There is a lot of interest in me as a teacher all of a sudden, but I am skeptical whether any of the interested parties are willing to support me financially. That is the way it is in the early childhood field if you are a competent teacher. Parents love you and want to leave their children with you, administrators respect you and want you to work for them, but nobody is able to give you a living wage. There is always  overhead and support staff, and no help outside what parents are able to afford, which for most parents is not enough to sustain the system. In most other first and some second world countries the government actually makes some financial commitment to childcare and early learning. They get that it is important to give children a solid foundation in life. In our country children are seen as the sole property and responsibility of their parents, and none of the rest of the countries business even though the cost of early intervention, quality care, and support for working parents is shown to be a fraction of the costs of a fragmented system of underfunded day cares that stress  employees, children, and parents.

The McCare system of corporate for-profit warehousing of young children is a travesty and indictment of our countries lack of planning for the future. We as a country are handing our future over to people who will try to make a dollar anyway they can.

Not that the public education system is helping the argument for government support of early childhood with its bloated bureaucrat heavy, top down approach to what amounts to school age daycare. There has got to be a way for parents to get together and support each other by supporting centers that hire good teachers and support staff at fair wages without building a juggernaut system that becomes an all consuming monster whose only purpose is to sustain itself. We need a system that provides quality care with well trained and well supported staff who understand how children learn and thrive with active parental input and involvement. In the long run we get what we plan and pay for, which at the moment is mostly an overburdened system of isolated and underfunded day cares some of which are actually striving for quality.