From primary to preschool, Rebecca Gibson is making a difference for children

While teacher Rebecca Gibson initially thought that the primary years were where she wanted to make her mark, she soon found a fondness for the birth – five age group, settling in at Goodstart Early Learning Seventeen Mile Rocks in Queensland.

“I started my Bachelor of Education (Primary) at QUT in 2020, but I switched to Early Childhood because I was leaning more towards teaching younger children,” she explained.

“The early childhood degree allowed me a lot of freedom in where I could teach. With this qualification, you can teach birth to Grade 6, giving me more options. I had a lot of time to decide where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do.”

“I got a job at Goodstart in the first six months of starting my course, and the team was great from the beginning, supporting me to learn in a real-life scenario about the topic I was doing my degree in.”

For Ms Gibson, working with children aged six weeks to five years of age allows her to make the biggest difference and have the most positive impact on children’s lives.

She also loves making her own curriculum decisions in her classroom. 

“There is such a heavy focus on developing children’s literacy and numeracy knowledge in primary school,” she explained.

“People tend to forget that before they can do this, children need to be able to sit for longer than 10 minutes, have strong handwriting muscles, be able to problem solve, interact with their peers and regulate their emotions to navigate the social complexities of life.”

“If children don’t have those skills when they start school they tend to get left behind. So, in my kindy curriculum, I specifically teach all those forgotten skills.”

“My team and I take time throughout the day to stop any planned academic activity and prioritise children’s social-emotional development above all else when it is needed.”

Being able to cater to children’s different needs is also something she finds easier to achieve in early learning spaces. 

“I can base everything we do on the children’s interests. For example, if I had planned to teach something on recycling one day but then we find a cool bug in the playground, it could completely change. And we’d still be supporting children’s learning. Talking about the bug, its habitat, what it’s eating… The children are still developing, just in a different way. And we can move the original plan to another day.”

To learn more about becoming an early childhood teacher with Goodstart please see here.