Listening to Early Childhood Educator Voices

Yesterday was a big day for EdSurge. Emily Tate published the first in a series of pieces on the early learning workforce. The article explores how an apprenticeship program in Philadelphia is coupling on-the-job coaching with classroom instruction to propel career advancement. Emily focuses on the experiences of two apprentices, weaving in details illustrative of the significant challenges that early childhood educators face: few structured opportunities for professional learning and growth, high turnover rates, and low compensation.

Emily’s piece is an ambitious piece of reporting that exemplifies many of the things that EdSurge does so well: recognizing the centrality of educator experience, giving voice to programs and people who don’t always have a platform, and contextualizing individuals’ experiences within the larger field of education. But Emily’s piece is also something new. It treats a segment of educator that is new for EdSurge. And it treats those educators on their own terms, not assuming that what we know of K-12 applies to this space. I urge you to check out Emily’s Twitter thread that explains the difficulty—but also the urgency—of this work.

All of us who've been involved in this project have been so incredibly touched and inspired by the work that early childhood educators do, often against incredible odds. We’ve heard stories of teachers who’ve watched children squirrel away food in their backpacks, knowing that their families could use it to stave off hunger later. We’ve heard stories of teachers who’ve had to take precautions for their own safety during home visits, knowing that the children who they’re visiting don’t have have the luxury of leaving the neighborhood after the visit ends. We’ve heard about mounting bills and food bank visits and how teachers try to leave their personal financial worry at the door when they meet their young students each day. 

But we’ve also heard powerful stories about how early childhood educators are making a difference. There are small moments of recognition—the time that a two year old who, for the first time unprompted, breathes deeply when he recognizes that he’s upset. There are moments of sheer delight—the three year old who runs around in circles, so amazed that his teacher has come to his house to visit. There are quiet moments of earned trust—the time that a mother confides in a teacher about something she has not told anyone else. We’ve heard about the dedication of teachers to their small learners—designing their own curriculum to suit the particular needs of learners in their class when standard resources are insufficient. These are small things that are so big.

Early childhood education is a field in which lunch breaks, paid preparation time, and benefits are not the norm. Nationwide, the median pay for child care workers is just $10.72 an hour. But it’s also a field that has attracted deeply committed educators who take seriously their responsibilities for educating and keeping safe the littlest learners. This project aims to show how they are doing that work, sometimes with external support—as in the Philadelphia apprenticeship program—and sometimes on their own.

Early childhood education is incredibly complex—far more complex than any of us imagined when we started this project. We are learning a lot—about who the early childhood workforce is, about the patchy funding that circulates in this space, about policy and regulations, about models for helping these educators thrive, and about areas where educators desperately need support to do their work effectively. We are excited to share what we learn over the course of this project. Read the first article here.