Through a partnership between Trying Together, Learn and Earn Homewood Children’s Village, and The Shady Lane School, high school students had the chance this summer to explore early childhood education as a future career.
Providing Real-World Experience
In its second year, Child Care 101: Learn and Earn is a six-week summer program for rising sophomores and seniors that provides hands-on learning, conversations with early childhood professionals, and real-world classroom experience at The Shady Lane School. The program gave the 10 participants in the program the opportunity to envision themselves in the field.
Over the course of six weeks, the program’s participants worked at Shady Lane and met on Fridays to explore topics, including an introduction to the early childhood field, child development, health and safety, engaging activities for young learners, and career pathways in early childhood education.
For one activity, students were broken up into small groups and given eight minutes to play with an item from Trying Together’s Lending Library. They then completed a worksheet where they had to decide for which ages the item would be appropriate, which areas of development it supported, and how many stars they would assign it based on whether they would like it in their own future classroom.
“It was fun to see the students grow over the course of the program, in terms of how they approached discussing behaviors from merely being bad to thinking about what the child might need and how educators can support them,” said Lindsey Vicoria, the Career Pathways program manager at Trying Together. “From day one, students were very curious and asked a lot of thought-provoking questions about working with young children.”
Victoria said students shared in surveys taken at the end of the program that Child Care 101 made them consider careers in the field.
“It was great, the teacher was amazing, and after this I was thinking about being a part of childhood education as my career,” one student wrote.
Career Pathways Opportunities
To learn more about Trying Together’s professional development opportunities, check out our fall 2026 Professional Development Catalog.
Courses offered this fall include professional development opportunities in the following areas:
- Assessments and Supportive Services (Early Intervention)
- Child Development
- Classroom Environment
- Curriculum Development
- Family and Community Engagement
- Guidance and Behavior Management
- Health and Safety
- Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI)
- Professionalism and Program Organization
