Teaching Young Children

Teaching Young Children

Ashley Jelliffe has known she wanted to work with children since she was a child herself. She started helping at her aunt’s daycare in Meridian when she was in grade school and later became heavily involved in family and consumer sciences programs at Meridian High School. She also participated in HOSA-Future Health Professionals, took sports science courses, and became a certified nursing assistant while in high school.

Those experiences led her to the University of Idaho as a medical sciences student. However, during her first semester she realized medicine wasn’t the right fit.

“I knew I loved children and wanted to go into pediatrics, but then I realized that I didn’t really like medicine as much my freshman year,” she said. “I started exploring different majors and ideas that still dealt with kids.”

An entry-level course in U of I’s Margaret Ritchie School of Family and Consumer Sciences introduced Jelliffe to different career paths for working with children. She’ll earn a bachelor’s degree in December 2022 in child development.

“I like this major because of how broad the options are,” she said. “I can do so much with it. I can explore into the daycare/teacher role or go into counseling. There are a variety of options.”

Gaining Hands-On Experience

Internship and undergraduate research experiences at U of I helped Jelliffe realize that teaching young children was the right fit for her.

“I like at this age, 3-5 years old, they are just sponges,” she said. “You’re the first ones to catch anything that might be developmentally wrong, which I really like.”

During her sophomore year, FCS Assistant Professor Shiyi Chen contacted Jelliffe about participating in undergraduate research.

Jelliffe worked on two projects with Chen, including a Farm to Early Childhood Education professional development program. The goal of the project is to enhance rural educators and students’ food and agricultural literacy. The team is developing a curriculum for teachers, focused on teaching preschool children about agriculture and where our food comes from.

As a resource specialist for the project, Jelliffe was responsible for procuring fruits and vegetables from local farmers and collecting data from participating teachers.

“Not many kids know about different fruits or vegetables and where they come from,” she said. “Science, especially in preschool, isn’t taught enough. And that’s why we started this project. I want to teach children about science and where we get food and why it’s important to have farmers.”

Jelliffe also gained experience working with children as a work study student at the U of I Children’s Center, as a group leader with Adventure Club — an afterschool program for K-5 students in Moscow, and through an internship with the U of I Child Development Lab — a requirement for her degree.

“It was nice to have all those different forms of working with children,” she said. “I had a daycare setting, an after-school program with different ages, then I had a research project as well. I feel like it was pretty well balanced.”

Jelliffe credits her decision to join the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority as a freshman for pushing her to gain new experiences.

“I loved being a part of my sorority,” she said. “I love the community that Panhellenic has. I love the leadership opportunities. I don’t think I’d be sitting with two research projects under my belt if I wasn’t in a sorority because I was so recluse and sorority life makes you get out of your bubble.”

Jelliffe hopes to settle in Idaho and start a career as a head start teacher or lead teacher at a daycare facility. Wherever she ends up, she’ll remain a part of the Vandal Family.

“The community here is so different from all the other schools I visited,” she said. “All the professors here really care about their students and want them to succeed. This campus and the professors and students — it’s something special.”