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Preschool education

The overwhelming need for preschool teachers in America is a result of a preschool teacher's pay which is comparatively low. In the country nearly 15 million children are living in poverty, whose mothers and fathers are wrestling with low wages and low socio-economic status. They are trying to make a way for their children to have the opportunity to succeed in the school system, and a large role in the success of a child's future is the promise of preschool.

But with preschool teachers still deemed as nothing more than babysitters, the undervaluing of proper education is profound. About half of the children under the age of five are living below the poverty line and need preschool to pull them from the cycle of poverty and prepare them for a life of possibility.

From birth to the age of five, people's brains develop more than they will at any other time in their lives. And the way the minds are molded during these first five years affects the way children will navigate their further education, and then their lives. The countless experiences encountered by children during these first five years of life — regardless of whether they are positive or negative experiences — shape developing brains. And by the time a child enters kindergarten, 90 percent of their brains have developed.

Preschool teachers are the hands shaping millions of minds during the most influential and delicate period of a person's life. And therefore, preschool teachers are much more than babysitters and deserve to be treated as such by society and paid decent salaries.

In those first five years of life, our brains develop so intricately and intensely. According to First Things First, what allows the brain to develop, think, communicate, and grow is the connections our brain cells make during those first few years. These connections are cultivated over the course of those years, and every experience is documented by our developing brains. So when children are entering into preschool, they are being profoundly shaped into the kind of person they will be for the rest of their life, because of the messages and connections in their brains. 

The fragility of children's lives is astounding, and preschool teachers instill patience in their lessons as they introduce children to reading, writing, storytelling, social studies, creative arts, vocabulary expansion, math, and science for the first time. All the while, they allow children room to grow, ask questions, and discover.

Children without preschool enter the education system heavily unprepared and devastatingly disadvantaged, lacking in areas such as social and cognitive development. Children without preschool are less likely to graduate — or if they do graduate, they are less likely to pursue college, according to a 2015 study from the U.S. Department of Education. But children with preschool are less likely to repeat a grade and are more likely to succeed in whatever career they choose.

Preschool teachers give children a platform for a successfully patterned life and deserve pay reflecting such. Because when they are paid so little — when they are surviving on the brink of the poverty line — it is overwhelmingly difficult to continue pursuing a career as preschool teachers. America needs preschool. And preschool teachers need adequate and fair pay.