Carly Walton is the owner and director of Peapod Learning Center, a licensed nature preschool located in Springfield that has been open since 2008. Prior to this role, she ran a family childcare home and a licensed farm preschool. With a background in elementary education, Carly taught kindergarten for five years, in addition to serving as a Title 1 Math and Reading teacher. She has worked with Parents as Teachers and has been actively involved in several early childhood initiatives throughout her career. Learn more about Carly here!
How did you become an advocate for early childhood education?
When my daughter was born in 2008, I was teaching kindergarten, and when looking for a preschool I could not find anything that met my expectations as a teacher and a mom. I wanted her to have a screen free, play-based, nature focused experience. I grew up running up and down Pearson Creek, area rivers and trails, and just outside in general. No one was offering what I wanted to see, so I created what I couldn’t find. Peapod began as a family childcare home, but demand grew and we expanded into several other locations outside of our home over the years. Our focus is high quality, nature based early childhood education and connecting families to the outdoors.
Why do you think it’s important to be an advocate as a provider?
It’s very important to speak up when there are problems and issues that are affecting families, children, and providers to help improve the quality and sustainability of early education. This is a profession that serves one of the most critical periods of growth in the human life cycle. Birth to five years—the brain grows more than at any other time in life. This is when trusting relationships are formed that will nurture healthy lifelong connections with others. Hopefully, infants, toddlers and preschoolers will be engaged in stimulating, hands-on activities and will develop a love for learning and exploring. Ideally, children will learn to be problem solvers with strategies to successfully navigate stress and conflicts. In a high quality program many early traumas can be overcome by repeated positive interactions with loving providers, engaging learning experiences, and quality care and nutrition.
Why should Missouri invest more in child care and early education?
Parents need to have the assurance that when they need to go to work, their children are safe, loved, well cared for, and have an engaging environment. The early childhood care system in Missouri is stressed, it is shrinking, and it is going to continue to crumble without intervention. The issues with state subsidy last year, on top of the stressors to businesses after COVID, have shuttered many childcare facilities. Costs of operation have driven the cost of care up to a point where middle class families that do not qualify for subsidy cannot afford to pay for childcare. Families are cutting dangerous corners. They often resort to unlicensed, unregulated care, or low quality care just to be able to get to work and make ends meet. This puts kids at risk, and this is an unacceptable situation for families to have to face. It is a dire situation, it is affecting the workforce in Missouri and our ability to grow our economy or even sustain an economically healthy state. Our kids should be our top priority, they are the future of our state and our nation.
In one sentence, what does the ideal child care and early education system look like for Missouri families?
Care needs to be affordable for families, more accessible, and high quality. Providers need to be able to recruit and retain qualified staff, offer benefits and compensation comparable to our competitors, and have a system of support and incentives to promote ongoing quality improvement. Shoot for the stars!!!
What is one thing you’ve learned about advocacy that you’d like to share with others?
You may not think that your voice matters, but it does. You are a part of the fabric of our childcare community regardless of your size or level of education when you are caring for kids. I started as a family childcare provider with four kids, and I was a kindergarten teacher. I have grown our program (trial and error) and love what I do, but I don’t have the same background as a lot of my peers. I am qualified, I have an education degree, but there are a lot of more qualified people than myself. I am on a lot of committees with some very experienced, educated people who run much larger centers than I do or have very important roles in the community. That has been an amazing learning experience and an opportunity to professionally grow. Surround yourself with people who can support you and that you can learn from.
Even if you don’t think you have an important role, you do! You may be the tiny family childcare provider that watches the kids in your neighborhood. That is still just as impactful for the families you serve as it is to the families that attend a big center. Anyone who is speaking up for kids can make a difference. Get involved! You are a part of the village that it takes to make up our childcare community. Keep growing, keep learning, and get involved.