From The Globe and Mail
The rewards of a career as an early childhood educator are not measured by the paycheque, which can only be described as a pittance.
Children play at the Jericho Kids Club in Vancouver in June 2010. (Lyle Stafford for The Globe and Mail)
Toni Hoyland has been in the field for more than four decades, and would have abandoned it to pursue a job that would sustain a mortgage, except she managed to switch to teaching the next generation of ECEs.
For Ms. Hoyland, the typically low pay of an ECE is the main frustration of the job. But compensation is measured in other ways.
“Obviously it’s not about the money. It’s about the incredible importance of what we do. In the field people know, they can see the impact on the children they are working with,” she said in an interview. “You watch them grow, and skills build, from the beginning of language to being so curious about every single thing.”
And that is the payoff, those moments when a child’s development is revealed.“One little boy who was so curious, and I remember him coming to me and saying, ‘Toni, what colour am I on the inside?’ ”
Kumarini Nugawila, who has worked as an ECE for a dozen years, shared the sentiment, recalling the development of a young child with special needs.
“When he joined us, he was three. He did not say a word and it was very difficult to communicate,” she recalled. “We kept him involved … we applauded him every time he did something. By the second year with us, he started talking and was putting letters and sounds together, making words, and even doing numbers. It was amazing.”
Read the full article by The Globe and Mail.
