An Ode to Early Childhood Educators and Child Care Workers

Dear Early Childhood Educator and Child Care Worker,

We see you. We see you comforting the child who is having a hard time transitioning to care. We see you guiding children’s social interactions, teaching them how to work together as a team. We see you wiping noses, changing diapers, ensuring each child is fed, helping children get dressed for outside, all while you are engaged with them – making them feel seen and heard. We see you coming in early when one of your team members is sick. We see you getting home late to your own family because there is no staff to cover the end of the day. We see you documenting and observing the children’s competencies, making necessary changes to your room to ensure each child’s individual needs are met. We see you offering messy sensory play that takes a lot of time and effort to clean up but you do it because of the joy it brings to the children. We see you showing up each and everyday to give the children in your care a safe and loving space all while your own world may feel like it’s falling apart. We see you, even though we know that you don’t feel seen.

To all the Registered Early Childhood Educators and Child Care Workers, we know it isn’t easy what you accomplish everyday. We wish our government and society recognized the important work you do each day that you spend with our youngest and most vulnerable population. We wish society would recognize how crucial childhood brain development is within the first 5 years and the huge impact educators can have on this. We know you deserve more. We’re fighting to see you get more. Not just the educators, but for the children as well. Ensuring our educators in the Early Learning field are respected and recognized will only solidify that children and families in our community are getting the upmost quality of care. To all the RECE’s and childcare workers out there, we know a single day of recognition isn’t enough but we cannot thank you enough for showing up everyday for our children and families.

Sincerely,
Early Learning Team
CLTH