Join forces to ensure early childhood education is a priority
Have you ever wondered if America has its priorities upside down, when it comes to education? While higher education has flourished with funds earmarked for older students, a child’s greatest cognitive growth occurs between the ages of zero and seven years old. What if the best, most skilled teachers were our early childhood educators? Consider an educational landscape where as many professors teach preschool as teach at the college level. Imagine the impact to the education of every child if we reversed the trend and earmarked resources to improve the quality of early childhood education? Not only would we be investing in our greatest assets, young children, but our efforts would be the catalyst to a lifelong love of learning in the hearts of every child.
If you have ever been in a classroom of young children, most are humming, with busy bodies involved in a variety of activities. Most adults in a class of young children strive to keep the children occupied and safe. From my bird’s eye view, we have filled our early childhood programs with well-intended, caring individuals, but few master teachers. Most teachers of young children are overworked, lack training, and spend the majority of their day managing the well-being of the children in their care. Quality instruction takes a backseat to many other challenges, but also because teachers have not participated in rich professional development opportunities. Through quality early childhood training programs an educator gains the necessary skills to do more than keep the children occupied. In this day and age, it is not enough to occupy children and keep them busy; we must engage children in rich environments to learn.
What have we done to make sure we have the best; most qualified educators working with children at this pivotal time in their development? The vision of The Literacy League is to enrich the learning environments of all children. Our mission is to improve early childhood education through professional development opportunities. Consider this your wakeup call to join The Literacy League either through donation or participating in our training program. Let’s start a dialogue.
Read more about beginning literacy at the Zero to Three website under Care & Education.
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