Imagine This!

I would research the reasons educators changed their career choice to other fields.  We are losing teachers at my center, and there is a shortage of teachers in the state of Georgia. My next door neighbor has a degree to teach early childhood, but that is not what she does. The research I would do is to find out the reasons we are losing teachers right out of college and others who change after working a short time in the classroom. Some would say that the field was not for them, and I am sure that is true for some. But I would be looking for answers to be used to save our teachers from leaving our field. One young lady told me she was done working with children because of her experience at a center. I persuaded her to not give up because of one bad experience, I explained that when you work with people there can be issues of some sort everywhere, but to give the field another try and she did.  She has been on her new job for two years, she is a good teacher, and loves children. If there was a study to find a common link, perhaps we could change the statistics, eliminating the shortage in Georgia. I would like to know if it was their training, their direct supervisors, the stress, children, whatever the reason to leave the field of their choice.  And maybe we can begin to address some issues with solutions before they result in loss of teachers. I think this research contribution to Early Childhood will be beneficial to our field, what do you think?

I thought this research was something I imagined, but after I wrote it I googled the idea and found that I am not the first to think of doing research about the shortage of teachers. I found several scholarly research articles all about the shortages of teachers.

                         

My Personal Research Journey!

Why does one child accept instructions, disappointments, or violence without resorting to their basest nature of screaming, cursing, or fighting? That is the dilemma I faced when several different children were brought to me because of the disturbance they created in the classroom. I asked each one to tell me what happened, one started to whine, and I said please use your real voice so I can understand.  He said they were laughing at him, the other child said he could not make the letter, and the last child said he was trying to help the teacher by telling the class to be quiet. In each of these circumstances, I was able to calm the children, enough to verbalize why they threw a chair, attacked a child, and ran at the teacher as he said “on ten”. These are Pre-K children who I think lack emotional intelligence. One of my subtopics is “The influence of family on the emotional intelligence of early childhood”. In one’s family, there are multiple interactions with parents, siblings, cousins, grandparents, and so forth, which member is likely to be imitated? Does the older sibling react to obstacles to their desire through tears, screams, cursing, or calm, or perhaps it is the mother? In the Pre-K class, this behavior by the first child has been an issue almost from the beginning of school, but the other two or three have begun to manifest these outburst in the last several months or weeks. Should my subtopic be about children mimicking other peers, or should I try to narrow my subtopic more?  I know this is a mock research, but since my topic is actually a concern, I am looking for a solution, understanding, while trying to focus on what is most important in emotional intelligence in early childhood.

     Being competent in research is a valuable skill for teachers, for anyone, and I am genuinely striving to get the information I need to become competent in research. I have learned this week that all information found on the internet is not valid, that research has to be searched for verification of its validation.