Julie Broderick's Role In Early Childhood Education

Julie Broderick began her teaching career after graduating from The College of William and Mary with an undergraduate concentration in Government and Spanish Language. Coming from a family of educators, her mom is a retired high school Spanish teacher and her dad is a retired university professor, Julie did not initially want to become a teacher when she went off to college. However, upon graduation Julie knew that she wanted to use her language skills in her future career and thus applied to The Peace Corp, Teach for America, and a few jobs that would allow her to teach English to adults in a foreign country. When Teach for America saw that she had taken many Spanish classes in her high school and undergraduate career, they offered her a …show more content…
As we have discussed in our class and taken note of in some of our readings, parental involvement is an important piece of a child’s success in school. As John Dewey explains, teachers have the “responsibility for understanding the needs and capacities of the individuals who are learning at a given time.” Parents are the first teachers that children experience and can often help school teachers uncover special needs that a child may have. In one example, Jason, the young boy at the Castle Bridge Elementary School in “Hitting the Switch: !Śi se Puede!” was able to feel welcomed and comfortable in his inclusive classroom because his parents, Sandra and Matt, had first met with his new teachers. Much like Jason’s parents, parents of Julie’s students had to trust that their children were receiving a meaningful education. By being able to communicate with her students’ parents in their own language, Julie was able to learn more about her students’ learning abilities and backgrounds and understand their specific needs in the classroom. If she had students whose parents spoke a language other than Spanish, she made every effort to get a translator so that she was able to communicate with