Kendal Early Learning Center 

I’ve learned so much in my time at the Early Learning Center, and my heart has been filled to the brim with love for my students. It didn’t take long working at Kendal for me to realize I want to pursue a career in early childhood education. Since I started here in September of 2025, I’ve watched this class of 22 kids do so much in the tiniest window of their time growing up. Two year olds have become three year olds, three year olds have become four year olds, and four year old have become five year olds in our class over the last four months. The kids have gotten taller, stronger, smarter, and I’ve watched their personalities blossom as their brains have continued to develop and their trust in me has grown. Madeline won’t go to sleep at nap time until I come to tuck her in. Frances has been asking the other teachers to draw her cats to color in when I am not there and voicing her disappointment when they are not the same kind of cats I draw for her. The kids have learned my work schedule and some started telling their parents “today is a Jessie day” on their way to school on Wednesdays and Fridays. I’ve learned so much from the kids about neurological and social development. I’ve watched several of the staged developmental theories I learned about in Lifespan Developmental Psych, play out in real time as the kids learn to share, show love and appreciation, put themselves in others’ shoes, clean up after themselves, take responsibility for their actions, and apologize. By far the most fascinating thing I’ve witnessed at Kendal has been my students building their vocabularies and their confidences speaking. There are three students in particular who have blown me away on this front. When I got to Kendal, Auggie was four years old, about to turn five. He had a huge vocabulary and has an even bigger one now, but he has gotten an incredible amount of control over his Rs and THs in just these four months. Margot started at Kendal in October when she was about to turn 3, and in just this short time her pronunciation has improved immensely. Xoie was our youngest student, at 2 ½, in September. She is now almost 3!! It has truly felt like a gift to watch her build a strong vocabulary and gain confidence in speaking loudly enough for others to hear, raising her voice when they don’t. Ella loves showing me the math tricks she’s learning at home. Archer has become quite the block builder, sometimes needing a boost to place the final blocks on his masterpieces. Frances has officially mastered coloring inside the lines and is starting to show an understanding of basic color theory without even thinking about it. All of the kids have their own talents and special skills and it feels like a gift to see them acknowledge and embrace them for themselves. I’ve also learned a lot from one particular student who has a hard time respecting the social boundaries of the other kids. There are issues with wrestling, pinching, pushing, taking toys other kids were using, etc. While Jack (fake name) shows some significantly problematic behavior that can sometimes be very frustrating, he is not a bad kid. Jack is sweet and thoughtful and very very smart. He is often the student who participates the most during our SITES Spanish lessons, he helps clean up messes he did not make in order to get them put away faster, and he follows muscle memory rules that don’t involve sitting still (ie. throwing away your trash after snack, filling up your water bottle, taking your blankets off your cot after nap on Friday) very well. I am still learning the best methods of dealing with students like Jack and keeping an eye on all the different dynamics they share with other students in the classroom to ensure there is no bullying or targeting in either direction taking place. I’ve learned from the other teachers at Kendal, Jeni and Emily in particular (who he responds well to), that Jack responds the most to direct instructions, as opposed to polite requests, and that when an incident takes place with another student, Jack can genuinely take accountability and apologize when warmly led through the steps of putting himself in the other students’ shoes for what happened. Lastly, I’ve learned a lot this year about the administrative and technical aspects of early childhood education. We have one student with a severe egg allergy, and as such I have had to learn more about how to keep our classroom environment safe from contaminants, as well as how to act responsibly should a crisis ever occur. Another student of ours wears bilateral hearing aids that occasionally require tweaking (handled by Emily or Jeni most of the time) and we have a sound enhancing necklace we can wear while we are teaching so that she can hear us even when multiple voices are speaking at once in close proximity. I’ve also learned a lot about strategic lesson planning that accounts for all of the students’ individual learning needs. Because Auggie is the oldest, many of the activities we design for the class (largest age group: 3-4 years old) aren’t challenging enough for him, and I’ve gotten used to adding extra steps for him (ie. cut the drawing out when it’s finished, give your drawing a name and tell me a story about it, help me help the other kids, etc.). In the opposite direction, I’ve also gotten used to helping our younger students a little more with the skills they haven’t quite mastered yet like using scissors, staying in one place long enough to finish an activity, and remembering multiple-step instructions. At Kendal, we have an iPad documentation system that allows us to let parents know what their kids do throughout the school day (ie. going potty, eating lunch/snack, falling asleep at nap, incidents with other kids, accidents, etc.). Through this system, I’ve learned how to stay on top of a classroom system and how to communicate efficiently with the parents of children under my care. All in all, though my time at Kendal has been short so far, it has had a profound impact on me and the plans I have for my future. I love working with the kids. I love their bad jokes and the silly faces they make at me from across the classroom and getting to watch them grow up. Teaching at Kendal has taught me how to manage a classroom, how to handle the complex needs of my students, how to meet children where they’re at developmentally, how to work within a school system helping kids build the specific skills they will need for the next steps in their education, and the very basics of administrative work in early childhood education. I feel so lucky for the time I've gotten to spend teaching at Kendal. I can’t wait to see my students again and see how much they’ve grown.