You might feel a little uneasy when you walk into a Head Start classroom and realize that the teacher helping a three-year-old deal with her first social problem probably makes less than the barista who made your coffee in the morning. That’s not meant to be a heavy comparison. It seems to be the case when you look at early childhood education in Colorado, where the average hourly wage is $18.50 and 46% of the workers depend on public assistance programs like Medicaid and SNAP to make ends meet.
Just seeing that number should make you think. These are the adults who have an impact on how young children learn to control their feelings, make friends, and get along with others. And a lot of the time, they’re having a hard time meeting their own basic needs.
Not to sound alarmist, but the job itself is very hard, and the numbers don’t give us much reason to be hopeful. Early childhood educators across the country say they are very stressed every day, almost twice as much as the average American worker. They spend hours sitting in furniture made just for kids. They deal with difficult behaviors during back-to-back shifts that can last up to twelve hours. When breaks happen, they are short. A lot of the research that’s been done says that support from supervisors is often limited.
Many people who aren’t in this field might not fully understand how physically demanding this work is—not just on the mind, but over years and years of doing it. Researchers have found that early childhood educators are more likely to have long-term conditions like obesity, lower back pain, and severe headaches than workers in other fields with similar levels of education and income. The rate of depression among Head Start teachers is between 25% and 32%, while the rate for the general workforce is only 18%.
This is especially hard to understand because teacher happiness and child outcomes aren’t two separate issues; they’re linked. When teachers are emotionally or physically worn out, the quality of care they give tends to go down. And kids who don’t get good care in the early years may have problems with their behavior and social and emotional development later on. So the problem of burnout isn’t just with work. Children in the state who are the youngest and most at risk are affected by this public health problem.
The Colorado School of Public Health has been studying this workforce for over fifteen years. In new data, they found something interesting: geography is more important than you might think. A study of 332 Head Start workers in rural and urban Colorado found that those in rural areas, where many of them made less money and didn’t have as many credentials, said they were less emotionally worn out than those in urban areas. This makes the most sense when you look at the results: people who live in rural areas tend to have closer friendships and less stress. For urban workers, on the other hand, class sizes are bigger and rules are stricter. They sometimes burn out faster and are brighter.
But there’s one thing that stands out. The group of people in cities said they had more hope, resilience, and self-efficacy than people who worked in rural areas. There is more stress, but there are also more mental tools to deal with it—for now.
The WELL program, which stands for “Well-Being of the ECE Workforce in Low-Resource Locations,” was created with the help of five Head Start agencies across Colorado. It’s not a big change to all the rules. There is more to it than that. There is mindfulness training, tools for dealing with stress, weekly wellness texts, and even simple things like helping sites create a space where staff can relax. It’s important to note that the program was created based on what workers said they needed.
The early results are good news. Most of the people who took part said they were happy with the program, and a large majority said they felt their workplace actively encouraged them to take part. One participant talked about how she learned to take a moment to breathe when a child’s behavior got on top of her. This helped her, and it also changed how she behaved in class.
It’s still not clear if WELL can really be used on a large scale or if it can fix deep enough structural problems to last. When the real problems are money-related, wellness programs can feel like they’re not enough. Still, there’s something good about a program that at least asks workers what they need and then tries to give it to them.
