My Major is Not Silly
If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that getting my Bachelor’s in early childhood education was useless, silly or stupid, I could probably make enough money to account for all the unpaid hours I will eventually work as a future teacher. I even believed that misconception for a while. Early childhood education is basically just babysitting, right?
I’ve been in the Anita Zucker Early Childhood Education program for five semesters, and I am so grateful that my cohort is such an extraordinary group. All six of us have a passion for teaching, but more importantly, we hold a deep passion for education and educational research. We are privileged to have the most committed professors who are incredibly knowledgeable about new methodologies and research, and who keep us updated even after we have taken their classes.
One Friday night in Koch, I found myself reluctantly giving what was essentially a TED Talk to a group of people I didn’t really know. The conversation began with my plans for next year (I don’t know, don’t ask me), but it ended up spiraling into an argument about whether or not social-emotional learning (SEL) was important in education. I was the only person in the group studying education, and also the only person who believed SEL was important in the classroom.
SEL is a process of teaching children how to recognize and manage their emotions, build relationships and deal with conflict and decision-making. I work in a Pre-K classroom, and there is a teacher who comes into each early childhood classroom once a week for a period of explicit SEL education. This can look like modeling common conflicts using puppets and asking the students to interpret what they think is happening and how to resolve it, or offering skills to implement when you feel a really big feeling. What the students learn explicitly from a teacher trained in a SEL curriculum is then reinforced by the classroom teachers throughout the day.
Although the core principles remain the same, every teacher has a different approach when it comes to language and implementation. As part of my own educational philosophy, when a child comes to me crying, I ask if their feelings are hurt or if their bodies are hurt. Instead of allowing students to skip to the end of a conflict with an apology, I first encourage them to ask, “What can I do to make it better?”
Social-emotional learning works. I know it works because I watched a student, a second away from knocking down a structure, put his hand down and say, “My body needs to recharge.” I know it works because I heard a student say to her friend, “It makes me feel sad when you don’t let me play with you.”
With enough repeated exposure to this type of language, children become aware of and able to name their feelings. At four years old, the students in my class are learning to handle conflict, advocate for themselves, read others’ feelings based on their facial expressions and body language and set boundaries for their bodies.
In the discussion I had with Stern students that Friday night, there were two main arguments they had against SEL. One was that it created soft children. The other was that “We didn’t grow up with all that and we pretty much turned out okay.”
But do we not want better for our children?
My students are soft in that they are gentle and kind and compassionate and so full of wonder. Their ability to handle their emotions and approach conflict does not make them weak; it makes them incredibly secure. We now have the language and tools to give children explicit instruction on these critical life-informing skills. Why not give them that gift? Why leave them to find it on their own?
I only have experience with SEL because of my fieldwork and student teaching placements. The education department at Stern College has offered me the gift of real-world experience and the understanding of research-based strategies for teaching.
In “Classroom Management,” I learned from Miriam Hirsch, chair of the Department of Education, how to have a strong and effective first-day setup, how to manage disruptions, that all behavior is purposeful and how to create strong lesson plans with clear and measurable objectives. I learned strategies for teaching, how to develop student understanding and how to communicate effectively with parents. In “The Arts in Education,” I learned the language needed to defend the arts in the classroom, how to teach the different arts disciplines and how art is an end and not just a means.
After taking two semesters’ worth of “Language and Literacy” with Meredith Resnick, clinical assistant professor of Education, I am prepared to analyze a school’s literacy and phonics curriculum and recognize its effectiveness and spot where I will need to supplement or rework material. I know how and why to argue against balanced literacy and leveled reading. I know how to teach phonics using graphemes and how much time should be focused on phonemic awareness and I know to run from any school that still uses Fountas and Pinnell. After taking her “Educational Psychology” course, I know to avoid round robins, to utilize the concept of windows and mirrors and how to differentiate learning.
I hold all of this knowledge because of the education program at Stern. The department cares so deeply about sending us, your children’s future teachers, into the field with as much experience and knowledge as they can impart. There is so much research and information on what is right and wrong in teaching that you simply will not have if you jump straight into a classroom without first being educated on how to teach.
I understand how someone could watch a class of education majors drawing or learning a folk dance and think, “This major is fake.” I see how someone could assume we’re “wasting money” by choosing to pay for a program in which we have required unpaid fieldwork and student teaching. I get it. But I hope that we care enough about the next generation of children to care about the quality of education they will be receiving.
We don’t choose this profession because we think we can become rich from it. We don’t choose it because it’s an easy job. We choose teaching because we are passionate, and we choose Stern because of the opportunities and guidance we are offered here that we wouldn’t get anywhere else.
My major is not silly, it is not stupid, it is not useless and it is not a waste of time. Yes, I could have gotten a teaching job straight out of seminary with no experience. Yes, many schools will hire you if you just have a pulse. But I care too deeply about the future of our children to do that. And I hope you’ll care too.
Photo credit: @kylejr on Unsplash
Photo caption: Assorted toys and educational tools in a classroom.
