Webinars

1. Note your group's section assignments.
2. Assign facilitator, timekeeper, and reporter/note-taker for your group.
3. Read the information about the group's assigned sections, using the discussion prompts below, discuss and note what you learned about your group's assigned section.
4. Prepare to share highlights of what your group learned and discussed.

Assignments

• Overview: Everyone
• Primary Purpose and Outcomes: Groups 1 and 2
• Key Activities: Groups 3 and 4
• State Leadership Team (SLT): Groups 5 and 6
• Implementation Sites: Groups 7 and 8
• Data and Evaluation Systems: Groups 9 and 10
• Key Effective TA Practices to Implement: Groups 11 & 12

Discussion Prompts

• Key Takeaways: What were the most important insights or takeaways from your group's assigned section? What stood out to you, and why?
• Connection to Current Practice: How do the key ideas from your section align with what's currently happening in your group members' professional contexts?
  • What practices are already in place that reflect these ideas?
  • Where are there gaps or opportunities for further growth?
• Stakeholder Inclusion: When thinking about the needs analysis component discussed in your section:
  • Who (by role or perspective) did your group feel should be involved in that conversation?
  • Whose voices are essential to ensure the process is equitable and informed?

• Choose one of the following two scenarios your group will read:
  • Scenario 1: MidState Early Learning Collaborative Scenario Activity
  • Scenario 2: The State Office for Early Learning (SOEL).
• The scenario will include some key Needs Analysis characteristics and leave out others.
• Using the prompts, discuss the scenario and prepare to share highlights from your discussion with the whole group.

The MidState Early Learning Collaborative (MELC) was preparing to host a regional professional development (PD) session aimed at strengthening inclusive practices across early childhood education settings. The planning team, led by Jasmine (PD coordinator) and Marcus (program director), was excited to build on the momentum of their last training event and had just eight weeks to pull everything together.

They started by reviewing feedback surveys from the previous year's PD sessions. Most participants had expressed interest in strategies for inclusion and better communication with families, so Jasmine and Marcus decided to center the upcoming PD around those topics. They also reached out to a few center directors they had worked with before to get their informal take on current needs. With those inputs, they finalized the training focus within a week.

The team was confident that their in-house trainers could lead the sessions and identified a few staff who had recently attended national conferences. Jasmine and Marcus drafted the session agenda and began working on logistics, booking a local community center for an in-person event. They sent registration flyers to their regular mailing list of center directors and instructional coaches.

The planning moved quickly. While Jasmine briefly floated the idea of reaching out to some local agencies or university partners, the team decided to keep things simple due to the short timeline. They were also unsure who to contact, so they opted to move forward with the resources they already had.

The training day came, and attendance was lower than expected. A few attendees mentioned that the timing and location made it hard to attend, especially for those working in rural areas. Several educators who attended shared that the content felt somewhat generic and didn't speak to the specific challenges they were facing in their programs. Others noted that while inclusion was a great focus, they were unsure how to apply what they'd learned without broader changes in their site policies or staffing support.

After the event, Jasmine and Marcus met to reflect. They were surprised by the feedback and wondered how they could have better tailored the PD experience to support more practical implementation in the field.

The State Office for Early Learning (SOEL) had been tasked with developing a new professional development (PD) initiative focused on strengthening inclusive practices in early childhood education settings across the state. The initiative was part of a broader effort to align with IDEA requirements and increase access to quality inclusion for young children with disabilities.

To begin the planning process, SOEL convened their State Leadership Team (SLT), a group formed a year earlier with representatives from state departments (education, health, and human services), local districts, family advocacy organizations, higher education, and early intervention programs. The group met virtually to begin the needs analysis process and discuss initial priorities. During the meeting, the SLT reviewed state data on preschool inclusion rates, educator workforce shortages, and regional service delivery trends. Members shared insights from their respective sectors—highlighting issues such as technology gaps in rural areas, uneven family engagement practices, and the lack of alignment between early intervention and preschool transitions.

Several SLT members voiced concerns about relying solely on state-level data. A family representative asked if families had been consulted directly, while a district special education leader wondered whether providers in different program types (for example, Head Start, community-based centers) were experiencing the same challenges. The team agreed to form a small workgroup to dig deeper, but progress was slow.

The group met only once over the next two months due to scheduling conflicts and unclear roles. In the meantime, the PD planning timeline moved forward. A few SOEL staff developed draft learning objectives and began planning a virtual PD series focused on "inclusive environments through UDL and instructional design." They updated the SLT at the next quarterly meeting, asking for feedback on the draft agenda. Some SLT members expressed concern that their earlier input hadn't been reflected in the PD content. Others asked how the sessions would address issues like workforce burnout, policy barriers, and system misalignment that couldn't be solved through training alone. A few members questioned why the PD series was being planned before completing the deeper needs analysis they had originally discussed. One higher ed partner noted that with more time, the SLT could have supported long-term planning and developed recommendations to improve system-wide coherence.

Despite these concerns, the PD series proceeded as planned. Attendance was decent, but evaluations were mixed. Some educators found the content helpful, while others said it felt disconnected from their realities or too focused on theory. The SLT reconvened after the series to review feedback and agreed they needed to clarify their role in ongoing PD planning efforts and consider how to better integrate system-level priorities with PD support.