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April 26, 2016

Doodle Bugs! Team Tuesday: Issue 258

This past weekend, nearly 200 incredible faculty members from our corporate locations participated in Doodle Bugs’ Sixth Annual Conference, #BestDayEver! On Saturday morning, we gathered at Samuel’s Grande Manor in Clarence, NY for a day filled with helpful workshops, collaboration, recognition, appreciation and fun!

Our Center Ambassador Committees, made up of faculty members from various Doodle Bugs! locations, played an important role in this year’s conference. They promoted the event to their peers, planned a pep rally (with unique Doodle Bugs! cheers!), solicited and facilitated workshops, and created a survey to gather post-conference input from attendees. This year’s event was truly a team effort.

Attendees were welcomed with the red carpet treatment; snapping photo booth-style photos on the red carpet as they entered.

Our emcee for the event was ‘careELLEN’; very similar to, but not to be confused with, Ellen Degeneres. Of course, we used this opportunity to take lots of Oscar-inspired selfies.

After an exciting, high-energy morning, we headed off to several workshop sessions for an opportunity to learn from and collaborate with peers from various Doodle Bugs! centers.

Our faculty members did a wonderful job facilitating workshops that spanned topics including: communication, cultivating kindness, technology, meaningful classroom traditions, play, resilience and relationships, and more! We are so thankful for our amazing presenters; we all benefitted from their willingness to share their time and talents.

 

To close out the day, we celebrated so many success stories from the past year.  We recognized those with milestone anniversaries (including a couple with tallies in the 20s!), the Leadership 101 graduating class, mentors and Bug Squad members. The individuals in each of these groups are vital to the success of Doodle Bugs! and we cannot thank them enough for their dedication.

At the beginning of 2016, Doodle Bugs! leadership selected five exceptional doodle team members as the nominees for the 2016 Employee of the Year: Jessica Green, Brittany Wachowiak, Angela Frost, Stephanie Fuqua, and Emma Hartman. These individuals were selected because they are tremendous examples of how to live the Doodle Bugs! Way and we are so proud of each of them.

During the conference, we asked attendees to cast their vote. It was an extremely close race; Jess Greene, a School Age Teacher from our Henrietta location, was chosen as our 2016 Employee of the Year! Congratulations to Jess and to each of our nominees— our community benefits from your excellence every day!

A few months ago we began asking families to show their appreciation for our teachers by donating a gift basket. Wow! Thanks to our generous community of parents, each of our attendees left the conference with an amazing gift!

It was truly a pleasure to celebrate this remarkable group last weekend. Doodle Bugs! is a better place because of the entire team’s shared dedication to our mission: Happy Children, Happy Parents, Happy Teachers!