Professor Sharon

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60 and teacher education

April 2nd, 2014 · No Comments · 100 Days Project, Children, College students, Education, Musings, My Goals, retirement, Teaching & Learning, time, Work

Today, as I stood on a playground (thank goodness I chose my winter coat and gloves today) observing a student teacher, I did feel sad at this part of my work that I will no longer do.  I estimate that I’ve been part of upwards of 125 early childhood teachers educational journeys.  It’s certainly more if you count all the students with early childhood at their major; I’m just counting those students who were in my capstone course at the end of their Associate’s degree program.

I’m proud of that.  One of the reasons I gave for pursuing my doctorate was so that I could have more impact on the world of young children.  I reasoned that I could stay working with little ones, and impact a couple of dozen in a year; but that if I went into teacher education, I could multiply that by hundreds.  And, this semester, really has demonstrated to me, often and in large and small ways, that that reasoning did come to pass.

And, I will miss that, a lot.  I’ve really been inspired by these pre-service teachers dreams and aspirations for their lives and the lives of the children they will work with over the years.  I’ve asked them endless times to reflect on who they are in the lives of children, and ways they can become advocates.  I’ve been frustrated and angry, more times than I can count, about the state of the industry and the fact that policy makers don’t give a damn about what research says about young children’s needs.  But, somehow these young teachers give me hope to rise above the frustration, and keep going.

I will keep going.  I already have in mind a number of ways to continue to try to improve the lives of our youngest citizens – I shall miss very much this particular way of doing that work.

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