Challenges faced by early childhood educators.

 

Many teachers of young children will tell you they love going to work every day. Early education professionals have a real passion for what they do. They are 100% committed to their students and their families. They don’t tell you there are many challenges facing early childhood education. The most dedicated teachers can’t avoid difficulties when dealing with young children. There are some issues that even the most dedicated teachers can’t avoid.

Current Issues in Early Childhood Education 

Many of the current issues teachers of early childhood education face are not new. Some of them have been around for a long time. Some new issues come from things like classroom-related changes. We’ll start with the most obvious problem in the field of ECE: the pandemic.

Long Hours and No Sick Days

Just like a parents’ work is never done, the same is true for the teachers of early childhood-age children. When you consider the amount of paperwork early childhood educators are responsible for on top of managing a classroom full of little ones all day, you can see why long work hours may be among the many challenges preschool teachers face today.

While this is not a new problem and isn’t isolated to early childhood learning, it may be one of the bigger preschool issues, and problems teachers are currently facing due to federally mandated student-teacher ratios. Since a certain number of early educations trained professionals must be present depending on the size of the classroom, serious staffing problems can arise if a teacher takes a day off or calls in sick. This circumstance in a preschool class can create a stressful situation where teachers feel compelled to come to school no matter how bad they feel to keep the peace.

Of course, the clear answer to this staffing problem is to hire more trained early childhood professionals, but the solution isn’t problem-free. We will address some of these issues later in the article. For now, consider how difficult it might be for schools and childcare facilities to attract and keep new teachers in the ECE field when they’re not able to pay for the most basic tools that young children need to be successful.

Declining Mental Health

An early childhood educator needs to be their best self in the classroom. This is not only for their own sake but for the well-being of the kids in their care. The problem of declining mental health in the ECE field affects little ones, so it’s an issue everyone should care about. Specifically, when teachers feel stressed or overwhelmed in their classrooms, their teaching skills suffer, and so does their ability to manage the classroom. They may have a shorter fuse with their students or not feel up to providing as much positive encouragement as children at this age need. A large amount of evidence has proven that children exposed to too much stress in the early years of life can have tremendous difficulty down the line. This includes stress disorders and even mental impairment. It’s clear that a young child’s healthy brain development is dependent upon relationships with caring, stable adults who can model positive stress responses.

You can click the link below to learn more about the challenges faced by the early childhood educators.

https://www.collegevaluesonline.com/challenges-facing-early-childhood-education-teachers/