March 11, 2019 | UHCL Staff
The Texas Early Learning Council named University of Houston-Clear Lake’s Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education Rebecca Huss-Keeler to be a council representative for the early childhood educators of Texas. The council utilizes grant funds from the federal government to achieve a series of goals to improve school readiness through targeted strategies stemming from the council’s priority areas.
“I’ll be representing higher education on the council. Others are representing different areas of early childhood education,” said Huss-Keeler. “It will be my job to give my perspective as an early childhood teacher educator and share my knowledge in this field.”
She said they began their work by creating a needs assessment. “We determine the state’s needs for early childhood education, and figure out how services and entities pertaining to early childhood education are working together,” she said.
“This means finding out how many children aged birth to five are served by different programs inside and outside public school,” she explained. “We find out what other services are helping them in their learning and development, how many children are being served inside and outside the public school’s pre-kindergarten, and what areas are not being served well enough.”
When the needs assessment is completed using the input of Huss-Keeler and her colleagues on the council, the Texas Education Agency’s Early Childhood Education Division will create a survey and send it to persons involved with early childhood education throughout the state. “From feedback we receive from the survey, we will create an action plan,” Huss-Keeler said. “The funds from the grant are for one year, but can be extended up to three. This is just the beginning of the process and it works in stages. A strategic plan will emerge from the needs assessment. That will let parents know what’s available for their children in and out of public school, and what social services are available that they might not know about.”
The plan will include sharing best practices in hopes of improving overall quality of early childhood education in Texas. She said the plan will improve early childhood programming in childcare through a collaboration of services and include a rating improvement system. “I believe I was asked to be on this council because I am active professionally in my field,” she said.
“I have taught early childhood education at UH-Clear Lake for 27 years, so I believe I have a unique perspective in higher education,” she said. “At UHCL, we have three degree programs for students who want to work with children birth through age 5. We have the bachelor of applied science in interdisciplinary studies with a major in early childhood education, a bachelor of science in early childhood care and education, and a master’s in early childhood education with early childhood-6th certification.”
She added that UHCL’s graduates are working in almost all the fields represented by the people on the council. “I believe I can use my presence on this council to the advantage of our early childhood education program because it links us to different initiatives that can benefit our students,” she said.
For more information about UHCL’s Early Childhood Education program, visit www.uhcl.edu/education/departments/curriculum-instruction/early-childhood-education.
