Leigh Anne Kraemer-Naser: Having Fun in the Early Learning Field

“One of my earliest memories was of being in preschool and hearing my teacher, Mrs. Shipley, read The Very Hungry Caterpillar to the class,” Leigh Anne recalls. “Afterward, we made mobiles with wire hangers of all the different types of food in the book, and I picked out all the junk food though the goal was to talk about healthy eating. As I taped pictures of the food onto a hanger, Mrs. Shipley stood beside me to help,” Leigh Anne says. She was a “fun teacher,” and led Leigh Anne to take a serious interest in becoming a teacher, too, though her goal was to work with “older kids.”

Leigh Anne does that now as director of applied studies and an instructor of early childhood education at Northern Pennsylvania Regional College, which serves students throughout the state. She oversees faculty members in special education, social sciences, criminal justice and early childhood education, a field for which she strives to gain recognition. “We need to professionalize early learning, and to do that we need a professional credential,” as I told the vice president of the college when I began working there as an instructor in 2018,” Leigh Anne says. “That initial conversation led the college to launch a CDA® program. It’s set up to lead to an associate degree and it’s now the largest program at the college.”

Earning a CDA helps early educators get the respect they deserve. And Leigh Anne saw the importance of the role educators play when she fell into the early learning field after teaching middle school students for several years. “I wanted to teach part time after becoming a mom,” she says, “but you can’t teach part time in middle school, so I took a part-time job at a preschool,” Leigh Anne says. And to her surprise she found that early childhood education was about far more than babysitting. It was actually real teaching.

“Granted, it took me a couple of months to get settled in the preschool and realize I wanted to stay in the early learning field,” Leigh Anne admits. What cinched the deal was “how much fun the children were,” she says. “They have so much joy and at the end of the day they give you a hug and tell you they love you. Their feelings were contagious, and I fell in love with the early learning field.”

She found even more joy in her work after her center sent her to receive training at Handwriting Without Tears, now called Learning Without Tears, where she found out that there is a physical component in teaching young children to write. “It’s not just about drilling them in letters,” she explains. “It’s also about teaching them to grip an object at a time when the tendons in their hands are still in a formative stage. They might not be ready to hold a pencil, so it might be better to have young children first squeeze Play-Doh to gain more control over their hands.” And dandelion stalks can also play a role in helping children learn to write,” as Leigh Anne explains.

“The preschool I worked at was at a church,” she says. “They didn’t like the dandelions in the yard. So, when the dandelions were starting to pop up, we would take the kids outside and have them pluck the dandelions from the church lawn. Then we would take the dandelions inside, dip them in paint and have the children use them to write letters. We also had the children collect twigs dipped in paint to write their letters, and the twigs were another good tool for hands that weren’t yet ready to grip a pencil.”

This was also a way to combine learning with fun, as Leigh Anne always tried to do in her preschool class. “We had costume day once a month, and I used to dress up in a costume for my class. Then I realized that the children often came to school in Spider-Man costumes or pajamas that looked like costumes, so I suggested at a faculty meeting that we have a dress up day once a month with a theme like princesses and princes, superheroes or pirates. The teachers loved the idea and the parents did, too, because it made going to school more fun.”

Part of the fun of going to school is also feeling a sense of safety and belonging, so Leigh Anne wrote anti-bullying programs for preschoolers when she took a break from teaching after the birth of her second child. “I worked for an anti-bullying organization called the Ophelia Project and designed a school-wide intervention program for early learning centers to teach children empathy and social skills. Then, we did parent training on how to teach social skills and how to lessen behavior problems,” she says. And it was a groundbreaking program at the time. Working on it also helped Leigh Anne break new ground in her career and run her own company, Curriculum Solution Center, for seven years.

“Much of the work I did at my curriculum company focused on early learning,” Leigh Anne says. “We provided a lot of workshops, teacher training and technical assistance in classrooms, where we modeled good teaching skills.” These activities made a positive impact on early childhood teachers, especially those, like Leigh Anne, who had fallen into the early learning field without any prior training. And the work Leigh Anne did through her company taught her something new, too. “That’s when I first learned about the CDA,” she says, “and I became a Professional Development Specialist for the Council for several years.”

During her visits to classrooms, Leigh Anne urged educators to view themselves as professionals in ECE and did her best to put them at ease. “I put away my clipboard because clipboards scare people. Then I told educators I’m just going to take notes and we’re going to have a conversation. Even more important, I reassured them that I’m not here to fail you and get you fired from your job,” she says. “Instead, I said I’m here to celebrate all the great things you’re doing with children.” So, she took a positive approach to her visits that she now brings to her work with college students.

One of the joys of Leigh Anne’s job is learning from her students,” as she explains. “When students ask the right questions, I’m never embarrassed to say I don’t know the answers, but I’ll find them for you. Looking for answers is a learning experience for me, and it gives me a sense of humility that helps me connect better with students,” Leigh Anne says. She knows that students can be their own worst enemies if they doubt that they will do well in a course or pass their CDA exam. And she’s found that giving positive reinforcement changes the students’ perspective, so they have a better chance of success.

“I sometimes tell my students that I don’t think of myself as your teacher,” Leigh Anne says. “I think of myself as your cheerleader because I see you have a spark and sense of passion for the early learning field. I’m just putting you on the best path to bring out your promise,” a goal she pursues as both an administrator and instructor. “When I accepted the promotion to director of applied studies four years ago, I insisted that I had to keep teaching so I could maintain my connection with students. Since then, I’ve taught classes in special education, creative and expressive arts, and children’s literature,” a course that’s a lot of fun for Leigh Anne’s students.

It takes place in a room that is set up like a preschool instead of a regular college classroom with rows of seats and a blackboard on the wall. It has a carpet with a caterpillar on it and colorful tables. The bookshelves are filled with toys, and all the foods from The Very Hungry Caterpillar are posted on the walls. There’s also a 55-inch TV with a big camera in the room because her college serves students in 10 counties across the state. But even if the students are too far away to attend the class in person, they can follow Leigh Anne as she reads books and does circle time with the students who can attend in person.

“We spend a lot of time on picture books,” Leigh Anne says, “and each week I dress up like a character in a book, just like I did in my days teaching children. On the last day of class, we have a party where it’s the students’ turn to also dress up as characters from a book, and they have been so creative. I’ve had students come to class dressed as Cinderella, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. One student came to class dressed as a mouse, and others have coordinated their costumes to come from the same book.” And all the playful dressing up has a purpose, as Leigh Anne points out. “I want my college students to have a good time while taking my classes, and my goal is for the message I give them to trickle down to the young children who they’ll serve. Learning should be fun.”