Your Professional Identity

An article in the Atlantic Monthly quotes Marcy Whitebook, the director of the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, about the importance of early educators:

"Existing brain science, Whitebook said, backs up what educators could only theorize in the 1970s: The first five years of a child's life are key to their overall brain development. What children learn before age 5—both academic skills like critical thinking and social skills like taking turns—sets the stage for the rest of their lives. The single most important element in capitalizing on that crucial window, Whitebook said, is who provides education in those years. 'People don’t tend to think teaching young children [is] as complex work as teaching older children, but in fact, it is,' Whitebook said."

And in the book, The Thinking Teacher, authors Sandra Heidemann, Beth Menninga and Claire Chang write about how important it is for early educators to respect themselves as professionals.

"Think of your professional identity as a story you are creating..." they urge. "That story forms a picture of how you see yourself as a teacher, how effective you feel, how you define your style of teaching, and what you see as your strengths and weaknesses in the classroom. It is also the story of how you take what you know about learning and teaching and bring it to life in your own way."

Source: “The Underestimation of America’s Preschool Teachers,” by Lillian Mongeau, The Atlantic Monthly, August 16, 2016

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