Getting Started

We’re excited you’re here and using this tool for the Achieve and Sustain Quality with Systems Thinking Fellowship!

This tool (which is new and in development!) is offered by JournalGroove in collaboration with your facilitator, Dr. Monica Yudron. JournalGroove is not affiliated with the Waters Center, but we are excited to support you as early childhood leaders in using the center’s tools to improve how you support all children and families.

Journaling & Reflection

This AI-powered space is designed to support your learning and growth as an early childhood leader by helping you reflect on the six core competencies at the heart of the fellowship.

The tool looks at your journal entries and offers reflections about how they are related to the competencies and where you fall on this developmental scale for each competency.

Know → Connect → Use → Evaluate & Adapt → Teach

The AI feedback is not meant to be a judgment or a concrete evaluation of your skills. We encourage you to treat the feedback as a conversation starter. Use it to ask yourself:

• “Does this reflect where I see myself?”
• “What do I notice about how I’m thinking now?”
• “What might I try or explore next?”

We hope that this tool helps you thoughtfully participate in your own self-reflection and in your coaching sessions as part of the fellowship.

Using the Tool

There are two main components of your space - your journal and reports. When you’re journaling, you can be in “Basic” mode for a more streamlined view or use “Competency View” to see how competencies are being detected in your writing. As you write, the system will create AI-generated headings to help you organize your writing. You can also add a heading above a text block if there isn’t one there already. Unfortunately, you can’t change the headings as of now.

The competency detection will run every time you add content to your journal (i.e., when you hit enter). Of course, we don’t expect you to journal about every competency in every journal entry. This is just to help you see where you are currently focusing and identify what competencies you’ll get reports for soon.

Once you have journaled about a competency, you’ll have access to a report that offers reflections about how your writing relates to that competency and at what level you’re demonstrating that competency. The reports may spark ideas for how you can build on your current practices to grow your understanding and use of systems thinking.

Finally, you can journal anytime! You will be given journaling prompts during the live sessions, but you can also journal between sessions. Anything about your work that you think will help with your reflection can be included. If you run into any questions, please check the Help section to get answers or reach out to us!

About JournalGroove

JournalGroove is a project co-founded by Nathanael Silverman, a software engineer and aspiring therapist; Kate Grannemann, an early childhood technical assistance provider and consultant; and Dr. Courtney Boudreau, a researcher with a background in behavioral neuroscience and public health.