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I, Madelyn Cayton abide by the Henry Ford Academic Integrity Policy. All of the work is in my own words and my own work. I am also very proud of the work I have done for this assignment. I do understand the penalty for plagiarism as well.

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The best piece I found the most interesting from Chapter 8, Physical Development in Adolescents is, hormonal programmers. I thought it was intriguing because they are released from the adrenal gland at the top of the kidneys that release it at around 6 to 8 years of age. That seems so crazy to me, because it is a few years before puberty even hits. I never knew that we had hormonal aspects in our body, other than what makes us females or males, before puberty even hits, let alone that long before.

(chapter 8, page 227)

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The best piece of information that I found intriguing from Chapter 9, Cognitive, Social, and Emotional Development in Adolescents was in the social development section. I honestly found this whole section to be very interesting. However, there was one thing that stood out to me most and that is, mid to late adolescence is the most important for autonomy. I found it very interesting that this was the most important, but it makes sense to me as well. The book talks about the parents thinking their children are more mature by junior and senior year of high school, which really put all the pieces together for me. For me, personally, junior and senior year were the hardest socially for me because my mom did not like the fact that I was growing up and not a little kid anymore and she wanted to have full control of everything I did every second I did it. The book also says that it is important to stop rebelling at this age because you need to start focusing on your future and career path.

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I strongly agree with the results from the Holland Code (RIASEC) Test. My results showed that I am mostly social and artistic, which I believe to be true. My whole life I was always considered very social and always making new friends. I also have always been artistic, I have always loved art in all different forms. Taking this quiz, I learned that not only myself thinks of me to be artsy, or social, a quiz that does not even know me, also knows this based on my answers, which is interesting. It makes me wonder what my first impression is to others when I first meet new people.

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After taking the second quiz, my results still matched my first quiz. The results said I was social as well. What I did find very interesting is, how it gave me career options after the results. It said I should be a kindergarten teacher, which is so ironic to me, because that is what I am going to school for right now. It is so interesting to me that a quiz with just me answering a few questions, the computer can tell me what I should do as a career.

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The career path I am choosing, is the Pre-Elementary program at HFC, to be a kindergarten teacher. I recently made the switch of majors after months of thinking I finally changed my major. I think it is so ironic that the Holland test told me that a kindergarten teacher would be a good fit for me, because it is what I am going into.

I found an article on Every Child Thrives and I find it very interesting. It talks about how important teachers are and how they are crucial to children succeeding, at any age.

Being a kindergarten teacher entails a Bachelor Degree and a state teaching license for public schools. I also feel as if, kindergarten teachers need to be very patient and kind and passionate about what they are doing, every single day they step into a classroom. I currently am a daycare teacher for one year old's and I love it oh so much. I have so much patience with my babies and I love watching them learn and grown each and everyday. I simply cannot wait to make it my life long career.

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This article, originally published on Second Wave Media , is part of Early Education Matters, a series about how Michigan parents, childcare providers, and early childhood educators are working together to implement Pre-K for All. It is made possible with funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. Photos by Stephen Smith.
Two preschool teachers work across the hall from each other. Both teach four-year-olds, have the same education level and ability, and work to meet the curriculum standards set by the Great Start Readiness Program (GSRP). One teacher's classroom is part of GSRP and the other is tuition-based, which creates a number of differences from student ratio to pay.

Those differences are something Rhonda Meyers, CEO and owner of Heartfelt Impressions Learning Centers , is very familiar with. In fact, she shared the above story at a PreK for All Listening Session in Ypsilanti. The Listening Sessions are being held in-person and virtually throughout the state to gather feedback from parents, early childhood educators, and others involved in caring for and teaching Michigan's youngest residents.

Having been involved in early education for more than 30 years, Meyer's facilities have both GSRP and tuition-based preschool programs. Student ratios are different with GSRP operating with one teacher for every eight 4-year-old students while tuition-based programs may have one teacher for every 10 or 12 students to keep tuition affordable while breaking even. GSRP teachers know they will work from about 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Tuition-based teachers could start as early as 6:30 a.m. and go as late as 5:30 p.m. with the possibility of students coming and going throughout the day. Also, teachers in tuition-based programs may not receive as much planning time as those in GSRP.

But the biggest difference is pay, which can be up to $7 an hour more for a GSRP teacher despite everything else being equal.

Key to expanding pre-K to all: finding teachers

As Michigan works towards a PreK for All program, which will expand voluntary preschool options so that every four-year-old in Michigan can access a free preschool education by 2027, one concern that Meyers and other preschool educators raise is workforce development for preschool teachers.

"As we're expanding preschool to more families, that's going to involve a lot more preschool teachers," says Maddie Elliott, policy and program associate for Michigan's Children , She shares that having qualified and experienced preschool teachers is key to building a high-quality preschool program. Elliott says there are about 17 states that have plans to recruit and retain teachers .

Governor Gretchen Whitmer's proposal includes an up-to-$3,000 tax credit for those working in a licensed childcare facility including childcare, preschool, and after-school programming. This is something that Michigan's Children has advocated for because pay for early education instructors traditionally has been so low.

The Michigan League for Public Policy (MLPP) notes that the younger the classroom, the lower the wage in its 2022 report on the childcare workforce . In 2019, the median wage for a preschool teacher was about $14.89 per hour. A kindergarten teacher's 2019 median wage was $34.08 per hour while an elementary teacher was $38.09 per hour.

"As we're expanding these programs, we're not going to be able to make it successful unless we actually have the teachers to teach the kids and fill the classrooms," Elliott says. "We have to make sure that a central part of this public pre-k expansion is increasing wages for all early childhood professionals. We can't be doing this by just increasing wages for GSRP teachers because that'll just drive a lot of childcare teachers from their childcare businesses into GSRP and leave a void in infant care."

Being valued and being heard

In a 2022 report, the Center for American Progress stated that the pandemic exacerbated the lack of good jobs in childcare. Since the pandemic, the profession has struggled to recover and fill openings as childcare teachers sought better-quality jobs in other fields.

"I have had experience with college students or graduates with an early childhood degree getting a preschool teaching job with a school district only as a placeholder until they get into a kindergarten, first-, or second- [grade class]," says Jennifer Haeussler, assistant dean of academics and education and early childhood education chair for Sierra Heights University . "So yes, pay is a huge deal. I just had one student come through the program and she had been a preschool teacher for seven or eight years. The government-funded preschool program she was in didn't offer her health benefits, so she got a job working with the district as a district teacher so she could have health insurance."

While pay is an issue, Meyers says the bigger issue for early education instructors is good working conditions.

"You have to make a wage that is livable, but if you look at all of the research about why people leave jobs, it's not the money," Meyers says. "It's about being seen and heard and valued. That takes human capital. And so it's not one silver bullet that fixes this."

Raising the bar in training

Early education requirements vary, says Julie Ricks-Doneen, Oakland University associate professor of human development and human studies. Programs like Head Start and GSRP require a teaching certificate or a bachelor's degree with a birth-to-kindergarten (B-K) certificate. An assistant teacher has to have a child development associate degree (CDC).

The B-K certification is fairly new, Ricks-Doneen says, adding it is part of a movement to help unify the system. However, the industry has yet to catch up to the new certifications, Haeussler adds, noting that most licensed facilities, outside of state and federally funded programs, do not have requirements for early education.

A number of financial incentives for post-secondary education help those interested in an early education career. Ricks-Doneen and her colleague Tomoko Wakabayashi, Oakland University associate professor of human development and child studies, both note they almost need a diagram to navigate through all the options. But it still goes back to the pay issue, Wakabayashi says, pointing out that people seek a higher degree because it usually will help boost their income. An early education program may not be able to pay more for a person with a higher degree because less funding supports those programs than K-12 programs.

Connecting with future teachers

According to Meyers, reaching the state's goal of PreK for All by 2027 comes down to a math problem. With approximately 110,000 four-year-olds in Michigan and applying the GSRP standard of 16 per class, Michigan will need around 6,875 lead preschool teachers in the next two years.

"We can open up all the classrooms everywhere across the state for 6,875 classrooms, all needing a lead teacher," Meyers says. "But if we only have 4,000 qualified lead teachers, how will we cover the gap?"

Many in post-secondary institutions believe connecting with middle and high school students, before they make a career decision could help - as well as raising awareness of the many incentives Michigan offers to help cover the costs of post-secondary education. Current incentive programs include Grow Your Own , , and the T.E.A.C.H. Early Childhood Michigan Scholarship Program .

"We need to focus on the students and say we have pathways to help you get from high school to community college to college, if that's what they want to do," Ricks-Doneen says. "They could end up out of high school with a CDA [Child Development Associate], which then transfers into community college credits, which then transfers into four-year college credits. If they want to do the B-K program, that's where they would end up if they want to focus on early childhood."

Getting high school and college students out into preschool classrooms where they can interact with preschool students and families is another strategy.

"I've had many students who go in knowing that the pay is lower, but they really enjoy working with families of children with special needs," Tomoko says. "The only way to know that is to do it, to have a mentor who can show you how to do that."

Setting positive examples

Lastly, Haeussler says that people have to stop bashing the profession.

"My daughter, who's 30-years-old now, is just brilliant. She graduated from high school when she was 16, and she said she wanted to be a teacher," Haeussler says. "Not just any teacher but an early childhood teacher. I went, 'No, no, no, no, no. You're way too smart for that.'

"I have been in education my entire career. I've been a teacher, and I was a preschool teacher before I became a university faculty member, and I owned my own childcare center. Is that not the pot calling the kettle black? That I am in this profession, and I didn't want my daughter to join it. To say, 'You're too smart to be a teacher,' that's crazy. We want the smartest people to be the teachers."

Haeussler says her daughter did become an early education teacher. Now Haeussler uses herself as an example of why a potential student should go into teaching.

"I'm a middle-aged woman. I have been an early childhood professional my entire career," Haeussler says. "I am not starving to death. I do have a car I pay for. I have a house I pay for. I have lights. So it can work. No, I'm not going to be rich, and I do frequent resale shops sometimes. But, the kisses, the crayons - it's worth it."

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Michigan looks to create a better career path for early childhood educators | Every Child Thrives

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Changing pay disparities for preschool teachers, supporting early education professionals, creating pathways to enter the field, and changing perceptions about the profession are all part of Michigan's PreK for All.

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I think the stage that is the most "ideal" would be, infancy and toddlerhood. I think that this is the most crucial because the way you grow up has a huge impact on the person you will become later in your life. A main reason I think these stages are so important is, it develops you as you start to grow and live outside of your mother. Your brain grows and learns new things, like your sensory motor skills, crying, feeding, and many more. Imagine this stage was not one, what would we do when we are hungry, or sad, we would not know how to do simple things either.

Chapter 3, page 71.

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Thinking back to everything we covered so far in this class, there has been so much that I have enjoyed learning. However, I think my favorite thing to learn about in this class was, chapter 2. I really enjoyed learning about the prenatal risks and development as well as just learning about pregnancy in general. I think the reason why I liked this chapter so much is because, one day, I would like to be a mom and if I did not learn all of this now, I feel like I would not be as prepared when the time comes. Even though, right now I am not at that stage, all of this information I have learned, is something that I will never forget. I also really enjoyed learning about the prenatal development in chapter 2, because I have always liked learning about the development of children and humans in general. I work as a daycare teacher so I always take what I learn in any aspect regarding children and try to apply it to my everyday life at work.

Another topic I really enjoyed learning about in this class throughout the semester has been in chapter 5, cognitive development in children. I think about the cognitive side of the babies in my class so often. I like knowing the reason behind every movement a child makes, or what their though process could be in that moment. My favorite part of the cognitive section of chapter 5 is Piaget's stages. While learning about sensorimotor specifically, I felt like I could really take that and apply it to my daily life, since I work with one year olds.

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I absolutely loved this course and all the material we covered in this semester. My favorite thing to do in this class was honestly probably the oral exam. I was so so nervous for the oral exam and I ended up doing so much better than I thought I would have done. The whole class, I felt like our professor was very responsive and very helpful, which I really liked because I felt seen and heard in this class, even though it seems like that would be hard to do, with so many students. I also really liked the set up of this course, in terms of achieve and moodle. I have never used achieve before, but I really enjoyed using it this semester. It was not a hard website to figure out at all. I really don't have anything in this class that I disliked at all. One thing I would change about this course is probably to have more projects. I really liked the poster project a lot, and I like using canva as well, but other than that I would not change a thing at all.