Kaitlin for #GaNeedsChildCare Story Bank - Teachers

Speaker: Kaitlin, 2-Year-Old Lead Teacher

Kaitlin: Hello. My name is Caitlyn I am from Marietta, Georgia. My classroom is the two-year-olds and I have been in the profession for about 3 to 4 years.

Kaitlin: What I love about being an educator is the kids. I love being around kids. I love being able to see their minds develop - them develop personalities. Seeing them have their own personalities and figuring out who they are and are going to become. Once they get older, I love watching how creative they can get with imagination, arts and crafts, playing - just everything. Being around kids is always able to lighten my day up.

Kaitlin: Something that I have found challenging. Being an early educator is saying goodbye to the kids. You know, once they get old enough and they moved to another classroom or they move schools or they get pulled out of the school I'm at. It's heartbreaking, You know, you develop a bond with these kids and seeing them go is definitely really hard, especially my first year when I was just getting to know the kids in my first class and when they moved on to the three class, it was very difficult on me. Another thing I find difficult is two-year-olds can be a handful. There are some moments where you wanna pull your hair out, You wanna quit right then and there. but you also have more good days and bad days and those good days outshine the bad days and bad moments any day of the week.

Kaitlin: Something that I think needs to be put into more early education is a lot of the people who work in early education have a Bachelor's degree in early education or are going to school. I think some of the things that we need to elect and really focus on is taking more classes and learning more about special needs and kids on the spectrum. It's very difficult when you have someone on the spectrum or someone who has Down Syndrome and you struggle with them the most You don't really know how to handle them, how to understand what they're going through, what their mind is thinking. So I really think that colleges and places really need to focus a little more on learning about kids on the spectrum and kids with mental illness and mental disabilities.