Now it’s Canada’s turn
The National AfterSchool Association reports that new US federal workforce priorities have started to line up with what the afterschool field has argued for years. Strong professions need clear pathways in: recognized credentials, work-based learning, apprenticeships, and real connections between education and employment. The US Department of Education’s newly finalized career-education priorities put federal weight behind those things, and NAA reads it as a real step toward out-of-school time being treated as a genuine profession with a defined career pathway.
That is a lead worth following. Canada has the pieces to build our own version, and in some ways we are already reaching for it. Child Care Now published its Educators Matter qualifications roadmap this month, laying out what a school-age workforce pathway could look like. The appetite in the sector is clearly there. What the US move shows is what happens when that appetite gets matched by real backing: credentials, training, and career steps that people can actually see and climb.
The opportunity for us is to take the same idea and make it Canadian. A recognized pathway into school-age care would help fill the rooms sitting closed for lack of staff, give educators a future to grow into, and finally treat this work as the profession it already is in practice. The US just showed the shape of it. Now it’s our turn to build one that fits Canada.
Read the full article: naaweb.org
