Kirkwood’s earn-and-learn child care program empowers students while addressing staffing challenges

IOWA CITY — A new program at Kirkwood Community College helped Claudette Urayeneza gain the language skills and hands-on experience to confidently work at a child care center in Iowa City.

Urayeneza, who immigrated to Iowa City from Uruguay almost seven years ago, was nervous when she started working last October at Lionheart Early Learning. It was a new environment and new co-workers and she was working on improving her English. She had experience caring for her five children, but wanted to learn more about caring for other children.

Urayeneza was one of six students — all women — who graduated from the pilot class of the Child Care Foundations and Communication Class at Kirkwood, an “earn-and-learn” program geared toward helping English language learners get the certifications and experience necessary to be successful on the job — while getting paid.

To Kirkwood’s knowledge, the Cedar Rapids-based community college is the first in the state to do this type of programming with child care. Kirkwood, along with other colleges, also have “earn and learn” programs for other industries.

The class — supported by state grant funding for workforce training and education and was no cost to the participants — helped Urayeneza learn the different childhood developmental stages, how to take care of children, how to put babies to sleep and more. Urayeneza said her English improved, she grew more confident and she is excited to continue her education.

The six students worked at one of three child care centers in the Iowa City area: Lionheart Early Learning, Handicare and Home Ties. All three center directors said the program was successful and praised the growth of the students — who are now staff members.

“You could see their skills building as the weeks went by,” said Vickie Brandenburg, owner and director of Lionheart.

The “driving force” for getting this program off the ground was addressing staffing shortages that centers were experiencing, Brandenburg said. Finding quality employees was challenging before the pandemic, and that only increased since.

‘Earn and learn’ at Kirkwood

Kirkwood offers more than a dozen “earn and learn” programs within different industries, including health care, manufacturing and elder care, said Stephanie Hasakis, the English as a Second Language program director at Kirkwood.

“It's pretty adaptable,” Hasakis said about creating an earn and learn program. “We can make it work for most industries.”

Employers identify candidates who they’d like to hire but who might not have all the necessary skills to be successful right way, Hasakis said. The focus is on supporting English language learners and helping them get industry-recognized credentials.

“We can develop a customized and contextualized program where the students will take a class that Kirkwood supports, and we build in anything that they need based on conversations with the business, any industry-recognized credentials that are helpful or necessary to work in that particular industry and then there's an on-the-job training component as well,” Hasakis said.

One of the long-running programs is Basic Healthcare Communications. This program is for individuals looking to become a certified nursing assistant or work in the medical field in some other capacity, Hasakis said.

Students sometimes have a background in the industry the program focuses on, but it’s not required.

“There are lots and lots of different jobs out there, and lots of different people who want to do those jobs,” Hasakis said. “If we can help get people into work that's meaningful to them, that's what we want to do.”

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What did the child care program look like?

Discussions about partnering on an earn-and-learn program for child care began in late 2019. Getting the program off the ground was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic and picked back up last year.

The pilot class ran from the end of November 2022 through March. Over the 15 weeks, students spent two hours each Monday through Thursday at Kirkwood’s Iowa City campus.

The Child Care Foundations and Communication Class was worked into the day. Students worked at their respective centers in the morning and then attended class from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Anyone working full-time returned to the center after class.

The class focused on various aspects of child care, including childhood stages, food allergies, general safety, every day tasks of the center and more. Students also learned about how the child care system operates in the United States, since it likely differed from their home country.

Students also completed a variety of certifications during their class time that are needed to work in a child care center in Iowa, in addition to other credentials such as medication administration, first aid and CPR.

The women had varied work history but “this is the work that they find so rewarding,” said Missie Forbes, executive director of 4Cs of Johnson County, which operates Home Ties.

“They were really tight knit group of individuals,” Forbes said. “Hearing some of those stories, they're a very impressive group of women.”

Michele Fink-Shaffer, director of Home Ties, said the graduation ceremony of the Kirkwood class was “extremely emotional for everybody involved” because of how much the students had grown in a short amount of time. The students were taking what they learned in the classroom and implementing that knowledge on the job, she added.

Hasakis said her colleagues have expressed interest in replicating the child care course at other community colleges. Other schools are offering earn-and-learn programs in health care and transportation, but “we are, to my knowledge, the first in the state who are doing this type of programming with child care,” Hasakis said.

“The partnership was wonderful with Kirkwood,” Brandenburg said. “There was always constant communication with them. Them asking for feedback, us asking questions, how we could tweak this or that.”

Helped centers with staffing

Before participating in the program, Lionheart’s directors had to be in the center’s classroom every day to help cover staffing ratios. Now, directors cover lunch breaks, which is typical of most centers, Brandenburg said.

“Of course we gained three employees, but we gained three highly trained employees,” Brandenburg said. “It has added to the diversity, and our conversations have changed in the building. Now we talk about ‘What do you do in your country for this?’ or we talk about celebrations that they have or just their customs within their country.”

Brandenburg said her employees who participated are all looking at next steps to further their education. All three of them are enrolled in the Child Development Associate Certification program.

Urayeneza loves caring for babies the most, but enjoys spending time with the older children because they help her with her English. Urayeneza said she enjoyed being in class with the other women and it made her excited to learn more.

Handicare is now fully staffed after gaining two employees from the program, executive director Laura Lage said. Lage also emphasized how a benefit of the program was seeing her two new staff members gain confidence.

“Both of the gals that I have, they each display it differently, but they both gained confidence throughout that course,” Lage said.

Marie Mubalu said the class helped teach her how to take care of kids. She now knows how to help them feel better if they’re sad or how to tell when they’re hungry. Mubalu said she was taking a class at Kirkwood already, which is how she found out about the child care program.

Mubalu, who immigrated to Coralville from Congo four years ago, said she enjoys taking care of the young kids. She has eight children in her classroom.

Mubalu enjoyed getting to know the other women in the class and learning with them, as well as learning from the other staff members at Handicare.

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Plans for next cohort

Hasakis said the team is eager to start another cohort in Iowa City, as well as potentially running one in the Cedar Rapids area. The three centers and two students The Gazette spoke with all say they recommend participating in this program.

“It's a model that can be transferred because those credentials that we baked in are required across the state, so we can we can run this in, theoretically, any of our seven county service area and help meet needs there,” Hasakis said.

Among the suggestions for the next cohort, Brandenburg said, is to make the timeline slightly longer since it was a lot of information to cover in 15 weeks, as well as possibly add additional trainings.

“It ended on a really strong note,” Brandenburg said. “It was very emotional the day of their graduation because I feel like we saw their growth.”

Urayeneza said her husband was proud of her after completing the course — and she was proud of herself, too, and felt strong.

For the next cohort, Hasakis said the program would likely engage with different child care centers who express hiring needs since the centers from the first cohort now have a couple extra staff members.

“If there are other centers who would like to explore this opportunity and learn more about it, absolutely reach out to us here at Kirkwood,” Hasakis said. “We'd be thrilled.”

Comments: (319) 339-3155; izabela.zaluska@thegazette.com