Staff Profile: Calie Belcher
Calie Belcher, early learning director, speaks with a teacher in a classroom at New Hope Early Learning Center
Name: Calie Belcher
Job title: Early Learning Director
New Hope employee since: July 8, 2024
Hometown: Titusville, Florida
Favorite color: Purple and green
Favorite food: Steak (medium rare)
Favorite sport: Basketball (Minnesota Timberwolves)
Pets: Four cats (Omelette, Pancake, Cinnamon Roll, and Blueberry Muffin), a German Shepherd (Kodi), and a Chinese hamster (Julia)
Children: A son, Joe (12), and a daughter, Jeorgia (9)
Fun fact: Calie was literally born in a barn (in rural South Carolina)
Early Learning Director Calie Belcher
Calie has lived in Indiana since 2009 and in Bloomington since 2019. She has a bachelor's degree from Ball State (BS, 2021), with a double major in early childhood education and special education, and a certification in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI, July 2022).
“Early childhood education has been the focus of my entire career. August 2024 makes it 20 years working in this field.”
Calie started out as a teaching assistant in a toddler classroom when she was 17 and since then she has advanced from assistant teacher to lead teacher, to special education teacher, to head of a special education department, before becoming the new director of New Hope Early Learning Center (ELC).
Why I work at New Hope
What attracted Calie to New Hope for Families is how the mission and the scope of what we do align with her personal values.
“New Hope really fills a lot of checkboxes for me, because my career passion is early childhood education and my personal passion is helping people who need the most help in the moment that they need it.”
The core reason why Calie says she feels strongly about the mission is because she has experienced homelessness herself. “I have had experiences with homelessness and I have had experiences with needing resources like CCDF (Child Care Development Fund) child care vouchers, because, being low income, I didn't have the ability to pay for those things.”
“So, I want to use my experiences -- coming from a place of homelessness to where I am now -- and share my story with the families that New Hope serves, because if sharing my story helps even one person, then it would make me really happy.”
“I also feel like New Hope just really puts people first,” said Calie. She emphasized that by providing housing and child care first, New Hope is able to get people help with solving other problems in their lives.
What I hope to achieve at New Hope
Calie says that she hopes to maintain the smooth operation of New Hope ELC on both the staff side and the family side. She said her top priority is ”helping all of the ELC employees to feel that they are heard and supported, and that we're doing that for our families as well. So, bringing that all together, that's my hope.”
Calie is very impressed with the teaching staff at New Hope. “We have a fantastic team of teachers. We have passionate teachers.” She added, “I see my role as supporting them and helping them grow, not only as teachers, but as people themselves, in their journeys, in their careers.”
The quality and diversity of the teaching staff is one of the strengths that Calie appreciates most about New Hope.
“We have teachers that have backgrounds in not only early childhood education, but various backgrounds, and while they're here, they're using their backgrounds to better our program.”
For example, “We have our own music teacher, because music education is so important to young children, and that's another level of quality that we can provide to our community that maybe some other centers may not have the ability to do.”
Calie Belcher, early learning director, greets a family as they enter New Hope Early Learning Center
The future for New Hope ELC
Calie is also focused on getting the ELC nationally accredited through NAEYC (National Association for the Education of Young Children). “We want to be nationally accredited for multiple reasons. One, it is a statement of our quality: if we are accredited by NAEYC, then that says we have joined the top-tier level of child care programs in the nation. And, two, national accreditation is also a requirement for Paths To Quality (PTQ). To be Level 4 PTQ, the highest in the state, you must be nationally accredited.” Calie looks forward to beginning that process soon.
Calie wishes more people knew about New Hope ELC, “because we offer high-quality child care to not only our shelter families that we're serving, but to the children of families in our community, and I'm not sure the word is fully out there that we serve both populations.”
Calie added, “I want people to know that we offer assistance to families in finding child care options, even when we're not going to be the ones to enroll the child. So, even though we might have what looks like a very full wait list, it's still beneficial to reach out to us, so that we can help them find quality care in the Bloomington area. We have an amazing network of child care facilities that we can refer people to.”
“We are a great resource for anyone struggling to find quality child care in our community,” said Calie. “We love our community. We value being a part of this community.”