On Subsequent Inspection...

There is a lovely and well-meaning article that has been making the social media rounds recently entitled To My Baby's Day Care Teacher , found on the Oklahoma City Mom's Blog. My first reaction was in line with most childcare providers; we are seen! We are appreciated! Working 9 to 12 hour days for minimum wage is worthwhile! Then I realized that as a field, early childhood educators could be both emotionally appreciated and appropriately compensated. As a (former) family child care home operator, I was open from 7 AM to 5:30 PM, with about 30-45 minutes on each side for preparation and tear-down. I planned my weeks on Saturdays and Sundays, typically grocery and supply shopping for 3-4 hours and planning for an additional 3-4 hours. My personal time off was limited to one week per calendar year and three sick days. This was more generous to myself than many providers, who don't take vacations or sick days. For this, I was compensated about $4/hour (depending on the numb...

A while back, a friend asked if I wrote all of the content on here. I responded, "yes, and any inconsistencies should be attributed to professional growth and not confusion". This post is a testament to that, as I review what I wrote  here, in the post "The Kid You Have" . While I maintain that the core theme is critical; loving children means honoring all of their gooey-nosed glory; I must make a public correction regarding the content. I've recently been reading  Threads of Thinking: Schemas and Young Children's Learning by Cathy Nutbrown , and it has made me realize that I missed something HUGE in the "undesirable" behavior detailed in that old entry. The child throwing balls (and shovels and everything else) outside the fence was exploring the "enclosure" schema, and I missed it because all I could see was the toys leaving the yard for the street! Of course I'm not suggesting that childcare providers or parents should consider...

In the last several years, I’ve made a radical shift in philosophy. Rather than seeing children as people who need to learn a checklist of skills by a certain time, I’ve begun seeing children as self-motivated learners, capable of taking in information as they need it to make sense of their world. This is mostly because I am a terrible student in traditional means. If I have a question about why a plant in my garden is growing poorly, or how to make my home computer network work together better, or how to conjugate an irregular verb in Spanish, I’ll read heaps of books and credible websites until my initial question is answered. Why would I be so egotistical as to assume that my brain is somehow special? Why would anyone expect that brains suddenly develop this capability at age eighteen or whenever compulsory education ends? People don’t stop learning because they’re not in school; people don’t stop learning, period. When was the last time someone sat down a three-year-old and intent...

If our nation's interest in early childhood STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education were a genuine push for scientific thinking and literacy, it would probably look a lot less like this:                                                                 And a lot more like this: If we want to teach and encourage scientific thinking, we need to start with the classic: this scientific method. For those of us who haven't been in a science class for a while, this is the scientific method: 1. Observe or describe a phenomenon/Ask a question. 2. Do your research. 3. Create a hypothesis. 4. Test that hypothesis. 5. Did it work? If it did, go to step 6. If not, return to steps 2-4. 6. Draw your conclusions. For those of us who haven't been around infants for a while, people are bor...