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In her article, "Learning to Play Well With Others" in the September 2009 issue of Exchange, Jeny Searcy shares leadership lessons from her career as an early childhood professional, such as this advice:

"In 2006 I was hired to be the Director of Sunbeam Child Development Center.  Sunbeam serves 48 children between the ages of birth and five in two Early Head Start classrooms, one three-year-old classroom, and one pre-kindergarten classroom. It has a staff of 13 people.  Somehow I thought I was competent to handle all of this. The first six months were beyond description.  Staff members quit, the public school took three months to supply a teacher for the pre-kindergarten classroom, and there were two federal reviews.  The center had always boasted that it accepted children who had been asked to leave other centers, and we had a lot of children with behavior problems.  I worked from open to close (6:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) every day and cried, either on my way to work or on my way home - sometimes both.  

"Gradually, however, things began to change.  As staff members quit, I was able to replace them with people who had the same goals that I had and who could complement my strengths and support my weaknesses.  When the public school teacher finally came, we were able to set goals for her classroom together.  We passed reviews with flying colors.  And while the children’s behavior didn’t improve overnight, I began to see the children as individuals and not just as problems to be fixed.

"Lesson Learned:  Some things just take time. As hard as it is for most of us to accept, most problems can’t be fixed immediately.  Take some time, cry a little, and hang on.  It will get better."

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Speaking of stress relief, Exchange has a number of extremely helpful resources for supporting teachers dealing with children with challenging behaviors:

• Our Beginnings Workshop book, Behavior, has 24 articles written by experts in the field on how to deal with challenging behavior.
• Ten Out of the Box Training Kits on "Positive Discipline" provide directors with all the resources you need to conduct in-house training sessions.
• Two Exchange CEU modules, "Managing Challenging Behavior" and "Social and Emotional Development", provide credit for reading Exchange magazine articles.
• Exchange's newest resource, the DVD, Facing the Challenge (an expertly crafted video training tool).

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