For preschool teachers, it can be incredibly difficult to manage both the challenges you face in your classroom as well as your career. In this post, we’ll take a look at some of the most common challenges of being an Early Childhood Educator in the preschool room. From children to career possibilities, there are plenty of difficulties that come with being an Early Childhood Education practitioner!
1. Children (so many children!)
Managing a room full of young children can be delightful, but it can also be hard and can drain a lot of your energy. The day-to-day challenges you will face can range from dealing with difficult behaviors to crying and cranky children. Throughout the day, you must balance all of their unique needs to keep your classroom functioning smoothly.
2. Caregivers
Each and every day, you will have to deal with parents and caregivers, some of whom may be quite demanding. It can be difficult to manage parents who may be angry, or have questions and concerns as they drop off or pick up their child. Especially since you have other things on your mind, like the day’s lesson plan and ensuring all children’s needs are met!
3. Admin Work
On top of keeping an eye on children and managing your relationships with caregivers, you also have piles of paperwork to handle on a daily basis – attendance, records of children’s activities, lesson planning, meal planning and more. The average preschool educator spends at least 45 minutes per day on documentation, and many Early Childhood Educators feel that this time could be better spent elsewhere. Have we mentioned there is an app for that?
4. Low Pay
You likely won’t make a lot of money compared to other fields of work. In fact, the average child care worker makes around $21,710, a staggering figure when compared to many other service-based roles. The low salaries associated with Early Childhood Education positions can make it difficult to feel confident in your career path and remain in your role over the long-term.
5. (Lack of) Recognition
It’s possible that, depending on your workplace, you will feel like you don’t receive any recognition for your work. In reality, you play a huge role during the most important time of a child’s life: 90% of a child’s brain development happens by age 5. You’ll feel under-valued, despite the fact that you are contributing to the well-being and development of a precious and important asset.
6. (Lack of) Development Opportunities
You may feel that there aren’t many resources available to you to help with your personal and professional development as a preschool teacher. Your time is so occupied with simply managing the day to day needs of your child care center and your children that there is little time – or funding – for training. Check out HiMama Academy for affordable, virtual, on-demand professional development options.
7. Upward Job Mobility
Often, there isn’t a lot of opportunity for upward movement in your position. If you are the type of person looking for new challenges all the time, you may find yourself getting “stuck” with limited options and no room to grow.
Many of these challenges boil down to a misalignment between the expectations and pressure placed on preschool educators and the resources provided to them to meet these expectations. Resources can come in various forms, but at the foundation, lack of funding is the issue.
When preschools are afforded additional funding, they are able to invest in hiring quality educators, staff training and development, technology and more to improve the way their child care center functions. With added staff and technologies to make preschool operations easier, time can be freed up to establish better relationships with parents, plan outstanding curriculums, and of course, spend quality time with children focusing on their development.
To discover how HiMama can help you to overcome many of the common challenges faced by teachers, get in touch with us today!
Related Resources
- Professional Development Opportunities For Early Childhood Educators
- How to Stay Current as an Early Childhood Educator
- Continuous Professional Learning for Ontario Early Childhood Educators
- Early Childhood Education Career Path Possibilities
- 3 Reasons to Pursue an Early Childhood Educator Degree
- How to Create a Professional Portfolio for Educators
- 5 Tips to Make Your Educator Portfolio Stand Out
- What is an Early Childhood Educator?
very good
thank you for sharing the 7 common challenges! they were interesting to read about. I will keep them in mind for the future.
There is no reason why Early Childhood teachers shouldn’t be paid more if they have a four year degree or a master’s. It’s not the 1950s anymore.
I really appreciate your work
Reading about these common challenges was very interesting. There are so many factors outside the children themselves that people often do not think about when they think early childhood education. Documentation is very important and hopefully we can develop better ways (apps/technology) to help assist workers. Even though early childhood workers do not see the recognition that they deserve, we must keep reminding ourselves that we do this for the children!
geat subject and good value, keep going
Learning all the 7 challenges are very evolving and supportive to ECE’s. Hiring more competitive staffs will be an asset for all those, who want to venture more in life and achieve different platforms of careers. ECE job’s should be recognize largely as it gives parents time to advance in their career and progress in field. RECE’s should be paid at least $35 hourly. Govt. must work to recognize Early Childhood Educators efforts and time who raises a child’s first 5 years and value their contribution.