On a warm spring day, Sally Tamplin's 20 kindergartners file into their classroom following their weekly art class. Tamplin has them sit down while she discusses the upcoming math lesson. Holding up five small colored blocks - three red and two green - Tamplin (BSFCS '00) asks the class a series of questions:
    "Is this right?" she questions, putting two red blocks, followed by the two green and ending with a red.
    "Noooo!" the children call out. "You don't have all of the red blocks touching."
After putting the blocks together incorrectly two more times, Tamplin is finally greeted with a loud chorus of agreement when she correctly places the three red blocks together followed by the two green.

To those uneducated in how young children think, the exercise seems simplistic, but Tamplin knows that her kindergartners will more quickly grasp addition if they're able to use objects to reinforce the concept. Tamplin divides the children into four groups and each group practices addition concepts with different types of objects, including beans, colored beads, and squares of construction paper they glue into patterns. They follow the hands-on activity by carefully writing out the equation, including the occasional backwards "3" or "5." For the next 20 minutes, Tamplin and her teacher's aide move from one child to another, instructing, encouraging and, occasionally, reminding students to continue their work rather than chat with a friend.

Sally Tamplin and Dr. Julia Atiles look over a teaching portfolio. Atiles is overseeing a program that allows first-year teachers like Tamplin to mentor university students.

  When the math lesson ends at 2 p.m., Tamplin talks with the children for a few minutes about the classroom chrysalis that will soon become a butterfly before the children lie down to rest and Tamplin has a brief break. "It's draining because the kids all need you and you can only help one person at a time," Tamplin says of this first year of teaching. "When you have two children who get hurt at the same time and a third is losing a tooth, it's hard to balance all of that. I think I could sit behind a desk until 8 p.m. and not be tired, but I'm emotionally drained at the end of each day."

  Although teaching 5-year-olds is challenging, Tamplin says she was well-prepared due to the Pre-K-Grade 2 program that she completed. The program, jointly offered by the Department of Human Development and Family Science and the College of Education's Early Childhood Education Department, was established in 1994 specifically to prepare college students to teach young children. "Our program focuses on the development and education of the whole child, not just their cognitive development," according to Dr. Julia Atiles, Senior Academic Professional. "When it was begun, pre-kindergarten was just being established as an opportunity for all children; we wanted to make sure the pre-kindergarten program wasn't just a watered down version of kindergarten."

  In answer to critics who suggest that a college degree isn't necessary to teach young children, Atiles says, "Human development is a very complex thing. Caring about the children is essential, but there's much more. It's also essential that teachers of young children understand how they develop, what should be expected of them at different ages, how to work with individual children to ensure that they all reach their potential, how to recognize the early signs that a child may have special needs so that those needs can be addressed, as well as knowing how to teach different subjects and how to teach them the best.

  And none of this is to say that a four-year degree is enough. That just gets teachers started. They have to be life-long learners." In addition, teachers like Tamplin are also teaching social behaviors, such as taking turns, sharing and using appropriate language. "They're not just teaching them songs and the alphabet," Atiles says.

  To ensure that university students are receiving the training they need, Atiles received a grant establishing a program that allows a first-year teacher to mentor a university student. "We're asking these new teachers to work with the students in developing their teaching portfolio," Atiles explains. "This accomplishes two goals: It helps the teachers reflect on their own training and how it has affected them in the classroom and it helps us ensure that the training we provide is relevant. "It's a very straight forward project," she continues, "but it's also a way to continue mentoring these new teachers. It's given me a reason to meet with them every week; to sit and talk and tell us what challenges they've faced that we could have prepared them for."