A woman walked into my office in 2010. Nervous. No early childhood experience. Just needed a paycheck. Most places would’ve turned her away. I didn’t. I gave her a two-hour observational interview in an infant room. She came back beaming. “Give me a chance. I’ll learn.”
Her name was Lindsay. Fifteen years later she is still teaching.
The engineer, not just the employee
It wasn’t just passion. It was support. We chose to see her as a human being first, an employee second. We tweaked her schedule for her Child Development Associate credential. We arranged coverage while she did practicum hours. I wasn’t there every step of the way but we kept in touch. She got an associate degree. Then a bachelor’s. Moved from part-time infant teacher to program coordinator.
Lindsay stayed because we saw her. We should be doing that for everyone.
The big miss in early education discussions? Teachers are engineers. Kids don’t activate curriculum for themselves. A teacher builds the learning environment from scratch every single day. Every discovery moment. Every language-rich chat. Every scaffolded group activity. It’s designed. It’s built. It’s brought to life by an adult looking at a room of kids, weighing their needs, checking the family’s hopes, and making a decision on the fly. All day.
These educators sit in the center of everyone’s expectations. The school. The family. The child. Their decisions matter. But right now? We aren’t supporting them.
New research proves what happens when we fix this. Rutgers University’s National Institute for Early Education Research watched 125 classrooms over three years. Randomized controlled trial. Rigorous stuff. When teachers worked in a connected ecosystem of curriculum assessment and live professional learning? Retention jumped by 23 percentage points. Kids scored higher on social-emotional language and math skills. Teachers felt accomplished. Less fatigue. The work didn’t get easier. They just felt equipped to do it.
There’s a difference between exhaustion from hard work and burnout from hard work done alone. The first is sustainable. the second drives people away.
Our philosophy is all about the whole child. Social. Emotional. Cognitive. All connected. Yet our support systems for adults? Fragmented. Episodic. Compliance-driven. One-day training here. Online module there. Checklists instead of lifelines.
Coherence over tools
It wasn’t a shiny new app that drove those results. It was coherence. The curriculum matched the assessment. The coaching matched both. Professional learning tied it all together.
I’ve seen the other side. Close up.
Walked into a classroom recently. Beautiful curriculum sat on a shelf. Spine uncracked. Dust gathering. The teacher was leading circle time with a bag of worn-out printables. She’d been using the same stuff for years. I pulled down the real curriculum. Opened it for her. Her face lit up. She hadn’t known. No one told her. No one checked if she had it. That happens everywhere. Leaders buy good tools. Then they stop investing in making sure anyone actually uses them.
We make good decisions about what to buy. Then we underinvest in the hands that use it.
Policy choices matter
If you are a policymaker right now trying to expand early care access? Ask yourself: How do you design systems for success? Just funding curriculum adoption? You leave impact on the table. You need the connective tissue. The coaching. The feedback loops. Live support. And guess what? It can be delivered effectively via virtual models. It scales.
For district leaders and program heads. Start with an audit. Be honest. Is the curriculum working with the assessment? Is the PD working with the coaching? Are teachers getting specific feedback on their actual practice?
These are the gaps where teachers trip. Where people like Lindsay take root—or walk out the door.
Lindsay stayed because someone made the system work for her individually. You can’t build a whole workforce on heroic individual effort. That’s unsustainable. We need systems that see educators fully. Their potential. Their development. The heavy load they carry every single day.
We’re a field obsessed with the whole child. Fine. Good even.
But it’s time we built systems that actually support the whole educator too.
The evidence is there. On the table. Clear.
Do something with it?
