Education Jobs – Working in Early Childhood Development
Education is vital to the development of a country, making Early Childhood Development an important foundation. Teaching jobs play a significant role in the development of a country as a whole. With this said, you definitely have to check out the jobs in educations advertised on Job Mail.
What is ECD?
You may have the question, “What is ECD?”. ECD stands for Early Childhood Development, this is the developmental stage between a child’s birth and the period where the child starts going to school. In this stage you generally want to monitor the child’s development to ensure the child is developing in accordance to the standards he or she should be developing to.
In understanding what is ECD you must understand how children develop mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually and socially through this period. It is important to understand these fundamentals because this is a very important period of development which has a huge influence on the child’s future and his or her potential to excel in the real world.
Early Childhood Development practitioner job description
ECD practitioners are employed to manage this developmental process. The job description of ECD practitioners is quite extensive. With these teaching jobs you can expect to do the following:
- Co-ordinating activities to help build children’s motor skills, build their confidence and generally aid in their mental and emotional development.
- Planning ways to teach children both indoors and outdoors.
- Choosing educational material that is best suited for children’s development.
- Applying first aid kits to children.
- Keeping children as safe as possible in the educational environment.
- Handling the personal care of children – this will include doing things such as feeding, clothing and bathing children to make sure that they are well taken care of.
- Helping children develop their language skills.
- Keeping in contact with children’s parents, particularly in the event of an emergency involving the child.
Because you are dealing with children a lot, with these teaching jobs you should expect to play the role of dispute handler. As you probably know children fight quite often, sometimes these fights can get out of hand. It will be your duty as an ECD practitioner to manage these conflicts.
Another task you can also expect to do as an ECD practitioner is ensuring that the children you supervise are eating well enough. Nutrition at this young age is very important, bad nutrition can slow down a child’s growth. Because of this you need to ensure that children are following a proper diet and are being fed enough to ensure that they are living a healthy life.
Education
There are a few paths you can take to be able to be qualified enough to find these jobs in education. One of the options you could take is pursuing a Bachelor of Education in Early Childhood Development. Another option you could take is pursuing a Bachelor of Primary Education in Early Childhood Development.
If you do not want to go the university route and get a Bachelor degree you could as an alternative try and get an Advanced Certificate in Education and Foundation Phase and Early Childhood Development. Normally, this qualification is followed by people who have already qualified as educators working in teachings jobs.
Another alternative you have is pursuing a National Diploma in Early Childhood Development. Other options available to you are getting a Higher Certificate or Further Education and Training Certificate in this field.
You can pursue these qualifications either at a TVET/FET college or at some South African Universities. Once you qualify you can start looking for teaching jobs or other jobs in education.
Skills needed for a career in ECD
In order to excel in these education jobs you have to have a few skills. In education jobs you need to be patient enough to deal with children. You need to be an understanding adult who genuinely likes children and is interested in the development of young children.
You need to be a good communicator who is able to talk to children in a way they understand. You must be caring enough to be able to actually have fun with the children and make their learning experience as exciting as possible to them. This will help make them more engaged in your teaching methods.
The more engaged the children are the easier it will be to teach them. The most important thing is that you have to be interested in teaching. Teaching jobs or other education jobs are not just jobs these are passion careers.
You have to be passionate to be a good ECD practitioner. There are far too many people who get into teaching with absolutely no passion. These teachers are no good for childhood development. This is a phase when children need passionate teachers who genuinely like teaching.
With these teaching jobs you will quickly learn that the children you deal with come from different backgrounds, have different cultures and religions, and very importantly different dietary needs. You need to take the time to learn about the children you are dealing with and their differences.
This is not a one-size-fits-all kind of job. You need to tailor your educational programs and even the way you interact with and treat these children to match their individual needs. This will help maximize the efficiency of your teaching methods, ensure that you give each kid adequate attention that matches their needs and a meal plan that will help them grow well and flourish.
Once you have acquired all the needed skills for teaching jobs, the hunt for the perfect job will begin. Luckily Job Mail offers a platform where employers and recruiters can advertise the right jobs in education for you. To get started, upload your CV and start applying for jobs.
Good work. It’s all I wanted to do.
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