Education of Teachers in Early Care

Hello Everyone!
I have been in Early Childhood for over 20 years. I have brought up two children. Two VERY different children to say the least. I have worked in various different EC settings. After 18 years I finally finished my BA in EC. Today's discussion is about teacher education verses quality.

One of the many debates in EC is if the education of your child's teacher equates quality care or education. The nation has many quality initiatives going. Most are rating systems. The one in Wisconsin is YoungStar. YoungStar though does not affect any DPI programs. It seems those in charge think that DPI has enough protocols in place to make sure that quality is there.

I am here to say I beg to differ. In any programs licensed by Health & Human Services there will be   many regulations in place that DPI does not have to follow. For example child to staff ratios. In a H&HS licensed program four-year-old classrooms require a 1:14 ratio. In a child care center or preschool no child would be allowed out of sight to use a restroom. That is not the case in a DPI school program. Many programs also go by the rule that no adults will ever be alone with a child. Not only does this protect the child from abuse it protects the program and staff.
Many child care workers in Wisconsin are up in arms about this push for quality. I was at a conference over a year ago when a discussion became a "bitch" session. There was a lady in her late 40's early 50's who said she had been in this business for over 25 years and felt she knew more than a new 24 year-old with a BA. I really would have to say that is true in ANY case. Yet, as I told her if she would get a BA she would improve also. I feel what I learned in my college classes helped me tremendously! That however does not diminish my 20 years experience.

My supervisor has a BA in Mental Health and has been in ECE in a supervisory position for 6-7 years. I feel I understand much more than her. Why? Because I have the experience of living the day to day teaching. She only has experience "watching/observing" it. I feel she really gets the social/emotional aspect of children and in observing classrooms she see things and can understand better than I can, yet implementing what she says is tricky to say the least. I know what needs to be done, yet I have 19 other students and an assistant who is not very skilled. Reality of what should and can be done is different.

In his article, The Pre-K Debates: What the Research Says About Teacher Quality , Steven Barnett says there are many variables in rating quality, not just education. He points out that good mentors and wages are other signs of quality. I watched a video Watching Teachers Work | NewAmerica.net that discussed many things, one of which was quality and assessing teachers. There were two teachers on the panel and when they discussed having student scores as the basis for teacher bonuses and contract renewal they were not completely on board. One made the point that she teaches 17 year-olds and  that one day they like her, the next they hate her. If they took the test that her contract was based on,  on a day they disliked her she might lose her job.
The group actually acknowledged that the K-12 population is learning from the EC field on what quality really is. Right now the National Head Start is being revamped and many have heard about the re-competition that is happening all over the US with programs scoring low in reviews. There is much more to it than low scores see ECLKC, the Early Childhood Learning and Knowledge Center  (http://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/hslc ) for more information on how that is being handled. Head Start has started to use the C.L.A.S.S  assessment tool CLASS™ and QRIS FAQs  as part of their arsenal to check for quality care. In the video mentioned above now the K-12 is looking at this tool also. It does not just look at the environment, the curriculum, and student test scores it looks very deeply at adult/child interactions.
The Center for Social Emotion Foundations of Early Learning Pyramid Model, http://csefel.vanderbilt.edu/about.html, has a base of effective workforce. The next level is Nurturing and Responsive Relationships. C.L.A.S.S. matches with that same theory. What makes a good teacher? All the education in the world may be good, but if a teacher/caregiver is not building a relationship with the students there will not be quality.
So with all that said, is education important? Absolutely! If you do not know what is developmentally appropriate or understand how the brain works to store memories you cannot possibly provide quality learning experiences. So it is a combination of things that constitute quality.

I had a pre-k DPI certified teacher tell me at free play she finds it is best to just let the children play. Why, she asked, should I interrupt children? I think they need that time away from teacher directed learning. I asked her why was she directing the play? What interactions could you have that would scaffold them to a higher level of thinking? It is not interrupting to make statements or give encouragement. Teachers are there to facilitate learning not to direct it. In early childhood we set up the environment to give opportunities for learning. Many times what we planned to be learned was not, but something totally different was learned.
When Steve Jobs died there were two articles, of which I cannot find at the moment, both pointed to the fact that today's world is becoming so structured and academic that there will not be another Steve Jobs. He was so creative. He was an out of the box thinker. He created things that no one else would even think of. If we direct every learning experience and make sure that what "we" want is taught our children, who are our future, will not know any more than we do. They will not reach beyond. We want our children to be risk takers. I do not think that we should go beyond what is safe, but they should not be a clone of what we are. I hope that every child I teach learns something more from me that what the curriculum is set up for them to learn.
Quality is more than a box of information. Quality is many things. The next posting will discuss the cost of quality. Who will, who wants, who should to pay for it?
Goodbye for now! I hope my blog has got you thinking and discussing!