Early years teaching is giving professional teachers a rich range of opportunities to make a genuine difference in the lives of young children.
Guardian Childcare and Education Teacher Mentor Margie Cohen said early learning gave teachers the flexibility to target learning around the needs of each child, family and community.
Early learning was focused on a curriculum framework that was tailored for individual children, without the more prescribed “instructional” syllabus requirements of school teaching.
“It allows teachers the freedom and responsibility to critically reflect on the context and the community of children in their care,” Ms Cohen said.
“They can target the professional teaching program based on the needs and the priorities of each child. That means they need to think more, respond more and plan more in ways that are unique every single year.”
Ms Cohen said World Teachers Day, celebrated on October 31, was an opportunity for teachers to reflect on early learning as a potential career path.
“It wasn’t until 2015 that early childhood teachers were recognised by the registration authorities as teachers,” she said.
“That was a big milestone that told everyone that early childhood teachers are real teachers.”
Ms Cohen said that in some jurisdictions there was a differentiation between being a registered teacher or a registered specialist early childhood teacher.
This reflected the “additional specialist body of knowledge” early learning teachers needed to understand how young children learnt and developed.
“They need to look at what their group of children need and deserve to develop a confident identity and become connected members of a community,” Ms Cohen said.
“It’s not about memory of facts but developing their thinking skills and communication and being really responsive to the ways the neural pathways in the brain are developing.
“It’s about authentic daily experiences and hands on manipulating of objects in an interesting environment. It’s being able to form relationships while playing. It’s being able to notice others while playing and having really concrete interactions.”
Ms Cohen said the new Guardian Childcare and Education learning program, called To BE Me, was opening an exciting new frontier of experiences for teachers and families.
To BE Me is Guardian’s exclusive age-and-stage learning program that is individually tailored to each child’s needs and interests and ensures their progress is visible and meaningful.
Ms Cohen said the program was opening a new world of understanding of the foundations of reading, writing and counting, and developing friendships.
She said, since the program was introduced, the tone and types of questions from families had changed.
“Previously on webinars with families they asked questions that showed they were worried about whether their children were learning enough to be ready for school,” she said. “Many parents thought they should be seeing work sheets, drilling and testing, and formality.
“To Be Me has broken down the significant moments of learning into very simple, easy to understand, small but important steps and this leads to lots of follow-on conversations.
“Now the conversations with families are so much more of a beautiful exchange. Families are able to join the conversation with their own examples from home. To Be Me is already a game changer and we’ve only just launched it.”
Ms Cohen said, besides the “goosebumps” moments that came with teaching young children, early learning was also a foundation for a diverse career.
At Guardian Childcare and Education, after spending enough years in direct teaching to be proficient and have a deep enough “bank of scenarios” teachers could move on to teaching leadership roles in centres or branch out to roles like Centres Managers, portfolio (area) managers, curriculum mentors, teaching mentors or compliance roles.
“Here is a place where your curiosities are welcome and you can go in so many directions,” she said.
Guardian Childcare and Education Chief People and Culture Officer Louisa Rinaldi said teachers were being attracted to Guardian because of the level of support offered and the diversity of opportunities.
“We have well resourced centres in convenient locations and our teachers are able to increase their qualifications on the job,” she said.
“We have a strong focus on the well-being of our people and our structure means there is always support available from specialist experts across a broad range of areas.”
There were also dedicated hours for programming and leadership meetings to help teams stay on top of their workload and maintain work-life balance.
“Guardian’s reputation as a premium, world-class early learning provider means you can take pride in your role, enjoy top-quality resources, feel confident and secure in your job, and build a strong professional identity,” Ms Rinaldi said.
“The exclusive To BE Me program simplifies planning, boosts confidence, improves performance, and helps families understand their child’s journey—creating a shared language of learning from early years to school.
“We believe it will become a must-have on any early learning teaching resume.”
More information on working at Guardian Childcare and Education is available here.
