Taking Back Early Childhood Education

I have been watching with escalating concern the trend of public schools taking over Pre-K in their communities all over the country to bolster their waning enrollments. In my own community, state funding meant to help support local Pre-K programs was diverted into creating and maintaining several public Pre-K classrooms that are not only competing unfairly with long-established local programs, but are being run and taught by people without education or experience in Early Childhood Education. This alarming trend is a threat to the well-being of young children and families. ECE programs should be run and staffed with well-trained Early Childhood professionals, not Elementary educators, not special education staff, not school administrators who have no idea what quality early childhood education looks like. Here are some examples of the kinds of developmentally inappropriate practice going on in these schools:

In one classroom I was observing, a staff person was standing there scowling at the children as they made use of the bakery my student teacher had developed. The student had made mini-muffins for the children to buy from the bakery, and as one girl approached to buy her muffin, this teacher, who made no attempt to do anything but stand and glare at the children, told the girl that she had already had her muffin, so she had to leave. The child quietly told the teacher that she had not had a muffin, and the teacher insisted she had, until the child admitted to having one, when in fact, she had not!

In another instance, one of my students reported that the teacher sat at the table, dabbed the paint brushes into paint one at a time and handed them to each child, one at a time. When my student remarked to a girl that she had created a new color by mixing red and yellow together, the teacher yelled at the child not to mix the colors!

It's bad enough that children in K-2 classes must endure these disrespectful, unethical practices, but we early childhood professional must find a way to take Pre-K back; at the very least, to make sure that it is carried out and administered by competent, trained ECE professionals.

If you are interested in learning more about high-quality, apporopriate practice in Early childhood programs, read We Are All Explorers by D. Scheinfeld, K. Haigh and S. Scheinfeld, Teachers College Press, 2008.

Debra Murphy
http://www.classroomtoclassroom.com/