Cathy Collie-Robinson is Director of the Early Childhood Education program at Durham Technical Community College. This interview was conducted the morning of Friday, January 6, 2023.

Cathy, you know firsthand the challenges preschool teachers face – degree attainment, compensation, professional respect and development. How do you see Durham PreK addressing all of those challenges, and how can Durham as a community go further in shaping the future of universal pre-k?

I think I said earlier that Durham can really be the model for a well-funded pre-k program. And what that looks like is that teacher salaries are matching what's happening in the school system, but also assistant teacher salaries and health benefits - a whole compensation package. That's an area we're still having to figure out here in Durham. What does the entire package look like for pre-k so that it’s the equivalent of what’s happening in the school system? I think Durham's got the opportunity to really step up a little bit more and figure out how to do that. If we do that, we'll be, I think, the first in the State. We’ll be a model for that. If we can show you how it's done, I see how that can be a ripple effect, and then perhaps we can convince our State legislators to fund more – to fund wages but also benefits. That is one thing that’s super important. 

Compensation, professional development, and all of that – I think that's part of the compensation package, right? Teachers who want to keep on going and get a master’s degree, how do we support that? How do we support assistant teachers with completing their associate’s degree and then getting a bachelor's degree, to have that whole career pathway. I think Durham PreK can lay out the model for what that looks like – work with T.E.A.C.H., have scholarships, have the salary supplement, have the salary scale increase with your education and professional attainment. With all of that, professional respect will grow. If we have this wonderful model of well-educated, well-compensated teachers and teacher assistants in Durham PreK, then what we're going to see is that the quality of Durham PreK is going to be at such a high level that we will start to see pre-k teachers viewed exactly as kindergarten teachers or first or second grade teachers. They’ll have that professional respect. This is a wonderful opportunity to be the model for what this can look like.

You talk about higher degree attainment and setting expectations at a certain point, but also about supporting those ideals through funding and mentoring and support that is necessary to help folks get there.

Right! Exactly. We have the bones in place here in Durham with Child Care Services, with Durham’s Partnership, with Early Head Start/Head Start, with Durham Tech, with North Carolina Central. We’ve got all the bones, it's just, again, there's not enough money to make all those bones work together. So with the right model that’s funded, we have it all here.

Money being the connective tissue.

Unfortunately, money is that connective tissue. I'll just speak for Durham Tech. We are stretched as thin as we can be. We are doing all we can. We would love to provide more support and do more innovative things. But there are just two of us here at Durham Tech in early childhood so we would need more support. 

Two of Durham PreK’s goals are to increase the number of Spanish speaking teachers of Latinx or Hispanic backgrounds, and to support the development of anti-racist pre-k curriculum and lesson plans for Durham PreK classrooms. As director of Durham Tech’s early childhood degree program, what are your thoughts about how the system of higher ed can aid in these goals?

If we look at the first one – Spanish speaking teachers – I think [higher ed] are the ones that can really get folks into the early childhood profession who may be Spanish speakers, and we are slowly doing that by increasing how many bilingual course offerings we have. We have two part-time instructors right now who teach courses in English and in Spanish. 

What's interesting is that I'm hearing from the community that they're not even aware of these classes, so we have the opportunity to do better marketing, to let folks know that every semester we have these three classes that are available in English and in Spanish. I think higher ed has a wonderful opportunity to increase that, both here at the community college level but then also at the university level. And then can we expand it to other languages, as well? How can we emphasize that as we're looking at attracting new individuals to this field of early childhood education that that's something we need to do more of?

And then for the development of anti-racist pre-k curriculum, two to three years ago, we really took a deep dive into what we're teaching here at Durham Tech and how we’re going to ensure that anti-racism is embedded into what we're teaching, what we're allowing, what we're enabling our students to even know about and to be aware of.

We see it as critical to what we are teaching that our students have the foundational level of understanding of what it means to be anti-racist, to understand implicit bias, to be aware of their own implicit bias and how that impacts their work with young children and families. We've always kind of done that, but with the murder of George Floyd, we really took a deep dive. One of the part time instructors called and said, “We’ve got to do more. We’re not doing enough. What more can we do?” So as a faculty, we all came together and evaluated what we were teaching and figured out concrete ways to really build in equity and anti-racist conversations and assignments into what we're teaching. We've evaluated all of our courses and added in readings and concrete assignments and discussions and videos to really start those conversations and to support students in understanding the importance of that in their work. 

You know, in higher ed, we’re at the beginning – boots on the ground. I think it's our duty to ensure that our students know how to provide a supportive learning environment where every single child can thrive and be the best version of themselves that they can be. Our students need support in having that same type of environment, and many of them have not experienced that. We are creating learning environments where we're role modeling that, where we’re making sure that every student's voice is heard, where we're figuring out every student’s strengths and helping them to grow and to thrive so they can do the same thing with the children they’re working with.

As you've implemented those changes, have you seen changes in the students themselves, and if so, can you talk a little bit about that?

I think a lot more students are feeling comfortable having some of the hard conversations, whereas before, maybe conversations just didn't happen. A lot of students are sharing, “Yeah, this was my experience. I never had a teacher that looked like me;” or “we never had conversations about race, ever;” or “my family never felt welcomed in my school or in my classroom.” We have these conversations, and then a lot of, “Well, this is what I’m going to do differently. These are the things that I’m going to try.” We're just hearing our students talk in a different way. We hear students talk about what they're seeing and how it doesn't match what we're teaching and what they're learning and what they would like to do differently. Some students don't feel like they can do anything differently at this point, but they're thinking further down the road when they have more control over what's going on, how they can change things.

What I think I'm hearing you say is that you're really taking students’ experiences and perspectives into consideration and using their ideas to further the anti-racist curriculum. 

Yeah. For everything that we teach, we really do feel like that's the best way to impart change on students. We’ve got to start with where they are and their own experiences and help them go through that and then understand next steps and the difference that they can make. Like when we’re talking about theory or something really abstract, how do we make it make sense to your real world? We do that with our anti-racist conversation as well as conversations connecting your real-life experiences so that you understand. It connects better.

If you could flash forward 10 years from today and look back over Durham PreK’s development, what changes or growth do you hope you might see? 

I really hope in 10 years’ time, we have universal pre-k for 3-year-olds as well as 4-year-olds. I really hope that in 10 years’ time when we're looking back, we're seeing that we have a fully funded model for what high quality pre-k looks like – a [teacher] salary scale that’s funded, professional development, mentoring support – all of that, with directors also having a salary scale for them to be supported. 

In 10 years, I would also love to see how Durham PreK has expanded into infants and toddlers – to see that our whole early care and education system is at the highest quality possible, with teachers who are treated like the brain-building early childhood professionals that they are, [and] that they are compensated and supported.

I would love to see in 10 years the culmination of all the things that I've been learning about and talking about for my whole professional career to come together, and we in Durham have this model of an excellent, amazing early childhood system that the State can replicate and that can spread out nationwide. We have just got such a great opportunity here in Durham to really make that happen.

Imagine if that happens! If we have got this solid early care and education system in Durham, imagine the ripple effect –students are entering kindergarten ready and by third grade they’re reading on grade level; they’re graduating from high school; our economy is strong because every parent who wants to work can work because we have plenty of high-quality early child care opportunities available for families.

So you see a model pre-k program that is really planting the seeds for a more just and equitable community.

You got it. We always say if you go to kindergarten knowing how to solve your problems with words and you understand your big emotions, you’re set. If we can ensure that all children have that solid start, then by the time they're five, they’ve got the framework. That ripple effect would be quite incredible. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see all of these great things that we know about instruction in the early childhood years, and how we can help every single child grow and thrive, how that might then move on with them into kindergarten and the higher grades? We’ve got so many wonderful opportunities here in Durham.

You emphasize how the social and emotional learning that takes place in pre-k really informs school success. This is another area we hear parents talk about a lot, this idea that pre-k is academically focused or that it is preparing children for academics in school. This might be an opportunity to say more about the social-emotional learning and how much more important that is to school success.

When parents and even some educators outside of early childhood are talking about getting children ready for kindergarten, they think about the academics because that's really what you remember, right? You remember learning how to read. You don't remember learning how to use your words or how to understand and control your emotions, but that happens so much earlier. That’s not as concrete. 

What we know about early childhood development is that there are certain times in our life when we can learn skills easier and better – language, social-emotional development – all of that happens in the first five years of life. That’s the prime time to learn those things. So if we're thinking about what it means to get a child academically ready for kindergarten, we really need to be looking at what's going on socially and emotionally, because by the time you get to kindergarten your brain might be ready to read or it might not, but your brain is primed to understand your emotions, use your words to solve your problem, sit down and control your body for a few minutes. Those are the academic skills that we are hoping children have when they enter kindergarten, but you don't learn those skills automatically. 

Those are skills that you have to be taught, and the way we teach those skills in pre-k and earlier is in our play-based, hands-on learning environment where we introduced sitting still for a minute or two next to your friends, just so you get the feel of what that’s like. The social and emotional part is solving problems with your friends. The adult is there supporting you, giving you the words to use to understand what you’re feeling and how your words have caused a friend to start crying and consider what we can do about that. Helping children who have big emotions understand what that emotion is, what to do with that emotion, how that emotion is impacting them and maybe others. That's what we really need to be talking about when we’re talking about the academics. If you have that solid by the time you go to kindergarten, yeah, you're going to be able to listen, to focus more, and maybe by the time you're finishing kindergarten your brain is going to be ready to read or maybe not. You might need another year or so. 

I think reframing what it means to be ready for kindergarten is something that we all can do better job of. Knowing how to write your name is not something you need to enter kindergarten. You should be able to recognize your name. And maybe you can write some of those letters, but you might not be able to write all the letters. That's fine. But if you can enter the classroom, say goodbye to your grown-ups, use your words to ask for what you need, be able to sit on that carpet for a few minutes without causing a distraction, you're there. You're ready.

We’ve always said that play is the academics of early childhood. And that’s true. But it’s more than play. There’s just so much more going on that’s at the root of all of it.

That really highlights the importance of the teacher’s role too, to be prepared to have those conversations with children and teach those social-emotional skills that are so critical.

We know that if teachers are engaging in conversations with students, reading to children, singing with children, that's going to do so much more to prepare them for kindergarten than anything else.

You speak about this with a lot of hope.

Well, I've been doing this forever. I am hoping that in 10 years I will be looking back going, “Yay! It worked!”