Tennessee Aquarium

As part of its larger effort to open an Early Childhood Education Professional Learning Center, the Tennessee Aquarium will launch a community planning project to identify its community's needs around early childhood educator (ECE) professional development (PD). The Aquarium, in partnership with the Creative Discovery Museum and the City of Chattanooga, will explore the ideal, financially sustainable model for accessible, high-quality, community informed ECE PD to benefit the community's educators and young children. The project team will first bring together a planning group of community ladders to conduct a needs assessment to understand where gaps, needs, and opportunities lie. Using a collective impact approach, they will seek input from diverse groups of stakeholders from across the county and will use these findings to inform a draft model of the professional learning center's program delivery method. The team will use data walks to inform stakeholders and use their feedback to inform the center's curriculum. Finally, with the buy-in and support from the community stakeholder and partners, the plan to launch The Professional Learning Center's calendar of professional development opportunities and share it with the entire community.