Erica Meadows has a passion for kids and early childhood education. But finding quality help is challenging in her home state of Maryland. To combat the issue, Meadows works with high school students to help them foster a love of teaching. The experience has proven to be successful in many ways. Meadows, who runs the preschool program at Loyola School in Mount Vernon, told The Baltimore Banner that finding people willing to work early childhood education hours isn’t easy.
“You can get people to come in for a year or two, but then they don’t see a career path, so they’re like, ‘OK, this is a lot of hard work,’” Meadows said. “How do you encourage people to want to work with young children?”
Currently, Loyola has three interns attending Cristo Rey Jesuit High School. The school requires all students to work one day a week in different industries to help identify a future career path.
Since 1970, high school students in Montgomery County have had the chance to work in a preschool environment, creating lessons and under teacher supervision.
“The program’s mission is to cultivate future educators who understand how to support the cognitive, social, and emotional growth of young children,” district spokesperson Liliana López shared in an email to the Baltimore Banner.
The students from Cristo Rey don’t receive certificates like those in Montgomery County schools, but they still love working with the kids.
“I might as well try to get in touch with the kids, like older people say,” 15-year-old Nayeli Galvez-Hernandez told the news outlet.
Mirairi “Mimi” Carter attended Cristo Rey and interned at Loyola all four years of high school. She’s now pursuing a psychology degree at Towson University. Carter also put herself on Loyola’s substitute teacher list while she completes her education.
“We try to build them up, nurture them, make them realize like that really might be what their gift is,” Meadows told the Baltimore Banner.
What a brilliant program. How wonderful it would be if this caught on across the United States.
