For High School Student

Welcome to the CDA

If you’re a student interested in working in early childhood education, earning a CDA can help you get a job in the field by the time you leave high school and help you earn college credit towards your AA or Bachelor’s degree.
Some of the benefits of earning a CDA include:

• Graduate high school career-ready with the nationally recognized CDA Credential
• Jumpstart your higher education with core knowledge of child development
• Gain the knowledge, skills, and confidence to work with young children
• Acquire valuable skills and competencies early childhood employers want
• Earn college credit while still in high school

You will want to start this webinar at the following marks. 
Welcome starts at 8:50 min mark and ends at 17:18 minute mark. 

How to embed the CDA into current courses at your high school starts at 17:19 minute mark and ends at the 47:53 minute mark. 

Steps to completeing your CDA in High School

1.) Enroll into Human Development 1 and 2 at your local high school. This will meet the 120 clock hours of formal education.

2.) Get a placement with a child care center to start working towards your 480 hours of working directly with children. You will need to decide which area you want to get your credential in as your hours need to be inside that area.

• Pre-school Center-Based
• Infant/Toddler Center-Based

3.) Submit your Professional Portfolio for review and set up your observation of working with young children. 

4.) Take the CDA Exam

5.) CONGRATS YOU EARNED YOUR CDA
- Now you can start working right away
                          or 
- Further your education by working towards your associates or bachelor degree

NEW! CDA® High School Handbook Child Development Associate® (CDA)

 Handbook for High School: A Guide to Advocacy and Implementation is for instructors, school faculty, and administrators interested in developing a high school CDA training program. The handbook provides templates, workbooks, budgets, and guides for engaging administrators, instructors, and students, and support in creating a sustainable high school program. It will also help you locate community resources that may provide students with training opportunities to receive their 480 hours of work experience. Digitally formatted, it is a comprehensive framework for informed planning and establishment of the CDA as a competency-based pathway to college and career readiness.
Download your FREE copy by clicking the image of the handbook.

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These two books also might be a resource as your students complete the 120 academic hours, and the 480 on the job training hours. These two will help them when preparing for the test. 

These two workbooks would be good to have as you build out your CDA course within your Human Development 1 and 2 courses. They will have good resources for you to consider as activities and lessons as you embed this into your courses. As the webinar shared you will be doing a lot of these already as part of your courses. It is just about refining what you are doing to touch on a few topics differently.