Early Childhood Teaching

There are a lot of college graduates looking for early childhood teaching jobs right now. We get a lot of calls this time of year mostly from young women looking for a place like The Garden School to try their teaching wings because we’re small, private, and we really teach. Young teachers like the safety of the teaching and the camaraderie of the staff.

But while they are looking, we’re looking too. What do older experienced teachers notice about younger models? What do we look for in a teacher? The categories are very demanding and might surprise you.

Physical Fitness: In early childhood, being physically fit is a big consideration because the job is really hard and the hours are long. Even at our little school everyone is interested in condition. Our principal, a splendid example of teaching longevity - over forty years - is a body builder. We all lift weights, do yoga, run, walk, work out and take good care of ourselves. That’s how we can keep up with little kids all day without a break.

Healthy Lives: Eating a healthy diet should be a priority in the life of an early childhood educator. Teaching nutrition is essential in early formation. Watch the teachers. For breakfast, it’s not unusual to see Miss Rachel eat a bowl of spinach and some feta cheese covered in olive oil while Miss Judy munches half a real peanut butter sandwich on pumpernickel bread with walnuts and cinnamon and a cup of coffee heavily laced with ginger and cinnamon.

Intellectual Curiosity: It’s a top priority. If a teacher says she needs a book on Mesopotamia, she won’t expect someone to hand her a cookbook, a gardening book, or a US atlas or even say, “Huh? Where’s that at?” We all know it’s behind the at.

A Desire to Learn: If someone wants to do a class on Impressionism, Paleontology, Entomology, or even spelunking, incoming teachers should be interested to know what these things are. If they don't know, they should politely ask.

Here's A Brief Test For Incoming Teachers that we use at the Garden School:

Can you show me where Iceland, Israel, and Ireland are on the map, and can you tell me why the Ivory Coast is not a soap product?

Which was longer the Renaissance or the Middle Ages? Bonus questions: Which came first? What preceded the first and what follows the last?

Can you read Jabberwocky to the kids?

Water is finite, so how come we haven’t used it all?


Even a rough knowledge of history, geography, science and literature mean someone is interested in the world. Without an interest in the world, a teacher fails to be interesting because she ultimately doesn’t know anything, and therefore how can she hope to delight and instruct children? In the early years, teachers don’t use texts. We have to know material we gather from life, and life does not begin and end with self.

Experience: Teaching experience is not necessary. But the ability to teach should be bursting from the very seams of a person. First question an incoming teacher should ask is: What do the children know? It is presumption for an incoming teacher to think the kids know nothing. What have other teachers been busy doing? Wanting to know what they know means an adult understands that both the individual child and the group have a starting point.

Understanding Teaching: Our job is to take a child from wherever he is as far as he can go. In order to do that, a teacher has to be able to evaluate where a child is, what he knows, and how he learns. That’s not easy. After a while, experience will allow a teacher to see commonalities. But in the first years of teaching, the ability to listen to children and to other adults counts.

Understanding Learning: Understanding how a child learns takes a long time. Every child learns differently, is interested in different things, is distracted by one thing today, and something else tomorrow. Knowing how to attract a child’s interest and keep it takes a lot of work. Insisting that children be interested simply because it’s on the agenda is never going to happen. Making something interesting, when it’s dull as watching cement dry, takes skill.

Patience: Patience is learned. Little children are not always perfect. And teaching is not for the moment but for the long road. What a teacher repeats today, tomorrow and all next week may actually be understood a month later when the lights go on. A teacher has to know that and has to realize that learning comes someplace between take off and landing. Teachers with experience understand that not all children will benefit from a lesson, and often it's the not the lesson at all but a byproduct of a lesson that finally sinks in.

Child Development: Development is fascinating in the early years, and parents can see the development happen through art. That’s why art is so important. That's why art should be a daily activity. A purple tree today, a green one tomorrow, and then the stick figure becomes a snow person and finally becomes human-like, because he’s finally making connections. He’s thinking it through. He’s thinking about the end product. His actions are curbed into production. He’s quiet while he thinks.

The Actors Trunk: A teacher’s repertoire is like an actor’s trunk. It’s packed full of surprises, and it’s all there waiting to be pulled out and used to help a child grow up. But the trunk is not the center stage, nor is the teacher. The child is the most important part of the action, and teachers just starting off need to remember that without the student, there is no one to teach, and without the tools, there is no way to teach. Manipulating the tools so the stage comes alive and the child’s mind is delighted by what he sees and hears is the goal of teaching. "You're on stage, honey, now do something wild and wonderful."