We spend a lot of time talking about what young children need to thrive.
They need nurturing relationships. They need teachers who are patient, engaged and responsive. They need opportunities to play, explore, move, create and ask questions. They need adults who know them well and can recognize when they need a little extra support, a little more challenge or simply a hug.
But there is another important part of creating a high-quality early childhood program that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough:
The people caring for our children need to be cared for, too.
Early childhood education is deeply rewarding work, but it is also demanding work. Preschool teachers spend their days on the floor, on their feet, outside in all kinds of weather, helping children navigate big emotions, communicating with families, managing the physical demands of caring for young children and pouring an incredible amount of energy into creating meaningful experiences for them.
We believe the professionals doing that work deserve to be supported just as thoughtfully.
As a program, we often talk about the importance of self care of our teachers, such as being able to take a break, take time off, book the trip, drop our kids off at school and the like. But on a deeper level, there’s another kind of self care that is often neglected in the early childhood professional industry. Health Insurance Benefits.
Early childhood educators health deserve benefits, too
A recent article from the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) highlighted an issue that has long been a concern in early childhood education: access to health insurance remains far less common for early childhood educators than it is for workers in many other fields.
According to NAEYC’s recent reporting, fewer than one in four early childhood educators working outside of public schools have access to employer-sponsored health insurance. Their research also found that access to benefits can play an important role in an educator’s decision to remain in the field.
[Read NAEYC’s full article, “Why Health Insurance Keeps Early Childhood Educators in the Field.”]
Those numbers are important because they remind us that early childhood educators are professionals, too.
We would never consider health insurance an unnecessary perk for an elementary school teacher, a high school teacher or another professional who spends their days caring for and educating children. We don’t believe preschool teachers should be held to a different standard simply because the children they teach are younger.
At School of Enrichment, caring for teachers is part of caring for children
At School of Enrichment, we offer health insurance and supplemental benefits for our teaching staff because we believe their physical and mental well-being matters.
We want our teachers to be able to go to the doctor when they need to. We want them to have access to the care and support they need. We want them to be able to take time off when they are sick or when life requires it. And we want self-care to be something that is encouraged, not something a teacher feels guilty about.
That philosophy extends beyond insurance, of course.
We have intentionally created a workplace where our teachers are valued as whole people, not simply as employees who need to show up and take care of everyone else.
We believe in reasonable time off. We believe in supporting our teachers through the inevitable challenges of life. We believe that rest matters. We believe that mental health matters. We believe that physical health matters.
And we believe that investing in our teachers is one of the most important investments we can make in our school.
When teachers are supported, children benefit
There is a reason this matters so much to us.
Children thrive on consistency and strong relationships. When our teachers are able to stay in the field, grow within our school and build deep relationships with the children and families they serve, everyone benefits.
A teacher who has been part of a child’s life for several years knows that child. She knows what makes them laugh, what helps when they’re frustrated, which activities capture their attention and when they might need a little extra encouragement.
That kind of relationship takes time to build.
Supporting teachers helps create the stability that makes those relationships possible.
We want School of Enrichment to be a great place for children and the adults who care for them
We are incredibly proud of the environment we have created for children at School of Enrichment. But we also want to be known as a place where talented early childhood professionals can build a career and feel genuinely supported while they do it.
Because being a great preschool isn’t only about what happens for children.
And, perhaps most importantly, they deserve to know that the people asking them to care so deeply for young children are willing to care deeply for them, too.
At School of Enrichment, that’s the kind of school we strive to be.
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