The Care and Keeping of Emotionally-Intelligent Educators: How Professional Development Can Support Teachers’ Social-Emotional Success
Educators have more on their plates than most understand. There is, of course, the day-to-day work of teaching children and all it entails — lesson planning and execution, evaluations, engaged and attentive classroom time, and more. With limited time in the day and limited budgets, many who choose the field find ourselves taking our own time and reaching into our own wallets to make our classrooms function.
Early childhood educators find ourselves in a unique position because the work they do is viewed as “lesser,” despite the fact that it involves engaging children at a crucial time for their development across all domains. Lower wages for early childhood educators, a lack of professional development and support, and respect in schools and in society as a whole send a message that early childhood educators are functioning in an entry-level job that anyone can walk into, which could not be further from the truth. Quality education comes from educators who have and continue to put in the work, especially with infant and toddler populations.
“Jennings and Greenberg (2009) found that, when teachers lack the social and emotional competence to effectively manage their classrooms, they experience emotional exhaustion, which eventually leads to the tendency towards depersonalization, a callous and hostile attitude towards their students. It makes sense that this would also lead to less sensitive approaches to discipline, which may be harmful to young children” (Jennings, 2015, p. 9-10).
Yet, support to develop this quality in educators and support their own social-emotional needs is scant in the industry. There have been few studies on the impact professional development that addresses teacher mental and emotional wellbeing can have on the classroom environment, but there is an awareness of what deficits in those areas can lead to for students. Developments in this area have been spearheaded by educators and the organizations that support them.
For example, NAEYC has worked in partnership with 15 other national organizations to develop the national Power to the Profession Task Force, in order to develop a consensus framework that articulates competencies, qualifications, standards, compensation, and infrastructure needed to create and support a diverse and unified early childhood education professional workforce servinc chilren birth through 8 across states and settings (NAEYC, 2020).
Among their goals is specialized training and professional development for educators that enhance knowledge and competencies while addressing and normalizing the mental health and well-being of teachers and other providers. They also advocate for state-level policies that address teacher well-being, as most existing initiatives are voluntary, scarce, and frame well-being as an individual responsibility without accounting for systemic and other environmental factors.
References
Jennings, P. A. (2015). Early childhood teachers’ well-being, mindfulness, and self-compassion in relation to classroom quality and attitudes towards challenging students. Mindfulness, 6(4), 732–743. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-014-0312-4
National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). (2020). Power to the professional and the unifying framework for the early childhood education profession. Young Children, 75(1). https://www.naeyc.org/resources/pubs/yc/mar2020/unifying-framework-early-childhood-education