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Post May 4th, 1970 there was a lot of interest expressed by university families for full
day programs for pre-school aged children. The early childhood program on campus stepped
in to offer a laboratory school for children of that age and the school currently serves
150 children from 18 months through kindergarten.
I have a long history here. I've been here since I was a college student back in the
late 70s so this place has always had a special place in my heart. But, um, I think what I
love best about teaching here and being here is the relationships that we build with the
children and the families and with each other as teachers and faculty here.
We're a laboratory school so we serve as a professional development site for the students
who are majoring in early childhood education. We do have a college classroom in the building
so some of the early childhood courses are taught in the building by not only teachers
in the classroom but also other early childhood faculty members and we are able to host anywhere
from 25 to 30 undergraduate early childhood students each year.
I absolutely love it. This is the best place, I think, to be placed, honestly. Every day
I come in, all the kids run "Ms. Rothermel! Ms. Rothermel!". I love coming here every
day, I come Monday through Friday and it's just a great atmosphere. You can really tell
the community that the CDC has really built around the classrooms and the parents and
the children, of course.
We do give priority to current university families so primarily most of our children
are children of faculty, staff or students and we have maybe about 5 to 8 percent of
our families are just affiliated with the community.
We want our children to be lifelong learners and to really have a love of learning and
so we encourage them to embrace problems, that problems are good things. And so when
a problem comes up, whether it's between children or a social issue like the litter out on the
campus, we sit together and we talk about what can we do about this and how can we make
changes.
Typically, in many other programs, the focus is on skills and academics, knowing your numbers,
knowing your letters. We feel that comes naturally when children have a purpose for knowing those
things so when they are engaged in long-term investigations and projects with their peers
and they have to articulate their ideas, communicate them, negotiate, then they find that there
are meaningful reasons to write their name or to learn how to spell something or to engage
in mathematical thinking.
Every day is like a special gift with the children here. They just bring so much curiosity
and fun to the classrooms so I look forward to just everyday, seeing their faces and seeing
the families come in and building those relationships.
It's much better than just reading a book about children, like, you actually see learning
happening in the classroom. You see all these different aspects of the classroom come out
and you really learn how to become a teacher.