Celebrating National Hispanic Heritage Month with the Council

Written by: Vilma M. Williams

One of the most wonderful aspects of being part of the CDA community is knowing that our actions to support a diverse early childhood education workforce reflect a deep and sustained commitment.   The Council’s commitment to diversity is unparalleled:    We don’t simply extoll the virtues of diversity, we live it! 

•  The Council offers the CDA credential to an early educator in any language of the world that is part of their practice.  We are proud that we have supported the CDA in over 60 languages spoken in USA early education programs. 
• Our competent and committed staff also reflect this diversity at all levels, including administrators and executives.  For example, our team members hail from many nations, cultural backgrounds, and religious traditions.   We prefer it and love it this way!   
• We publish and present our work publically in many languages.   This includes publishing CDA materials and whitepapers in Spanish and conducting webinars, live sessions, keynote presentations, phone chats, and telephone calls in Spanish. 
• Our Professional Development Specialist community includes hundreds of monolingual Spanish and bilingual educators in the CDA assessment process. 
• Every year, we award thousands of CDA credentials to educators who are bilingual or monolingual in languages other than English.  

Therefore, it gives us great pleasure to celebrate September 15 to October 15 as National Hispanic Heritage Month.   We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and many others in paying tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.  

Our commitment is rooted in many reasons – and began long before the Hispanic population became the demographic power it has achieved today.    Still, we notice that, according to Child trends, “the proportion of children who are ethnically Hispanic has been growing steadily, from 9 percent in 1980 to 25 percent in 2015, and 26 percent in 2021-2023.”   

At the Council, our role is to ensure that each of these children – and every child - has and deserves to have a knowledgeable, well prepared, and competent early childhood educator who meets the highly regarded CDA Competency Standards. 

Happy National Hispanic Heritage Month! 

¡Felíz Mes de la Herencia Hispana 2023!