator Compensation Reform in Oregon
- The Oregon Child Care Research Partnership is where a lot of the early childcare education policy research in Oregon comes from if you want to know more about the kind of research that goes into child care policy.
- Maya works on the Early Learning System Initiative (ELSI) in helping build a system of support for Oregon’s early educators.
- If you want to learn more about Maya or get in touch with her, here is her OSU profile page: https://health.oregonstate.edu/directory/maya-johnson
