This interview was conducted October 17, 2023, and has been edited for length and clarity.

Tabatha, thank you for taking the time to share some of your insights with us today. Let’s start with your love for education, which started early. Even before completing high school, you were teaching Spanish to preschoolers as part of a dual credit college class. What pointed you toward a career in education at such a young age, and what drew you specifically toward early education? 

I always knew that I wanted to do some kind of career that helped people. That was something that was important to me, and I witnessed people that I admired doing that. But then when I was teaching Spanish to preschoolers, it was the first time that I had been on the observing end of education. I had always been getting [education] delivered to me. My teachers were teaching me, but I'd never had the opportunity to just watch a teacher, and I got to see what an art form it was. 

I remember the teacher, Miss Pat, and the way she interacted with her students, moving from one place to another, never seeming like things were about her [but] always about the kids, asking open ended questions, really bringing out the best in each individual student. That's when I really thought “maybe I want to be a teacher, and maybe it's with kids this young.” What I found out when working with those kids is they are so funny. There's something so special about 3, 4, or 5 year olds. They're hilarious. They're insulting at times. They're honest. They are so excited to be at school. I thought, “I can be a part of [students] feeling this joy and intrinsic reward every single day, but also help them hang on to that joy for education and love for school.”

I changed my mind a couple of times in college about what I was going to teach. After two years of being an English major thinking I was going to teach English, I had a dream and knew that I needed to change my degree back to early childhood education. I was working at the on campus preschool, but I was still going back and forth about what I wanted to do. That dream made me feel connected to that younger self. I knew, and so I changed my major and had to go to college a semester longer, but I did it and I am so thankful that I did.

So it sounds like there was a lot of both observation and experience, but also intuition involved.

That's what I felt like. I think sometimes people discount intuition, and maybe it's just because we don't listen to our own internal guidance. We have this internal guidance system, [but] we are not present, we are so involved in what other people's realities are, that we don't listen to it. I’d spent my whole life not being emotionally regulated, but that was when I started tapping into what my own wisdom was.

I love how what you just said relates back to one of the first things you said about young kids, and that is that they are authentic. 

That's such a good parallel to draw there.  Something that I admire about people, and a value of mine, is to be authentic. And so, when I surrounded myself with other authentic people, that gives me the courage to be more authentic in my own practice in my life. 

You’ve said in past interviews that “social-emotional learning is the foundation for all other learning.” What successes have you seen for children as a result of your classroom focus on social-emotional learning?  How does social-emotional learning help to prepare preschoolers for school success?

I am a huge fan and I work with Conscious Discipline, and that is where I got my start in understanding what a big role our childhood has in our ability to be a successful adult when it comes to regulation. Through that work, I understood how important it was that I as the adult was regulated, but also that, at this really tender age of zero to five, we are setting their brains up to have healthy patterns that they can draw on for the rest of their life – when they're thinking critically, when they're having to make tough decisions, and even just day to day.

In my own classroom, I think back to little moments. I had a student who was terrified of dogs. My classroom was inside of a nursing home and people live there, so of course, there were dogs, and we had treats for them in our classroom. We made sure it was safe to be around all these dogs, and we'd let them come in sometimes. We never forced [the student] to get near or touch. We just talked about it. We talked with the other kids about [how] some people are nervous, and that's okay, and we can take a deep breath for them. We went through all of these tools and taught them what it looks like to be a supportive friend and have empathy for someone who is different than you. After several months, he worked up the courage to pet a dog for the first time in our classroom, and right after, the entire class, unprompted, enveloped him in a hug. It was just this pure form of empathy and celebration. 

I'm reminded of this book I read once by Dr. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz, Born for Love. It talks about how empathy is a gift of our biology. It's a potential, but it's not a guarantee, so we have to foster that in people. We have spent so much time working with children on rhyming words and numbers and ABCs and everything in between, but have we ever broken it down for them and taught them how to be empathetic to another person, how to love them, how to care for them, how to identify your own feelings and make sure they're not trampling on someone else's feelings? I feel like we did that! It was just a beautiful example of that. It couldn't be tested; it’s anecdotal evidence, which is why I think people struggle with social emotional learning and accounting for it. 

But in that short amount of time, we built a community where my students could do that. We didn't see teaching social emotional learning as a waste of time. We saw it as an investment. As Dr. Becky Bailey says, self-regulation is the missing piece in academic success. I think I would go even a little bit further and say, all emotional intelligence is the missing piece in academic success. Because my students had some of those skills, their other skills were able to blossom. We forget [social emotional skills] are just as critical and just as important as academic learning.

Fears can seem so huge to all of us, but especially to very young children, so it resonates to hear that a community of 4 year olds accomplished that together.

People talk about kindergarten readiness, which is so important, but I think they discount the fact that 4 year olds are already people who need skills for everyday life. Kindergarten readiness is not the only reason we need preschool and early learning. We put way too much focus on school readiness and not enough on [how] these zero to five year olds are already living some challenging reality, and they need these skills right now.

You helped launch the intergenerational program at Winfield Early Learning Center that features daily interactions between preschoolers and retirement community members. Few of these kinds of programs exist across the country. What inspired your choice to help launch the program, and what are the biggest rewards to come from it? 

I always want to further our capacity to build early childhood resources, whatever community I'm in. In Winfield, a lot of families were citing the lack of full day pre-k as a barrier to their success. So as a part of my work with the Early Childhood Readiness Coalition that we formed there, we [asked], “how can we get more full day opportunities?” Space is always an issue. Funding is always an issue. We had committed to [universal pre-k] in our town, and there was a similar kindergarten program in Coffeyville, Kansas, with a little bit different setup. A friend [and I] were the teachers’ union co-presidents at the time, and we would meet weekly with our superintendent. We were throwing ideas around and [said], “we should do this in Winfield.” I love to tell this story because it just proves that community involvement doesn't have to be hard. My superintendent had heard of this, too, and he thought it was a really great idea. He went to a Chamber of Commerce coffee, and a local nursing home was there, Cumbernauld Village, and he mentioned it to their Executive Director and [said], “Let me know if you want to be involved.” By the time he got back to his office, he had a message that said, “We're in. What do we need to do next?” All because he had the courage to ask a question. A lot of community engagement just takes a person willing to do that, and I'm really thankful that he did, but it also takes people willing to advocate for an idea. Sometimes leadership is not a position, it's an activity, but sometimes [it requires] authority in a situation. I couldn't just find a nursing home. It took involvement from the higher ups at the school district, as well. 

The reason I specifically wanted to be involved was [because] my mom was a CNA when I was growing up, and I would go to work with her a lot because we didn't have child care. We were lower middle class and couldn’t afford it. My dad worked days, my mom worked nights, and sometimes the other way around. I spent so much time in a nursing home when I was a child, and I remember it being incredibly fun for me. I have really fond memories of that time. As I got older, my own grandparents went into a nursing home, and I can remember once coming to visit them, and there were pictures of these kids that I did not know, framed pictures. And [my grandmother] said, “oh, that's the nurse’s son” or “the CNAs daughter.” They brought so much joy to her life. I saw that she loved them enough to frame pictures of them in her room alongside her own grandchildren who couldn't be there as much. I had a job in a town 30 minutes away, and I couldn't come every day. But she could see someone else's children, and they could bring her joy and purpose and light up her life in the same way. 

There's something so unbelievably profound about watching a 4 year old engage with a 95 year old. Together they're working on the same skills – fine motor, memory, gross motor, talking and asking questions, and taking turns – some of those skills that we lose as we get a bit older. They help each other in this mutually beneficial way, truly bringing joy and purpose and value to each other's lives. I wanted to be a part of that. I've seen firsthand this impact that it can make for both the child and the adult, and I wanted to be a part of creating and building that social capital in our community where there are children who need love and connection, and there are a multitude of people who still have so much left to give. They're an untapped resource, and [we can] also give back to them that joy that they all deserve. I thought it was going to be difficult integrating because this was someone's home – 140 residents. It was not at all. It was so easy to love each other, and I think that the elderly and the youngest in our community are beacons of light on how truly easy it is to love someone of differing abilities, age, experience; to have empathy, concern, and care for someone that doesn't look like you [or] have the same culture as you. What a gift. I think the children who have been through that program are going to be forever changed, and they've made a huge impact in the lives of other people, too.

You’ve also championed family engagement and noted the value of parents as children’s first teachers. Why is family engagement in preschool important, and how does it benefit children, families, and teachers? 

Sometimes we’re at odds with each other, the school and the home, and that can be for a multitude of reasons – [parents’] experience with school when they were younger, experience with perceived authority, who knows this kid best. For me, as an educator, I never wanted to assume I was the authority on someone else's child. I had them 6-8 hours a day, and that's a big chunk, but their family is so important, truly their first teacher. They have all of this time with them, all those little moments. My day might be really structured, and I have 16 or 20 kids in my classroom. [Parents] have the ability to make an impact in all of those small hours that we take for granted. Parenting doesn’t come with a manual. If you live in a place that doesn't have people showing you and [providing] resources, you're just on your own – sink or swim. I pursued a degree in understanding child development, and it would be a crime in my mind if I didn't share that knowledge with families in a loving way. 

I'm a collectivist – everybody offer what they have and take care of each other, and that's how we're all going to be better off. I don't have to be good at everything, because I love and care for people who are good at the things I'm not good at. Nobody can be everything to a child. I think parents need the school, and schools need parents and caregivers in the same way. I have seen the most growth and success in my classroom when I'm deeply connected to the parents. I would argue, and I have many people who would say they feel the same way, that their child has the most success when they trust the teacher, when they feel like they have some ownership in their child's classroom. 

Part of that is also understanding what families go through. Pre-K is when everything starts. It sets up the pattern for the rest of their school experience. It is when families start to learn about what school is, especially with their first child. It is this short window that we have, where you get 100% engagement at parent teacher conferences. In the beginning, everyone's fully fueled, and they're ready to go. We have to work to build habits with each other that are going to continue past preschool. I say that both for teachers and for families. I'm a preschool teacher with 16 students. That's very different than a high school teacher with 200 students. I recognize that, but I don't think that the flaw is in the teacher, and I don't think it's in the parents. I think it's in the system, so only together can we work to make that difference. When the school board listens, when legislators listen, when lawmakers listen – that’s when we work together. That's where our power is. Our country has gotten so isolated and divided. We only take care of the people in our house. It goes all the way back to our own early childhood experience, where we were taught to survive and not to be in community with other people. That’s why it’s so important for us to work on social emotional learning, internal wisdom, self-regulation, and empathy.

Let’s come back around to the initial question about what brought you to a career in teaching. The pandemic revealed both how much families depend on the ECE system while also pointing to how difficult it was for teachers and programs to survive in the ECE system as it currently operates. As the field begins to recover, and we take stock of lessons learned, what will it take to build a stronger ECE system and inspire teachers to return to the profession or students to take up the profession in the years ahead? 

That's a really huge question, but immediately, I think of that opportunity that I was given to observe. It wasn't a teaching class we were in; it was my college Spanish course [exploring] “how can we transfer this knowledge?” The best way to transfer is to teach someone else. When I'm doing workshops, it’s this, “I do, you do, we do” philosophy of education. I explain it to you, you answer some of my questions, but then I have you transfer it over – teach it, explain it. You really don't know what you don't know until a child asks you a question. It’s really great to have to teach someone something to practice, but even better than that is to not just be a recipient of education, but get to see it, get to understand. 

We're trying to build our teachers up, and I think we need to give them the opportunity to witness what teachers love about education, understand the magic behind it and the why that teachers have. Some teachers wear their why on their sleeve. It's evident in everything they do, but that is not always the case. For most teachers, especially in the secondary level, there's so much pressure on them with so many kids. I think that's when we need to start giving kids the opportunity to do what I was able to do, which was to just be a part of a classroom. I'm always quoting Dr. Becky Bailey, but she says that being of service to someone is a powerful intrinsic motivator to continue. She always says you get “joy juice” from it – like endorphins and serotonin and all that stuff we're lacking throughout our day. 

To get teachers to return, we have to pay them a professional wage. When people say what people do in early childhood is “just daycare,” that's an insult to child care providers and the brilliance of early childhood educators around the world. People think that what we do is just play, and they are correct in some ways, because play is serious learning. It's not because early childhood educators are disconnected from reality; it's because they understand how children learn best, and the K through 12 system has lost sight of that. So as early childhood educators, we have an active role to take in being advocates for our field. Not everybody feels comfortable advocating to legislators, but you can be an advocate in whatever role you have – in line at the bus stop, at the grocery store, at your church. What place can you spread the good news of early childhood education, because we need it. It’s sharing in whatever platform you have the impact that you're making in your community. 

Part of it is also working better with the community, other community organizations. I think that people are not aware sometimes of what resources they have, so there has to be better teaming amongst social services. Whether people like it or not, I do believe that school is a social service.  Public school was founded on this idea of bridging equity gaps in our community, and that is what social services do. We are serving a purpose; we are caring for the children so that families can contribute to the community in other ways. I'm thinking along the lines of pediatricians, churches, other organizations that people might be going to – combining instead of competing. We are offering this hand up to families to say, “Hey, did you know what else is in our community that could really help you?” I think that takes some orchestrating behind the scenes. I think that's something that we need to do better. And I do have something to say about the pandemic. I think early childhood programs propped up the economy while we were in the pandemic. I really do think it's all going to come down to treating them as the professionals that they are, but that is going to take all of us. 

I'm also hearing a thread throughout all of your answers about the power of being present.

Yes! Yes. That's hard. It's so hard. For me, it's hard because maybe I have got this version of myself that I want to be, and sometimes when I'm really present, I'm faced with who I really am. You have to fight against some of those unhealthy habits or patterns in your life. We don't have the self-regulation skills to deal with what's really happening. I think of that, too, when I avoid looking at the news, because it hurts, because it's hard. We don't know how to handle things that hurt and that are hard and that make us uncomfortable. So yeah, presence is a huge thing.

Tabatha, it’s been great talking with you. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to include?

I just want to reiterate something. No matter how long you've been in this field, you have a role to play, not only in your classroom, but within the field. We have this responsibility to care for the other people who do this work, and not just our students. That's where our power is. I think sometimes we feel helpless. We're doing what we can in our classroom, but the rest of the world is falling apart, and that's because we're not taking advantage of some of those opportunities to just be in community with other educators and to use these little pieces of our time to further their endeavors and to cheer them on and to support them and to celebrate in public or private ways. I would just reiterate that to any other early educators who are reading this.

So in summary, communicate, celebrate and stay present.

Yeah. I love that.