JENNIFER KEYS ADAIR, PH.D.
Jennifer Keys Adair, Ph.D., is a professor of early childhood education at The University of Texas at Austin, a young scholar fellow with the Foundation for Child Development and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project.
JOANNA ENGLEHARDT
Joanna Englehardt is a Ph.D. student and instructor at The University of Texas at Austin and a former preschool director with 10 years of experience.
Top Teachers Required for All Our Small Children
Lower-income child care centers have caregivers who in addition to caring for the children are also required to be the janitors. As elite pre-K programs know, that’s inappropriate for students who are building neurological connections at a rate of 700 to 1,000 every second.
(WOMENSENEWS)– In a female dominated profession, where 95.5 percent of all child care workers are women, we often assume anyone patient enough can work with children.
We assume that working with babies, toddlers or preschoolers requires little to no special skills or knowledge. The "babysitters" of the world, while needed, are not respected as professionals. In addition, because they are women, doing "women’s work," their pay is reflective of such stereotypes.
Four Necessary Steps
Here’s what would need to change if we were to think of child care workers as teachers and not "babysitters or simply child care workers":
No. 1: Livable wages. Closing the nearly $25,000 salary gap between what a child care teacher and an elementary school teacher makes per year would recognize and value these teachers. Giving them a salary that would allow them to pay rent and buy groceries. You know, pay for the simple necessities of life.
No. 2: Have more early childhood education training programs in our four-year universities. Having teacher prep programs specifically designed with an early childhood focus, not merely lumping 0-5 into K-6.
No. 3: Provide educational and professional development opportunities for existing teachers. Enabling those who currently have valuable years of experience in centers across the country access to further education and professional development. Ensuring we do not lose those teachers who have dedicated their lives to children and who carry with them a level of expertise that cannot be replaced.
No. 4: Move away from a focus on simply meeting children’s basic needs. Moving towards providing rich learning experiences for all children, not just the elite. Providing all children with dynamic and rich learning opportunities and allowing teachers the freedom to create their own curriculum to best meet the needs of their students.
Too often those who care for our youngest children, 0 to 5, in centers across the country are viewed as workers rather than teachers.
Currently, governors such as Minnesota’s Mark Dayton and Montana’s Steve Bullock are advocating for universal access to prekindergarten and New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio is working towards implementing full-day free preschool for all.
Even in light of advocacy for access to "affordable, high-quality child care," as President Barack Obama expressed in his 2015 State of the Union address, we still witness a lack of consistency in whom we see working with our future generations and the quality of experiences children receive.
One of the primary reasons to create universal access to prekindergarten or preschool is to provide equal access to early learning experiences, regardless of race, ethnicity or economic income level.
To change this, we must see all child care workers as teachers and treat them as the professionals that they truly are.
