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Child Enrichment Programs: How They Help With Teacher Retention
What if the biggest threat to your childcare business was hiding in plain sight?
The stress of teaching and managing children often causes problems with teacher retention. For example, the public school system loses about 8% of its teachers each year. And many child care centers lose even more due to things like teacher burnout.
What’s the solution to your childcare teacher retention issues? Child enrichment programs. Keep reading to discover the benefits these programs have to offer and how they can help protect your teachers from burnout!
More Time for Teachers
For teachers, the biggest benefit of child enrichment programs is that they give teachers more time. Every minute that the child is engaged in an activity is a minute the teacher has to catch their breath.
And once they catch their breath, teachers have time to prepare lessons and get work done in the classroom. They can also clean tables and do anything else necessary to create a safe, clean environment for the children.
Some teachers even use this downtime to squeeze a personal workout in. So by the time the kids come back, teachers are ready (in both body and mind) to teach.
Help Ease Teacher Schedules
Earlier, we discussed how child programs help to give teachers a break. And one of the benefits that teachers come to love is that these programs help to make a teacher’s daily schedule easier.
Why? The average childcare teacher must plan every moment of every day. And it can get downright exhausting when making these plans fall 100% on the teacher’s shoulders.
With a child enrichment program in place, the teacher can count on someone else to plan and provide some of the daily activities. And this makes their schedule easier week after week and month after month. As a nice bonus, a good enrichment program will coordinate with the teacher to support whatever the current lessons are.
Benefits of Structured Physical Education
One of the reasons so many preschoolers act out is that they aren’t getting enough physical activity. But how much should they really be getting?
Preschoolers are supposed to get at least 60 minutes of structured physical activity per day. Unfortunately, it is difficult for most childcare teachers to include that activity as part of their lessons.
With child enrichment programs though, children get that structured time. This helps to make them healthier and happier. And, as we noted before, they will be better students when returning to the classroom.
Enhancing the Standard Curriculum
A good teacher is always on the lookout for ways to improve their curriculum. And this is something that a child enrichment program can do right away!
How so? Child programs offer handouts to children. And good programs also provide a blog as well as regular newsletters for parents.
Students, teachers, and parents alike appreciate how this improves the average curriculum. And keeping parents happy is one more way that the right enrichment program takes the pressure off of teachers!
Coaches Support Teachers
We often focus on the emotional needs of preschool students. However, it’s also important to focus on the emotional needs of their teachers as well.
Teachers can get stressed and burned out very easily. Even on a good day, watching out for these kids while helping them learn takes a lot of energy. And teachers often don’t have anyone to vent to when they are burning out.
When teachers have no emotional outlet, it causes problems with teacher retention. However, the coaches of an enrichment program are always there when teachers need someone to speak to. These coaches can even help out where needed to help give the teacher a break.
Inspire Students to Be Their Best
To get the most out of an enrichment program, it’s important to get creative. For example, many teachers use access to these programs as a special reward for students who behave and perform well.
For example, students love these programs. Teachers can use going to a special activity as a reward, inspiring students to do better each day. Conversely, when students who are about to go to the event act up, access to the program can be taken away.
At this young age, it’s important to shape good behavior. And a good child program helps inspire children to be their very best.
Share the Excitement of Education
Teachers are naturally excited about teaching. It’s why they became teachers! And with a child enrichment program, they can share that love with the community in a very exciting way.
For example, coaches of child programs often take pictures of special events. They then share these pictures via blogs and newsletters. With the administrator’s permission, these images may be shared with local newspapers as well.
All of this serves to generate local hype and excitement for your childcare center. And it helps promote local gratitude toward teachers. This, too, helps you with teacher retention.
Discover the Best Child Enrichment Program Today
Now you know the benefits of child enrichment programs and how they can help with teacher retention. But do you know where you can find the best enrichment program for your own students?
Here at Stretch-n-Grow, we’re the original children’s fitness program and trusted leader in child enrichment programs for over 30 years! To discover how we can help schools STRETCH their curriculum and GROW their kids in all areas of development, contact us today!
Learn more about joining the Stretch-n-Grow Family here, find a class for your child here, or email us at info@Stretch-n-Grow.com!
