Hi, everybody! My name is Jenn, and I have been blessed to be a part of the early childhood education world for 20+ years. My journey into education happened somewhat unexpectedly. I had a very different career path in mind when I took a service learning class in college in which I was assigned a location to volunteer at for the entire semester. My assignment? A special education classroom. I had actually spent some time volunteering at the same school, in a preschool classroom, during high school, but had not considered it a possible career choice at the time. However, the second time around opened my eyes to the fascinating field of special education and soon I made the decision to change course, moved 3 hours away to a different college, and applied for admission to the special ed program.
My initial intent was to study only severe disabilities, but a last minute decision to tack on an early childhood disabilities endorsement, along with a chance opportunity to take an internship in place of student teaching landed me in what has become my favorite place to be in education–preschool. Disabilities or not, preschoolers have my heart ❤️
I spent 3 years teaching special ed preschool before leaving the classroom to raise a family. During my years away, I continuously sought out opportunities to work with children, and when my youngest child headed to preschool herself, I tagged along as a teacher in a neighboring classroom.
During college I fell in love with the idea of play-based classrooms and understood how play is the most developmentally appropriate way for young children to learn. After graduation, I quickly learned that implementing a play-based classroom is not always easy amidst the demands of state requirements and regulations, administrations with differing opinions, lack of funding, and parents who push for heavy academics to get their child “ahead”. I also learned that as the “new kid on the block”, my ideas seemed a little foreign to my co-workers. Most of them were far removed from their college days, and they had fallen into the all-too-common trap of viewing preschool simply as a time to prepare for kindergarten–which meant lots of rote memorization, a focus on letter recognition, and a need to learn how to sit still and be quiet. I was the head teacher–a very young one, at that–but joining an already-established classroom with additional staff used to doing things their own way made me realize that it’s near impossible to just waltz in with an attitude of “out with the old, in with the new”. I had earned a teaching degree, but I had yet to gain any solid experience with teaching and the paraeducators and therapists that worked in my classroom knew it. The process of shifting to a more play-based classroom took time and lots of trial and error, but I was proud that I made it three years without using a single worksheet, which was far from the norm when I first joined the group.
Today my situation is very different. I now work in a private preschool that sees 100 children a day come through the doors. Due to what I believe is a combination of logistical roadblocks with our building and a lack of solid early childhood education background in our director, we have a very teacher-directed program that leaves far too little time and space for high quality play. I believe it is not an absence of motivation to provide the best educational environment possible, but a lack of knowledge. Perhaps the day will come when I feel led to open my own school where developmentally appropriate practice will abound, but for now, my job is to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation and hopefully share some of my knowledge along the way.