[Martha Yorke]  The thing to keep in mind about the Early Childhood major is that this is an academic major.  It is a major where you will take academic courses.  There are English requirements and there are math requirements, science requirements, social science requirements and you are going to have to do all of those to get the major.

[Pat Kemp] Students will take a variety of classes.  They will take early childhood ed one and a lab component with it; early childhood education two and a lab also with that and also a curriculum course that semester, usually.  And then they will take early childhood education three with a lab and they will end up with student teaching. 	

[Jennifer Baird]  This is definitely a professional coursework.  It is definitely building you up to be a professional and they expect professionalism and the coursework definitely reflects that.  It is very challenging.
 
[Lori Fallon] We really give students the best teaching practice based on current research and knowledge and we get them right out in the field, which is wonderful because they do not get that often.  There is a field experience every single semester starting with semester one.

[Martha Yorke] The first semester students do take a lab praticum and that is lab one where they go to an off-site placement and it is either UB's childcare center or Westminster's childcare center and they spend the morning with children learning the fundamentals of really being part of a practical placement .
    
[Karen Koness Dearing]  At Westminster Early Childhood Program we have been having the students of ECC for a number of years.  We have had both the ed three and the student teachers.  And we are currently having the lab one and lab two with the supervisor of the class being here right on campus and having about 10 students in our classrooms.  We feel this has been a win, win situation for both the ECC student and for us at Westminster as a center.  For the student, they get to be placed in a nationally accredited program, so they are seeing high quality education.  They are seeing child development first hand in the field with the children and they are getting to see the early childhood curriculum every single day in a live classroom.  

[Pat Logan]  They do come in prepared and eager to learn and wanting to be really good teachers and to work well with young children and it has been a joy working with them and the faculty at Erie Community College.

[Pat Kemp]  A lot of the stuff that we will be talking about in ed three is how our opinion can cover, how to work with parents and how to be aware of all kind of things ...

[Pat Kemp]  The early childhood department develops a really strong relationship with our students.  It is a field where the students need to learn how to develop strong relationships with children  and I think that in order for them to learn how to do that we need to model for them what those kind of relationships are.  

[Sheldon Ottey]  With the early childhood program everyone is more a family, so you have someone there that you can actually talk to and someone there that has actually been in the system itself.  So they are not just teaching, they are in the system and they know what it takes to get there.  And I think that is the biggest thing, that we have people that actually is there who believe in us.  

[Jennifer Baird]  The whole team works together to choose the textbooks.  They talk to each other so that their classes are kind of cohesive.  They know each student individually and then can talk about the students to each other and really make sure that you are getting the best education that you can  and making you be the best that you can be.

[Martha Yorke]  We realize that there are a wide diversity of students who are interested in early childhood who come to our program with varying needs and varying interests and varying ability levels and we are able to custom the degree and our guidance and our advisement to the needs of the students.
[Lori Fallon] We have a lot of students that come that have not had really good experiences with school.  So they are a little apprehensive and I think in the way that we are a small community here in the early childhood department we are able to nurture that you can do it, we know that you can do it and they prove they can do it.

[Pat Kemp]  Many of our students are actually teaching out in the field and are in some of the very daycare centers that we use as the sites for our lab courses.  

[Lori Fallon]  And many of our students have gone on to get their bachelors in health and human services with a concentration in early childhood, which is what I got and then transferred into elementary or early childhood education to get the master's degree.  And at UB all the credits transfer, it is a seamless transfer.

[Student Presentor]  I had so much fun, it is actually fun.  All these lesson plans that you have to type.  Once you see the kids having fun and you are in the middle of it, you don't mind doing it.  You type them up and you can't wait to try them out.

[Pat Kemp]  We hope that the student leaves the early childhood program with a solid foundation in theory of early childhood, as well as so much practical experience in the classroom that they have developed a confidence in their ability to work with children and that they will take that ability and go out and make the world a better place for today's young children.