NELSONVILLE — When students walk through the halls of Tri-County Career Center and High School, there is a specific door that from behind can be heard the sounds of laughter, shouts of joy, and maybe, more than occasionally, the complaints of a grumpy child.
The Early Childhood Education (ECE) program at Tri-County opens up the opportunity for high school juniors and seniors that seek to pursue a career in childhood education before college.
Students are able to graduate and move on to employment or continue further education in other early education programs. What makes the ECE program at Tri-County special is the licensed preschool built into the lab for children 18 months of age to 5 years of age. Students are able to train at the daycare, learning with hands-on experience, in addition to sitting in a classroom.
While in the program, students will learn skills like: communication, child development, leadership, preschool classroom management, interaction at an appropriate level, laws required for child care center operations, and much more.
Juniors are in the lab for three periods – rotating weeks between training and working in the early learning center. Almost every student has an internship senior year, where they will go to the lab two days a week and then three days a week they will be in other early learning centers.
Allysen Wintermute, a senior in the ECE, from Logan High School, said she has always loved and wanted kids of her own, which led her to the Early Childhood Education program. Before coming to Tri-County, she babysat her cousin, which has helped her with what she has been learning in ECE. What she loves the most about the ECE program is the kids.
Wintermute said working in the licensed preschool in Tri-County does ultimately help her learn better by being taught how to take care of the kids and understand what it will be like when she has her own. She does find it difficult though to keep the kids focused on their activities at times. She plans on working in a daycare after graduation.
When it comes to working in childcare/childhood education, there are skills that will need to be possessed that cannot be necessarily taught. Patience is a key example.
Shelby Denhart, instructor of the ECE program at Tri-County, said patience isn’t something that she can necessarily teach students of the program. Regardless of things going on outside of the lab, students have to leave them at the door when going to work in childcare.
“… the stuff you have at home, your issues and stuff, you gotta leave that …” said River Klingenberg, a senior from Athens High School.
Klingenberg shares Wintermute’s love for kids. ECE was the obvious choice for her at Tri-County. After graduation she plans on owning a daycare or being the director of one.
Klingenberg is excited to learn all the different ways she can teach the kids in the daycare. She agreed with Wintermute that having the opportunity to work in the early learning center helps her, because it lets her understand and learn easier from having hands-on experience.
Denhart has been the instructor of Early Childhood Education at Tri-County for two years now. She has been teaching for six years. Before coming to Tri-County she taught at Federal Hocking as a kindergarten teacher and in Athens City schools where she was an intervention specialist.
She started out as a kindergarten teacher and felt as if there were kids that she wasn’t able to fully help, so she went back to school and got a intervention license so she could help kids who were on their way to getting an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) or who already had an IEP.
When the Early Childhood Education teaching spot opened up, it was the perfect opportunity for her. She is now able to help other people help “the littles.”
“It feels really good to be able to help the next generation,” Denhart said.
Since she was hired at Tri-County, she has continued to make changes in the program. One of those changes is a focus on the Childhood Development Associate — a 12-point credential for childhood education educators. She hopes that a large majority of her students will graduate with it.
Denhart likes to teach with a hands-on approach and believes that there is always room for improvement. She doesn’t ask for perfection when first coming to joining the ECE program, but a willingness to try.
After graduation, students will have the opportunity to get jobs like working in an early childhood center, becoming a paraprofessional, or own their own home daycare,
Students will have the opportunity for social work if they plan on going to college after graduating from Tri-County. Students planning on becoming early childhood teachers, which as of now is pre-K to fifth grade, will have to go to college after high school, but will have the ECE as a nice “stepping stone” for when they go, she said.
Denhart hopes that her students will take away from the program how to teach children, how to hold employment, and a love of children after graduation. Soon after they might have their own doors that will have the shouts of children as they run upon soft floors, laughing.
Marie Seurkamp is a student journalist with Tri-County Career Center and High School’s New Media+ program. This article originally appeared on The 360, a publication of the New Media+ program.
