Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/turning-crisis-into-opportunity-how-managing-the-pandemic-took-our-team-to-the-next-level/5025440/
For the early childhood education industry, the COVID-19 pandemic has been a crisis on steroids. I have built 27 schools, shepherded more than a dozen schools and hundreds of teachers through the 2008 financial crisis, and managed nearly every challenge you can imagine an owner would face over the course of 20-plus years. But it goes without saying that the pandemic is hands-down the most difficult situation I have encountered as a leader, by far. Within the ECE field and beyond, I am hardly alone.
The coronavirus crisis has fundamentally challenged every aspect of early education–from programming and operations to health and safety protocols. It has forced many owners and directors across the country to make excruciatingly hard business decisions and pushed the child care ecosystem at-large toward the brink of collapse. However, without minimizing the loss and devastation the virus has caused, the situation also brought potential to transform the crisis into opportunity.
Despite the frenetic early days of the pandemic, the opportunity as I saw it was always very clear: to further strengthen our Malvern School team by boldly supporting teachers and staff during an unprecedented time of need. Not only was it quite simply the right thing to do, it ...