CityU Launches Early Childhood Program to Meet State Need

By Cara Fitzpatrick

Velocity contributor

Sandra Werner opened a home daycare after her two children were born, sparking a 20-year passion for working with young children.

As a busy mom, she balanced her career with raising her kids, earning her associate’s degree over the course of six years. For years, she looked without luck for a bachelor’s degree program that would allow for a flexible schedule while delving into issues of teaching young children.

Werner found one in City University of Seattle. This fall she hopes to be one of the first students to enroll in its new bachelor’s degree program in early childhood education, which emphasizes child growth and development and learning. University officials say the program will help meet a growing need in the state and nation for advanced degrees that focus on teaching children during their most formative years, ages birth to 8.

The program has both CityU of Seattle officials and prospective students like Werner excited.

“This is probably the most unique and major program that we have new this year,” says Judy Hinrichs, CityU of Seattle’s Dean of Albright School of Education.

Werner, who now is a teacher with ECEAP, a state-funded pre-kindergarten program, said the program’s appeal is that it offers flexibility, focuses on early childhood learning and provides a route to teacher certification.

“I really like that,” she says. “I like that we can do it at our own pace.”
Early childhood education has been increasingly recognized in recent years as one of the most important areas of instruction. Children in high-quality early childhood programs make stronger gains in language and literacy, math and social development than do children in more typical daycare settings, said W. Steven Barnett, the co-director of the National Institute for Early Education Research at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Gains for disadvantaged children are even greater, he says.

The quality of the teacher in early childhood programs cannot be understated, Barnett says.

“Well-educated teachers interact with children in ways that are better for their cognitive and social and emotional well-being and development,” he says.

At both the state and national level, politicians, educational foundations and higher education officials have made efforts to fund more early childhood programs and to ensure that students in such programs have quality teachers. Both President Barack Obama and his opponent Arizona Senator John McCain talked about the need for early childhood programs during last fall’s presidential campaign. Congressional leaders passed legislation requiring teachers in federally funded Head Start, for instance, have bachelor’s degrees. And in Washington state, legislators have been trying to fund full-day kindergarten programs.

That makes it all the more important for universities like CityU to offer advanced degrees in early childhood education, Hinrichs says.

“More and more teachers will be teaching at an early childhood level,” she says.

CityU’s early childhood program for prospective teachers will be offered online and in-class at three locations, including Green River Community College in Kent, Bates Technical College in Tacoma and North Seattle Community College in Seattle. Students must complete 180 credits to earn the degree; half of those are prerequisites that should be completed before admission to the program.

Students will learn strategies, how to put developmental theory into practice in the classroom and how to incorporate multicultural and anti-bias practices, says Retta Main, teacher certification faculty and program coordinator for the Albright School of Education.

Students can pursue the degree with or without teacher certification and can focus their studies in these areas: administration, infants and toddlers, early literacy, bilingual and bicultural education, and special education, Main says. Students who pursue the teacher certification also must pass a state exam in order to teach.

For Werner, it’s that combination - flexible schedules, an early childhood focus and teacher certification - that makes the CityU program the perfect choice after so many years of searching for a program.

“I’m really excited,” she says. “I had been looking for a long time.”