Architect of Change

As the fire roared before her eyes, filling the night air with smoke and a distinct sense of tragedy, eleven-year-old Valora Washington began asking questions. What was going on? Why did four young children live in an apartment above a bar? Where were their parents?

She had often noticed how the oldest child, a withdrawn boy who sat across the classroom from her and kept to himself, would collect his three younger siblings after school to walk them home. All four children died that night in the fire that had started in the bar below their apartment.

Later that week, as she joined her classmates on the sidewalk outside the school to watch the funeral procession pass, she looked at the four small coffins and decided something about life. Having watched a building burn down and grieved for the children who had been inside, she knew it wouldn’t take just an architect to rebuild what had been lost—it would take an architect of change. “I remember thinking to myself right then and there that, when I grew up, no kid was going to be burning up on top of a bar,” she says today. “Right at that moment, my whole vocation started.”

Now the CEO of the Council for Professional Recognition, Valora has become an architect of change as a child advocate and is still doing her best to ensure that the innocent are given a fair start in life. “Working with young children and helping them get a strong footing is the best way to prevent problems down the road,” she explains. Instead of fixing problems that already exist, her work has its sights set on keeping those problems from occurring in the first place.

“What we know from research is that family, teachers, and caregivers who work with a child influence that child the most,” says Valora. “Historically in our country, people who work with young children under the age of five haven’t had a lot of training because many people assume that anyone can teach young children. People think it’s just kind of an extension of mothering. But actually, that’s not true. Research shows that working with children in a particular way strengthens opportunities for learning and can have a lifetime impact on them in all kinds of ways. When children receive a high quality early education, they earn more money as adults, are more likely to be homeowners, less likely to drop out of school, and less likely to become teen parents. The impact of a good early childhood education benefits society as a whole.”

The Council for Professional Recognition gives people working in early education a professional development framework for their work. The mission of the Council is to promote improved performance and recognition of professionals in the education of children from birth to five years old. Professionals who work in all types of early care and education programs like Head Start, pre-kindergarten, infant-toddler, family childcare, and home visitor programs are able to earn credentials through the Council. The Council is widely known for administering the Child Development Associate (CDA) National Credentialing Program™, which assesses and credentials early childhood education professionals.

The CDA credential has been awarded to over 325,000 people since it began in 1975, and approximately 18,000 new early childhood professionals are credentialed annually. The Council for Professional Recognition was created in 1985 as a means to oversee the professional assessment, which was a paper-based process until Valora came along. “We revolutionized the CDA,” she explains. “I knew it needed to be upgraded or enhanced for the 21st century, so I joined the organization to do that specifically.” Now, the exam can be administered electronically, and results can be obtained the day of testing, instead of the weeks it took with the paper process. In addition to updating the CDA to be administered electronically, Valora’s team updated all of the competencies and materials to reflect the latest research.

Each candidate for the CDA assessment is observed by a professional development specialist, lending the credential new power and endurance. The national exam is offered in the language spoken by the candidate, and is currently being expanded internationally. “We recently awarded our first international credential in Dubai, and we’re in negotiations to work with eight other countries right now,” Valora says. “The exam is so crucial because our nation, unlike most of Western Europe, doesn’t really have national childcare standards.” The U.S. military also uses the credential extensively, requiring childcare workers employed at U.S. military bases all over the world to carry their credential.

The tremendous passion for social justice that Valora brings to her work each day was first honed by the example of her grandmother and by the emphasis her family placed on education and giving back to the less fortunate. “Many parents do not understand how important it is to talk to your children and to read to them,” she says. “That’s why there’s a thirty-million-word vocabulary gap between poor children and middle class children before they get to kindergarten.” Valora is grateful that her family always encouraged her to learn. “In my family, education has never been about personal development only,” she points out. “It’s also about how you can be of service. When you get your education, you’re supposed to do something with it that is of service to other people.”

Valora grew up in Columbus, Ohio and remembers her childhood fondly. Her father was a railroad worker and her mother a nurse. Her parents divorced and remarried other partners when she was young, but Valora never felt any chaos or tension in her family life. Her parents were still friendly after their divorce, and her extended family all lived in the same neighborhood. Everyone supported and looked out for each other.

Valora’s stepfather was an elementary school principal, and her mother a lifelong student, underscoring the emphasis on education in her family. In fact, her grandmother received her high school diploma, her mother finished her Bachelor’s degree, and Valora got her PhD all in the same year. Every day after school, Valora and her siblings would sit down at the kitchen table and do their lessons. “It was a daily routine,” she remembers. “And in the summer, we would go to the library and read books—hundreds every summer.” Even when she got her first job as a busgirl at a hotel in high school, it was to save money for college. In the environment she grew up in, college was the expected next step.

Valora considers her grandmother the most influential person in her life. Her grandmother volunteered with her church and with the Red Cross, always looking out for people in the neighborhood who needed help. “She worked, had eight children, volunteered, was a very active member of her church, cooked three meals a day, and was loved by all members of the neighborhood,” says Valora. “We took real lunches to school. She cooked, baked, and sewed, making most of my clothes until I was a teenager. We grew vegetables in the garden, and we canned things for the winter. I was the eldest grandchild and I hung out with her a lot. I saw how people relied upon her and talked to her. All the things she did in her life were such an influence on me. My grandmother would not have called herself a social activist, but that’s in fact what she was. She was always generous.”

Valora was also profoundly influenced by the civil rights and women’s movements in the U.S., hitting home for her the idea that anything is possible. “Not only is anything possible, but you can join with other people to make things happen,” she says. “The social justice worldview of my generation focused on seeing education as a means for personal as well as community development.”

After high school, Valora studied Anthropology at Michigan State University, as well as the many other subjects she found interesting but hadn’t been exposed to before.  She embraced the opportunity to study abroad in West Africa, where she became even more interested in childhood studies. “When I was over there, I noticed the children and how they were behaving,” she recalls. “They had a lot of responsibility, with many of the older children taking care of the younger ones. Even a seemingly small task like collecting sticks was considered a contribution to the community. A lot of children these days have nothing to do except entertain themselves, but what they’re doing isn’t actually critical in any way, and they know that. The model of child behavior I saw in Africa definitely influenced my outlook on child development and my resolve to begin my career in the field.“

With that resolve, Valora went straight from undergraduate to graduate school at Indiana University, receiving her PhD in Child Development at 24 years of age. Upon graduating, she accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and received tenure before age 30. She worked in academia for a while before entering the nonprofit world, finally deciding to leave teaching when she was offered the position of Associate Dean at Howard University. She then became Vice President at Antioch College in Ohio. While at Antioch, she was recruited by The Kellogg Foundation to work as a subject matter expert in early childhood education, where she remained for ten years and was the organization’s first black Vice President.

After The Kellogg Foundation, Valora opened up her own nonprofit organization, the Community Advocates for Young Learners (CAYL) Institute. “CAYL focuses on leadership development for people in the field of early care and education,” she explains. “We took mid-career people and tried to make them stronger leaders for young children and for the profession. To accomplish change, I knew we needed to come together to make things happen, both at the policy level and at the direct childcare level. CAYL teaches people the skills of how to impact the profession at the state level through state policy and so forth.” Valora had been involved in the Council for Professional Recognition as a board member long before joining, and when the Founding Director retired, she took his place.

Although she has accomplished so much in the workplace, Valora is most proud of the work she has done for her family. Her most prized possession is a collection of old family photographs that she is working to digitize, giving family members priceless glimpses at moments in time that they could never have experienced otherwise. She has two adopted children, a son and a daughter. “What I’m most proud of is the time I’ve invested in my children,” says Valora. “I made it to every sports event, musical performance, and play. I participated in the Girl Scouts and became the mother of an Eagle Scout.” Valora made the decision to adopt a child when she was working as an evaluator in a foster care project. “I learned that the state can be a really poor parent,” she remarks. “I told myself that I can’t solve this whole huge problem, but I could at least help one child. So I got involved in some adoption advocacy, which led to my adopting my son. And then seven years later, I adopted my daughter.”

In advising young people entering the working world today, Valora emphasizes the importance of staying true to your curiosity and giving back to the community by sharing what you know. “Instead of being only career-focused as a young adult, focus instead on what you’re interested in and that will lead to a vocation,” she encourages. “Think about what you do when you don’t have to do anything. That’s probably where your passion lies.”

Beyond this, she reminds young people that they don’t have to wait until they’re older to give back. Just as her grandmother gave back to the community in abundance regardless of her circumstances, and just as the West African children she met were each given something important to do in the community, her leadership philosophy rests on the belief that each person has something important to give. “Young people these days are searching for meaning in their lives and want to contribute something meaningful to the community,” says Valora.  “There’s always opportunity to share what you know. It’s never too early to start. It’s important to be an architect of change but also to try and help other people be architects of change. What I really believe is that you start with your everyday challenge—whatever is bothering you. That’s the place where change first begins, and the structure of one’s impact takes shape from there.”

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