Opportunities to support early childhood education. How NC leadership prioritizes family and child well-being. Overcoming learning loss, through fun summer learning. Talking to parents about their child care needs and seeking insights to find solutions. These were just some of the favorite topics our readers enjoyed in the blogs we produced in 2022.
The top nine posts cover a wide variety of topics, from promoting more opportunities to work at the intersection of early childhood to analyzing the budget and distributing summer learning resources to amplifying stories directly from families and advocates. Click here to make your year-end contribution and continue more stories like these.
- Our most viewed blog was the June 2022 post promoting the opening for a Data and Policy Associate. This post resulted in the hiring of the fantastic Fowota Mortoo.
- Many readers were keen on the June 2022 blog exploring How Does Governor Cooper’s Budget Proposal Prioritize Early Childhood? It has been said that a budget is a reflection of moral values so this was an interesting layout of Governor Cooper’s priorities, as it pertains to safety, education, expanding the workforce supporting early childhood, and health care, for the state of North Carolina.
- We were thrilled that our Summer Learning Toolkit garnered 200 downloads, so we’re not surprised that our May 2022 post on how to Be a Summer Learning Champion with the 2022 Summer Learning Toolkit was really popular. Not only was it exciting to see the content we produced spread across the state and digital spaces, but also that communities and leaders came together to support summer learning, making up for pandemic learning loss and filling in for the “summer slide.”
- In June 2022, we attended a panel discussion hosted by EducationNC on the Science of Reading and wrote a blog on how the Science of Reading Policy Panel Highlights NC Journey and Progress for Literacy Programs. The audience was pleased to hear that North Carolina is one of 13 states that has passed a Comprehensive K-3 Reading Policy, with Alaska just joining the collection of states that have a fully developed policy.
- In line with our values to spearhead collaboration by promoting understanding and advancing policies, we continue to promote a roundup of hiring with our partners. In that light, the Q4 2022: Early Childhood Related Career Opportunities blog also received much interest. We also used this opportunity to hire our Project Coordinator, welcoming Crystal Folmar, to the team to help us keep our projects more organized.
- Being a part of the Care and Learning (CandL) Coalition has been enlightening as we move to transform our early care and learning centers and schools into more accessible, affordable publicly-funded North Carolina early childhood systems. Parents and caregivers are finally being and feeling heard! So, we were excited to share a CandL Update from the Pilot Listening Sessions in July 2022 and glad so many others were interested in hearing what we learned.
- We were proud to feature Sumera Syed on the May 2022 blog in the special series, NC Parents & What They Work for: Sumera Syed, Equity Leader, and inspired by how much her story resonated with readers. We remain so grateful for the superb contributions to the team for nearly 6 years before she moved on to a new role this summer.
- Since it’s such a huge work full of valuable insights, we’re pleased that our late November announcement of the New Report: North Carolina Economy and Child Care Industry Inextricably Linked was in our top 50 web links viewed. Please don’t forget to register to attend our panel discussion on this on January 19, 2022.
- Reflecting on census data and economic hardship, we posed the question: Is Having a Child in America Becoming an Unattainable Privilege? With increasing costs, limited affordable child care and other challenges bombarding parents and caregivers, this seemed like a logical question to ponder.
Which of these posts was your favorite? For more of these stories and this great work, please be sure to subscribe to our biweekly newsletter and consider making a donation today to start 2023 off strong by helping us transform the lives of North Carolina families, from their earliest days, while also supporting a small growing, family-friendly team.
The NC Early Childhood Foundation is driven by a bold – and achievable – vision: Each North Carolina child has a strong foundation for life-long health, education, and well-being supported by a comprehensive, equitable birth-to-eight ecosystem. We build understanding, lead collaboration, and advance policies to ensure each North Carolina child is on track for lifelong success by the end of third grade.