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When Rose speaks of challenges she refers mostly to those which are not program
related, but field related. “The government needs to understand that they need to keep
giving money to child care.” Rose feels that early childhood educators should be paid a
wage worthy of the jobs they do, one that would establish them as professionals in the
eyes of others. Rose is cautiously optimistic about the pending federal and provincial
initiatives that would provide an increased level of funding for the field.
Collaborators.
Compared to her peers at other centres, Rose considers herself unique. “We do
have it easy here. There are a lot of centres that don’t have preparation time. They don’t
have the freedom to work on documentation.” The Directors here hire extra teaching staff
“so that documentation can be done.” In addition there is a weekly programming
meeting. “Without those things, you would have to do this on your on time. It affects how
you feel about your job because you are bringing too much work home.”
Emergent curriculum works within this organization because of the high level of
collaboration. There is a commitment to support the teachers’ work with emergent
curriculum. Rose acknowledges and appreciates this support as management has set the
stage for collaboration, having an open door policy that invites parents, children, and staff
to dialogue. For Rose, this is an unusual situation. She feels most other programs do not
operate in such a collaborative way.
Parents.
When Rose and her colleagues switched from a traditional thematic approach to
emergent curriculum they were anxious about the reactions of parents. Some parents have
had difficulty with the change. Considering that most parents were raised in a traditional