FACES OF THE BCIU

VICKI SMITH - PreSCHOOL TEACHER, BCIU CHILD CARE

“Playing to their sense of wonder is the key to helping children learn.”

Imagine a child care room full of children ages 3-5. The walls are a colorful and cheerful mess with the children’s drawings hanging on just about any bare space. Tiny chairs sit around tiny tables.

The children giggle, wriggle, and squirm as they sit for their letter-of-the-week lesson. Or perhaps they’re learning a new song. Or getting ready for their afternoon snack after nap time. A physical therapist may come in to work with one youngster; an audiologist could stop by for an appointment with another. The assistant teachers are trying to catch the youngsters’ attention, to keep them on task.

And imagine you are in charge of it all.

If you were Vicki Smith, you would be.

And you’d absolutely love every single chaotic moment of it.

“This is a job where you really get your heart involved,” Vicki says. “You really have to love it. And I do!”

Vicki is a preschool teacher for the BCIU’s Child Care program. She’s in charge of a classroom at the BCIU’s Education Centre of 15-20 children ages 3-5, as well as up to six staff members, including two assistant teachers and paraprofessionals from the BCIU’s Early Intervention program (who watch over any youngsters who are in the Early Intervention program).

The Hamburg Area High School graduate holds a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from Kutztown University and is in her fifth year as a preschool teacher with the BCIU. She lives in Hamburg with her husband, Jeff, and children, Ryan, 10, and Emily, 3, who also is a member of Vicki’s preschool class.

“We have a very fluid classroom,” Vicki says. “There’s always something going on. Yet we work to make it organized, so that no child’s needs are neglected.

We also work to make it organized and happy. There’s no sense in having organization if the atmosphere is grumpy. It’s like home. The parents of our students tell us their children cry when they have to go home. We consider that a great compliment.”

Vicki says she believes Governor Ed Rendell’s focus on the importance of a child’s preschool education has “shone a light” on the work she and her colleagues do and how important a good preschool education can be to ensure a child’s success in school and beyond.

“We care for children, yes,” she says, “but we educate them too. There’s more to what we do than what you see here in the classroom. For example, we often go to training sessions at night in order to be better educators. I put together lesson plans every night. I may not follow them rigidly– sometimes a really cool thing happens in class, and I want to run with it – but we have educational standards and benchmarks that we follow.

“I’m very proud to work at the BCIU and to be a part of the quality services the BCIU provides children,” Vicki continues. “I’m proud of my colleagues, too; the BCIU puts high-quality people into a high-quality workplace.