Ava Wilson: Committing to a Career

January 22, 2025
Home > Newsletters > Ava Wilson: Committing to a Career

“The CDA® credentialing process is very hands on,” Ava says, “and that’s what drew me to the CDA program in high school. When you study early learning in college, you often don’t get that practical experience with children until you are student teaching in your senior year. Before committing to study early education in college, I thought it was important to see if I wanted to be in a classroom with kids all day.” The experience she had at Sanilac Career Center in Peck, Michigan, helped Ava make up her mind.

“The children I worked with while gaining the 480 experience hours for my CDA were so sweet and said the funniest things,” Ava recalls. And spending time with them inspired Ava to be her best. “The children deserve good role models,” she says, “and I want to provide one as a teacher.”

The 120 hours of coursework that Ava took for her CDA gave her a good start. “My first year, which was in eleventh grade, we focused a lot on how to make lesson plans, conduct age-appropriate activities and assist children who are developmentally behind,” she says. “Then in my senior year, we continued to work on child development, but the CDA coursework I took put an additional focus on how to find resources in the early learning field, so I could use the resources to support children and their families.”

Ava brought all this knowledge to assisting children at a state-licensed preschool in the Sanilac Career Center, she explains. “During my first year in the CDA program. I went to the preschool three days a week along with 20 other high school students who were also gaining their experience hours at the preschool. It was fun but there were so many of us that we couldn’t all work with the children at the same time. Instead, we worked in hour-and-a-half shifts with half of us on the floor with the kids while the rest of us worked on our CDA coursework. We went back and forth throughout the day, and it was a good experience,” Ava says.

Still, she wanted an experience that was closer to the pressures she’d face in a real-life classroom. So, during her second year in the CDA program, she spent one day a week at the preschool and the rest of her time doing an internship at a kindergarten in an elementary school nearby. “It still counted toward my CDA experience hours,” she says, “because most of the children were about five years old, and I think working at the kindergarten taught me something extra. I was there with just one teacher, so it was more like how it would be when I’m a teacher, too. Besides that, my internship gave me more opportunities to work one-on-one with the children,” Ava says. And that’s the part of the early childhood field that she likes best.

Ava is proud, for example, of the breakthrough she made with a preschooler named Tyler who was very shy. “When he came to us,” Ava recalls, “he would cling to the teachers and wouldn’t play with the other children. So, we looked for ways to bring him out of his shell by pairing him in group activities with children who shared his interests. He bonded with several other kids over a shared love of trucks, construction equipment and Mickey Mouse. By the end of the school year, Tyler had made friends.”

Learning to advance children’s social skills, as Ava had, is a goal of the CDA. So is advancing their cognitive skills, a skill that Ava displayed while working with a kindergartner named Madison. “She came to class midway in the year,” Ava recalls, “and she hadn’t been to any kind of school before, so she had a big learning curve before her. She was behind the other kids when it came to writing letters and simple words. So, we helped her catch up by taking it step by step, instead of asking her to pick up a lot at once. Now, Madison is doing great.”

And Ava also did great during the classroom observation for her CDA last year. “I did circle time with the kids, talked about the letter J, and then read them The Rainbow Fish,” Ava says. “It’s about a fish with sparkly scales who learns to make friends by sharing. And I like the book for its message.”

Ava also likes Oh the Places You’ll Go!, a Dr. Seuss classic that CDA students at the career center read at the preschool graduation. “It’s a really cute event at which the children wear little caps and gowns,” she says. “We ask them some questions about their favorite color and what they want to be when they grow up. Then we hand them a diploma showing they graduated from preschool.”

Ava earned her own diploma, along with her CDA, when she graduated from high school last year. “I’m now studying elementary education, which includes preschool to sixth grade, at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan,” she says. And Ava is ahead of the curve in earning her college degree. “My CDA gave me a head start by giving me some credits toward my college degree in education,” she says. And it also helped Ava commit to a career in ECE. “I always knew I wanted to work with kids in some way, but it wasn’t until I began the CDA program that I knew I wanted to teach in the early learning field.” Now Ava is going to new places with her CDA.

Share:

Recently Posted:

Blog - Text Search
Blog - Category Search
Blog - Search by Tags
Blog - Publish Date