As a potential career, early childhood education may not seem like a better option when compared with usually higher-paying collegiate teaching jobs. However, it’s not the case if other factors would be considered and not the paychecks alone.
Teaching in preschool, kindergarten, and elementary can be quite rewarding in many regards. Today’s preschool and elementary curriculum teachers are highly needed more than ever given the increasing availability of distractions to learners in the form of computer games, modern toys, and access to the internet.
If you’re currently torn between the prospect of pursuing a teaching career in high school or college and a chance to mold young kids as a preschool or elementary teacher, knowing the benefits of choosing the latter might help you.
Here are five great reasons why you should get a degree in early childhood education:
There is a high demand for early childhood educators.
Talk about the law of supply and demand: the United States currently faces a shortage of educators in the early childhood education department. This is due to the fact that many education graduates opt to teach in high schools and universities where the paychecks have more zeros in them.
While this may seem like a negative prospect, it is actually a silver lining in disguise. This shortage only means that early childhood educators are in high demand today and in the near future. So if you want a great chance of getting hired after you graduate, a degree in early childhood education is just perfect for you.
It’s a great opportunity to mold future leaders and outstanding citizens.
Any established educator, psychologist, or human development expert would tell you that early childhood education is the most critical phase of a learner’s education journey.
As a teacher in preschool, kindergarten, or elementary, you will be instrumental in developing a child’s moral, social, and intellectual acuity. How your pupils would behave and think later in life depend a great deal on how you would mold them. You could influence a child to become a law-abiding citizen and a great achiever or you could be the person who would mold a future crook.
While other factors would surely come into play later in your pupils’ lives, there’s no denying that their early childhood education has the biggest influence on what they would become.
It’s an emotionally fulfilling career.
Children are transparent with their thoughts and feelings so you could expect a truly emotionally fulfilling career when you opt to pursue an early childhood education degree. Your pupils would be highly vocal about their appreciation of your efforts and would be truthful when they do so.
If you love kids or you already a child of your own, you would surely find a job teaching children exceptionally enjoyable. Being with children would also make you constantly feel like a child as their naivety and carefree attitude are sure to brush up on you.
You would always exercise creativity.
Learners in elementary, kindergarten, and preschool constantly require creative means of teaching for them to appreciate and understand the day’s lessons. As an early childhood educator, you would have each day as an opportunity to show and practice your skills in inventive and engaging teaching methodologies.
To be an effective teacher at these levels would always keep you challenged creatively. You’ll experience how to be an actor, inventor, and many other roles in order to teach children in ways that they would understand and appreciate with ease.
You can enter other fields.
With a degree in early childhood education, you won’t be confined to the prospect of teaching only in schools. In fact, you can find employment in a lot of institutions that require such a specialized degree.
Among the fields that you could enter into with your degree are child daycare facilities, family services (home tutors), and non-profit organizations that deal with children. You could also use your degree serving in a children’s shelter or a religious organization focused on child welfare advocacy.
With such a diverse range of potential employments, an early childhood education career is truly a wise path to take.
You’ll learn a great deal in building meaningful relationships.
By taking an early childhood education degree, you’ll have the chance later in life to learn a great deal about establishing meaningful relationships. These would include building connections with parents, the local community, and the children, of course.
You won’t find yourself lacking in such opportunities since every child and every parent is unique, which means you’ll have to treat each one differently. Parents are more hands-on with their young children so you can expect to have plenty of opportunities to establish meaningful ties with all of them.
Having known all these, you should definitely have an easier time making up your mind on the career path to choose. But the bottom line is that with an early childhood education career, you can hardly go wrong with such great reasons enumerated above.
