Small Talk: Big Ideas About Little Learners

Season 1, Episode 4: Between Power and the People: Jerlean Daniel and Rahshita Lowe-Watson

TRANSCRIPT

(Music + sounds of children playing)

NARRATOR: You’re listening to Small Talk: Big Ideas About Little Learners, brought to you by NAEYC, the National Association for the Education of Young Children. As we celebrate our centennial year, we’re diving into conversations that matter now – to little learners and the big people who show up for them, bringing you stories of struggle, inspiration, and hope for our children’s future. 

ALISSA MWENELUPEMBE: Welcome to Small Talk! I’m Dr. Alissa Mwenelupembe and I am glad that you’re here. Today’s conversation is about something that often goes unnamed in our field: Early childhood educators are usually described as teachers, and we are, but so much of what we actually do isn’t teaching, it’s navigating systems. Helping a family access subsidies. Figuring out who to call when a child’s housing situation changes. Holding what we know about a family’s circumstances while also representing - to them - a system that wasn't designed with them in mind. 

I’m joined by two people whose perspectives I’m excited to bring together: Dr. Jerlean Daniel has been in this field for more than 40 years – as a practitioner, program director, a faculty member, and as NAEYC’s executive director and Governing Board president. But before any of that, she worked as a case worker for the Department of Public Assistance. That experience, walking between institutions and the people those institutions were supposed to serve, shaped everything that came after. 

And Rahshita Lowe-Watson is a kindergarten teacher at John Francis Education Campus in DC, a 2025 DC Teacher of the Year finalist, and someone whose skill at building relationships with families is exactly the kind of labor we’re here to talk about. 

Jerri, I want to start with you, and with the work you were doing before you ever even entered an early childhood education classroom. 

JERLEAN DANIEL: Well, I have to start by saying to you that I never wanted to teach, and somehow I ended up there. But one of my first jobs, as what I would call a professional, I worked as a caseworker for the Department of Public Assistance in Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. I was all of 21 years old, a newlywed, and I was going into people's homes to renew their eligibility. We were in training, they had so many months of being in training or on probation, and my supervisor had what I would call a very old-school, narrow vision of poor folks. And one of my clients was a young African-American woman, my age, who had four children. And my supervisor, who was white, said to me, “there’s no way in the world she has four children and there’s not a man living there. You go, and you go unannounced, and I want you to go through every inch of that house. I am sure a man lives there.”  

I was horrified, absolutely horrified. And I had met this young woman before on previous visits and it was obvious to me that she was a really nice person who kept a home that was spic and span. So I knocked on her door, and I said to her, “My supervisor does not believe that you can have children without a man living with you.” She cracked up laughing, as did I, and I said, “I must look everywhere in your house.” And so I did. I opened drawers, opened closets, and don’t you know, that in one closet there was one man’s suit? I decided, you can’t live in a place with one suit, and I didn’t see any underwear or anything. I said, OK, he doesn’t live here. But it was so stupid, and so demeaning, and unfortunately, this young woman was used to the deameaningness of being in that system. And it was an experience that let me know I needed to get out of there. 

ALISSA: Yeah. So what did you do with that that got you from that caseworker role to getting into early childhood education? How did that experience help you to transition into the future that you walked into? 

JERRI: Well, I was with a cohort of about four or five of us who had started the public assistance job at the same time. Nobody was social work major. I was political science, somebody else was music, you know, it was kind of a catch-all place. And one of my colleagues said, “look, the Pittsburgh Public Schools is starting a preschool program and they're looking specifically for people who did not major in education.” And we were like, "Whoo! OK, let's go!" And we all applied, we all got into the program, and it was wonderful. They spent a year with in-service training with us. They sent us into master classrooms. The has us take sociology classes. They schooled us, if you will, into what was really technically probably a Head Start-type of program. It was wonderful and that's where I got hooked. 

ALISSA: So Rahshita, Jerri never wanted to be a teacher. How about you? You are one. Is that where you started?  

RAHSHITA LOWE-WATSON: I was waiting for this question. I love telling this story. I was not an education major starting off. I went to Dillard University in 1990. I was a business major, with Japanese studies, and so I thought that I was going to work for a major company and just be in charge. I went to Dillard and this story is very personal, which is why I'm still in the field of education. So I went to Dillard. Either I was going to be a lawyer or business executive. And so I got there and I had to take an assessment, and I just left high school and I was number two in my graduating class. I was “most likely to succeed.” I was just, all of these great things. All the teachers were all, “I want you to be just like Rahshita.” And so I went to Dillard a few months later and I had to take a remedial math class. And I don't like talking about it, but that's why I'm here. That stopped me, humbled me. I didn’t understand. I just left Honors Trig in June and it’s August, that doesn’t make sense to me. And so at that age -- 18, I believe -- I became just interested and just invested in education because I learned at 18 that everyone didn't receive the same education. Everyone did not receive that. I was competing with the world, you know? That was a difficult year for me, and I have surrounded myself with great people in the field, and I've just been present ever since. Most teachers my age, they’re leaving the classroom. The classroom is much different than it was years ago, and so my thinking is, I do not want any child to ever feel what I felt, and I can remember that day like it was yesterday, to leave a school setting, a classroom, and be in this honors class and to go out an compete in the world. I want everyone to receive the best education, and I’m committed to public education for that reason. 

ALISSA: That's great. I love hearing these origin stories and you're both like connecting really closely to my origin story, which, political science major, business major, English major, I did not intend to get into education or early childhood education at all. But I, I think the thing that really set my course was my brother. So my brother was born with a lot of physical issues, had strokes very early in his life, which led to cognitive disabilities, some physical disabilities. And when he went to kindergarten, he went to the same school that I went to, a small Catholic school. He had physical disabilities, you know, wasn't fully able to, you know, use the toilet in the way that is expected of kindergartners. And there was a day that he soiled himself and my mom got a call that he was in the janitor's closet and he would stay there until someone could come pick him up and change his clothes. I am 10 years older than him, so when he was in kindergarten, I was in high school. And even at that point I thought, how could this even be, that someone would do that to a child, that they would think that that was OK, that they couldn't see that this child just needed more support in the classroom than others. And you know, my mom is one of those people who very much, “teachers are always right, so there must be something wrong with us, if this is what the school is doing.” An we eventually got to the point where he moved to the public school and had a much better experience after that. But I think that was the thing that I've carried with me of, you know, seeing how families are treated when they have needs that are not typical. You know, I'm saying that in quotation marks right now, seeing how children are treated, when they have needs that aren't “typical.” And what those systems do to those children and their families that are so impactful and oftentimes, set them on a course for, you know, really negative experiences their whole life. So you know, Rahshita, I'm wondering, you know, for you as a public school teacher, what are the sorts of situations that your families and the students in your classroom are dealing with that you're supporting every day.

RAHSHITA: You know, instructors in the classroom, we are at the intersection of all of that – all of those social systems. We are on the front line in that classroom. You think public benefits, housing instability, now we have immigration, healthcare, childcare issues. All of those systems, I am orchestrating that with the family and the child, so for an example, I have a student who's going through immigration issues. One thing about our school, it, it's an embassy school, we have lots of families who come in and out and, two of my families this school year decided to go back to their country because of how they felt, just going about in their neighborhoods, right? And so how does that impact the classroom and the teacher? I'm dealing with the emotional behaviors from the child and the family as well. Healthcare, transportation. We have children bussed from all wards to our school, and so access to getting there on time. You know, if you're arriving every day, and this happens a lot, even at a school like the one that I teach in, which is in West End and that’s considered a fairly well-to-do neighborhood in DC, right? And if you’re arriving to school at 10 am, you have missed most of the instruction, even in kindergarten. As we know, kindergarten is not like it used to be, right? So we are reading and doing small groups and we’re doing all of this by 10 o’clock, and if a child just comes in at 10, they’re missing out, so that affects the learning. And then we have all of those systems as far as just not having access to basic needs. A lot of my time, and when I talk to other educators, our time is not spent teaching reading and writing and social skills, you know, those type of things. Now, you know, in the world around us now, most of our  time is spent on providing what I consider basic needs: food, shelter, social support, whether that’s a family who have high resources or a family who comes from a lower economic status, they're asking me the same thing: "Do you know who I can talk to regarding this?" And I'm thinking, well, you have a nanny, you have a driver, you have more resources than I do. You can find your own therapist. You know they're coming to me asking for a therapist recommendation or housing support. And so the public schools, we have, we have social workers, we have psychologists. But just think about it, we have several children. And so who does that family member see first? It’s that teacher, practitioner, that educator. And so that's a lot of weight to carry. And we have heard all the stories in the news. You know, teachers are stressed, the leaders are stressed, the students are stressed. But so much of the systems that affect our family lives are now in the classroom, if that makes sense, so it's a heavy, heavy, heavy weight at times. 

JERRI: You know, I’m thinking about the immigration issues, and I’m reminded of an experience I had a number of years ago when I was directing the childcare program at the University of Pittsburgh. You know, universities get any number of foreign students, and in those days, typically it was the dad who spoke English, who was the one getting graduate degrees, and the mom had come too, with their children, but she typically did not necessarily speak English and had to go to English classes. So here was a family transported to a new place. an exciting place. The future is bright because they're gonna go home and do great things. And at our center, in order to move, you need to be potty-trained. And one day, one of the staff came to me and said, “I’m kind of worried. I see some marks that I don’t know what they are.” What I realized was, here you've got people coming into a new society with different laws, different cultural norms, and you know, our laws say I was immediately supposed to pick up the phone and say, “Come get ‘em.” You know? But again, that wasn't fair to that family who didn’t know the laws, didn’t know the consequences, and then there were language issues, and so what we did was to have a family conference. We had a staff member from the same country who spoke the language, who understood our laws and so forth, and the dad and the mom were there, and so we talked back and forth about this and what the situation was and what our obligation was as primary reporters, if you will. They were stunned, had no idea there was such a law -- that there was even a problem with whatever it was they might have been doing to help this child not have accidents. And so after that conference as we, you know, entered our spiel, the dad spoke in their language to the staff member, kind of double-checking, making sure he understood, and we didn’t see them for a couple of days, and I thought, “Oh, man!” But they came back, and they said, “Thank you.” And I was like, “Phew! OK, this is good, you know, but imagine if, you know, that child had been snatched from her family in this foreign place, I mean, I couldn’t do it. 

ALISSA: Well, and, and I am listening to that story and I think there's so many different layers to that. And I, you know, I spent 20 years as a childcare director navigating those sorts of situations, and you do have to make choices: Do I follow the letter of the law and make the report? Is the relationship between me and that family something that I think I can build on that ultimately is going to better serve that child? And then I'm thinking about the potty-training situation where it's like, your rule is the one that put them in that situation to begin with. 

JERRI: Ain’t that the truth! 

ALISSA: So I, I think that there's so much complexity to how you navigate this job every day. And I think especially, I mean, most of my experience was in that director-leader role. I found out pretty quickly the classroom was not the ultimate place for me. I was OK in a classroom; much better working with the educators. But you know, I would often have educators come to me and say like, “why aren't you just turning this family in?” And I'm like, OK, let's sit down and let's talk about what this family's navigating right now so that we can ultimately get to whatever the best decision for that child is. I've been thinking a lot about a little boy who went to my center, the last center I directed before I came to work at NAEYC. He was 4 when he came to us. Older brother was like 19 or something like that. And he had been, uh, his caregiver up until he came to us, this 19-year-old brother. Um, mom was a single mom. She worked, actually at an organization that served adults with disabilities right directly behind our building, so she found us really convenient for her. Mom is, you know, a little rough looking, had lots of tattoos, facial piercings, and you know, she brings her child to us, and at first, everything’s great. You know, it’s always great the first few weeks, and then we started to really get to know that child. And he was a big boy and you know, he knew a lot of words, most of the words that 4-year-olds probably shouldn't know. But he knew them and he knew how to use them well, so we heard a lot of things. He was also pretty violent with us. He hurt other children. He hurt teachers. And, you know, we were committed to like, figuring out like, how can we best support this child? Because the mom was committed. She picked him up right when she was done with work, at 2:30 every day, you know? She was like clockwork. She would come sit in my office, “What happened today? What do I need to do? How can you help me?” 

It came through our conversations, I found out that she had been trying to get support from the pediatrician, saying, “I think that there's something wrong.” And she finally said to me, “Alissa, I just think that they look at me and they make assumptions about me and they're not listening to me.” So, I mean, there were, I wrote letters to the pediatrician. We got to a place where I was like, “I think I'm gonna come to the appointment with you because I need this pediatrician here. She went to the free clinic. You know, she's like, “I just think that they don't think that we have any value.”  

A year we went through this, and we also knew he was getting ready to go to kindergarten. We had to help figure something out. At the end of that year, finally he was diagnosed with a mood disorder, was able to get the treatment that he needed and become a kid that could, maybe not thrive in the classroom, but at least be successful in the classroom. And so, you know, I think a lot about other programs that he could have ended up at that would’ve, after a few weeks of him hurting adults, hurting other children, just said, “You know what, I don’t think that we can handle this. This isn’t a good fit.” All the really nice ways we kick kids out of childcare. And you know, he would've been bounced around until he eventually bounced into a public kindergarten classroom. But, I think it’s those decision points where you say, OK, what’s the best thing we can do right now that’s gonna get us to the ultimate goal? 

RAHSHITA: I see that story every single day. I saw that story yesterday. That’s the life of the classroom, and what I love about what happened in that situation, you provided the support and the love. Someone once told me if you just get a child to love you, you can teach them whatever it is that you want to teach them. Same with the family – support, love, you can get ’em to do whatever it is that you want to. Just imagine had you not been the way that you were, understanding, showing empathy with the family, what would have happened? 

Yesterday, my colleague received a new student from a different school. And so, similar situation. My colleague came next door. She said "Mrs. Watson, can you help me please?" So our little friend was outside the classroom and he had the mat that was in front of the door. He was just standing there and just waving the mat, and then he decided to, he wanted to feel the floor with his body, so he lay down on the floor with his body and moved around. And so I walked up to him and took his hand, and he grabbed my hand and he stood up, and I said, “Let’s go take a walk.” We went into my classroom, sat close to him. Sometimes children need that proximity. Sometimes family need closeness because everyone's always like, "Oh you look scary. I'm gonna move away. But just being close to him. We sat down. I got some Rice Krispy treats or something and some juice. When I walked him back to his classroom, about an hour later, he said, “You are the best teacher ever!” And I’m just like, this was just a little friend just throwing the mat up, and laying on the floor, and he had to, they first took him to the office the first time, but just that type of attention versus let’s just sit down and have a conversation, you know, with the child, that helps. That helps. We have to sometimes change, you know, the lens, how we view things and people. 

JERRI: You know, we became known, at the University of Pittsburgh, kind of as the center of last resort. 

ALISSA: I’ve been that center.  

JERRI: You’ve been that center, where, you know, somebody is, another program is kicking somebody out. And in those days, the Department of Public Welfare was the source of funds for low-income families, and so we would get a call that said, "We need you to take this child." And always, if I had space, I always did. I guess I asked a few questions, asked the parent or parents to come in and let us talk, and if they were receptive, if they hadn't given up on their child, then I wasn't gonna give up on ’em. But there’s one other thing that I did and that is, I absolutely never, ever, ever told the teaching staff in that room about that child's previous behavior. He or she needed a clean slate. The teacher, the family, and the child needed a chance to get to know each othe, you know, get a fresh start. And the only point at which the teacher ever found out was way later, and she said, “You're kidding! Him? He’s the sweetest thing!” But that fresh start. And parents always appreciated that. They had a partner. 

ALISSA: And that really aligns with the research too. You know, I think about Walter Gilliam's research that talks about if you give, kind of, that background information to teachers, they’re less likely to have a positive experience in that teacher’s classroom, which, the first time I hear that, it was like, mind-blowing, but then it’s like, yeah, that’s so true because they've already made up a story about that child and about that family that may or may not be true. And, you know, you’re giving that child and that family the opportunity to tell their own story. 

JERRI: Yes. Yes. 

RAHSHITA: I agree. I didn’t particularly like that. I prefer to be told what I was getting before it happened, but I agree. Just honestly speaking, I remember the beginning of this year and last year, last year was very difficult for me, by the way, and I remember saying, “I just wish someone had said that to me, you know, gave me that background information.” But definitely see how that may have caused some type of bias, and you know, other thinking before the child even displayed those behaviors. I was thinking, oh, if this does happen, this is what I’m going to do. And I shouldn't have been thinking about what I’m going to do for something that hasn’t even happened yet. 

ALISSA: No, I think it is a balance because it's always, you know, as a director, I always felt like, I know these things, and so the minute they start to bubble up in the classroom, then I can be the resource and say like, “Hey. Maybe let's try this, or, you know, here's a little bit more information that you might want to have about this child." But, you know, I also would always think about, is this even going to be a problem here? Because, you know, oftentimes the programs that these children were being kicked out of weren't as high quality as our center. They didn't have the resources that our center did. And so sometimes, you know, when they're in a classroom with, you know, 15 other 3-year-olds and you know, one teacher that’s with them all day. Well, I’ve got three teachers in there so maybe this isn’t actually gonna be a problem here. 

JERRI: Yeah. Yeah, that’s very true, that’s to the level of quality. I found there were teachers on staff who would go the last mile, trying to really get to know and understand who a child was. And you know we had situations where children had been left with the grandparents while parents went off to study and now the parents and child were united, but the child didn't, neither knew each other. You know and this one little boy was really very, he was mad. You know, he'd been taken from the folks who had cherished him, you know, and now he's with these strange people who are his parents at this point. It had been that many years, and he was just angry and struck out a lot and had no social skills. But the teacher I was able to put him with did, you, know, we’re often the alter ego. She said, “You come and you sit next to me and I’ll help you.” So he learned the classroom rules, if you will. He learned how to interact with other children because she kept saying hi by her side and modeled the language and modeled the interacting, and the other end of that story is that towards the end of what I’ll call the school year, but, you know in childcare, there’s not really a school year, but you know, a brand new child came in who did not speak English, and guess who was his mentor? He just took him under his wing and said, “Here, come over here. Let's do this.” And it was, it was beautiful. It was absolutely beautiful.  

ALISSA: That’s great. So I'm wondering, you know, we, we all have had experiences trying to help these families navigate all of these systems, whether that is early intervention or housing or food stamps. Where have you gotten the information to be able to best support those families and those children, because sometimes, you know, you might not have that experience yourself.  

RAHSHITA: Well I have had personal experience with those systems. In my case, it was healthcare. I had a significant health issue last year while I was teaching. I was navigating healthcare things that I didn’t know about, like how, what has to happen before you can get a certain procedure done. You know, there's things that happen behind the scenes. So I was front and center in that. I understand what one of my students, let's say Student A's family experienced when I suggested that you take your child to the doctor because your child is falling asleep several times a day. I was thinking, oh, just an easy thing to do. Take your child to the doctor. It's so much that needs to happen before that doctor can see this child. And so I have that experience. But also community partners, just relationships, the world around us is built on relationships. It's knowing what support systems are in our neighborhood, word of mouth, that has been helpful as far as getting connected and connecting families with those resources, but most teachers are, they’re juggling, providing these resources for families and children as well as for themselves. 

JERRI: I think that we've come full circle, and I would go back to those that, what, two years or so that I spent with the Department of Public Assistance, in a system that I watched the manual grow from no manual to something four inches thick in terms of how you could relate to people, but then the overlay of that is that my parents, particularly my father, was very active in civil rights, and my parents' point of view was, there's right and there's just plain old wrong. And if it's a plain old wrong or broaching plain old wrong, you’ve got a responsibility to fix it. You know, fight it. And I think that’s what gave me the courage, with the family from another country, to say I'm not gonna do what it says right this minute. We’re gonna try to navigate this. And so, I didn’t necessarily have, you know, the manual on what every law said or how the food system was supposed to work or anything like that. I just knew if it sounded wrong, it probably was. And so I needed to ask a lot of questions and insist that folks do better. 

ALISSA: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this has been such a great conversation. The time has gone so quickly. I think the things that have bubbled up for me during this conversation is, number one, this work is complicated and complex and it takes people who are committed to the ultimate best interest of children and families to do the work, ask the hard questions, push the envelope on the rules sometimes in order to do what's right for families. And I know we have plenty of educators in NAEYC’s membership, in the field, who are out here doing this every day. And so I hope those that listen to our conversation today can at least feel a sense of solidarity that they're not in it alone, that there are folks a little bit maybe, more seasoned than them who have been doing this for a while, and that, you know, will continue to have their back out there to continue to, to push for rules and regulations and, and standards and all those things that are going to continue to make sure that at the end of the day, children and families are able to benefit from the hard work that we do every day. So thank you both for your time today. 

JERRI: It’s a pleasure. 

RAHSHITA: So happy to be here. 

(Music) 

NARRATOR: Small Talk: Big Ideas About Little Learners is brought to you by NAEYC, the National Association for the Education of Young Children, celebrating its 100th year of advocating for little learners and the early childhood education field. To learn more about today’s guests, read the transcript, or listen to other episodes of Small Talk, visit NAEYC.org/SmallTalk or find us – and subscribe – wherever you get your podcasts.