Early childhood educators do some of the most important work in our communities. Yet despite the skill and expertise the work requires, early childhood educators remain among the most underpaid professionals in the country.
NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
There is a moment every early childhood educator knows. A child is deep in play, completely absorbed, doing something that looks, to an untrained eye, like nothing in particular.
Toward Intentional Teaching: The Need for Educator Agency
NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
The Spring 2026 issue of Educating Young Children is focused entirely on the preschool-to-kindergarten transition and reading it this week hit me differently than it might have at any other time.
The survey results and accompanying testimonies demonstrate a clear crisis of affordability for the early childhood education field and the children and families they serve.
The move from preschool to kindergarten introduces children and their families to new environments with different routines, activities, and expectations.
The transition to kindergarten can be both exciting and challenging for young children and their families: Entering a new school environment means navigating new routines, expectations, social interactions, and approaches to individualized support.
Celebrate 100 years of early childhood education with three simple activities for your program, plus reflection ideas and music to bring learning to life.
NAEYC promotes high-quality early learning for all children, birth through age 8, by connecting practice, policy, and research. We advance a diverse early childhood profession and support all who care for, educate, and work on behalf of young children.
Welcome to NAEYC’s podcast, Small Talk: Big Ideas About Little Learners, where we dive into conversations that matter now – to little learners and the big people who show up for them.
As we welcome the Lunar New Year on February 17, 2026, the Year of the Fire Horse, we are reminded that across cultures, the turning of a new year carries universal meaning: hope, renewal, family, and the promise of fresh starts.
Annie Moses, editor in chief of Educating Young Children, recently interviewed Tanya S. Wright, professor of literacy in the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan.
This issue of Young Children explores what educator agency looks like in action, how it connects to intentional teaching, and how it benefits everyone in the early childhood ecosystem.
More than 400 early childhood advocates from across the country gathered in Washington, D.C., for this year’s Public Policy Forum—bringing their passion, expertise, and unwavering commitment to young children and educators to Capitol Hill.
