Who am I

My husband found this in an old folder of resources of his the other day and was shocked that I had never come across it. I think it is awesome and want to share it with all of you. It's so old that he no longer knows of the source where it originally came from, if you know please let me know so I can give credit where it's due.

"It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather...I possess tremendous power to make a child's life miserable or joyous. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether the crisis will be escalated or deescalated and a child humanized or dehumanized."-Haim Ginott

As a teacher, you need to constantly reassess your role in the lives of children. Young children need teachers who are not machines, not simply memories. They need people with searching hearts and seeking mind, people who are always trying to better understand themselves, their job, their young charges, and the world around them.

As teachers function in the classroom-dealing with behavior, providing instruction, coping with problems, and, most of all, preventing problems-they will continually call upon skills and techniques that have become second nature to them.

The responsibility of early childhood teacher is to help children learn and grow. In the classroom you are called upon to provide children with a sense of psychological comfort and security. The younger the children with whom you work, the more vulnerable they will be and the more you will need to assume some of the nurturing role of the parent. You will also organize and maintain an environment in which children live and learn, you will collect resources, design curriculum, plan the daily program and evaluate its effectiveness, mediate relationships between children, and interact with other adults.

Another important role of a teacher is behavior model. The ways that you communicate, solve problems, and relate to others form a powerful model for how children and others in your classroom will behave. Research in schools has shown that children often learn to be aggressive or cooperative by observing adults. Children's behavior will be influenced substantially by the teacher's behavior will be influenced substantially by the teacher's behavior in the classroom.

Many teachers in early childhood settings genuinely love and respect children. Teachers love children for the limited time that they share a learning journey, because they participate in the children's daily lives and help them to learn and grow.