Shunsuke Baba: A Child’s View of the CDA®

August 26, 2025
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What’s a typical day like in the life of a CDA® educator? Shunsuke Baba provides a rundown in Mr. Nakada’s Busy Day, the Council’s first book for children. Mr. Nakada’s day begins, as Shunsuke relates, when he arrives at the school on his bike, then stands at the door to greet the families and children. A boy named Kenji is a recent arrival from Japan, and Mr. Nakada surprises Kenji by greeting him in Japanese. Later Kenji makes friends with an American boy named Brian, and Mr. Nakada teaches them a few words in each other’s language. As the day goes on, Mr. Nakada plays games with the children, makes sure they’re safe while playing outside, shows them how to wash their hands the right way before lunch and reads them a story. At the day’s end, Mr. Nakada rides his bike home, already planning for another busy day.

It will all sound familiar if you’re an educator, especially if you’ve read the CDA textbook, Essentials for Working with Young Children. And Shunsuke did as part of his research and writing process. “In the book, I tried to illustrate some of the major topics in Essentials, such as how to meet the unique needs of diverse children, how to resolve conflicts, ways to break language barriers, how to interact with parents and the importance of keeping children safe,” as Shunsuke explains. And he makes the impact of the CDA clear by showing Mr. Nakada’s CDA certificate on his classroom wall and putting the CDA Competency Standards at the end of the book.

He also used parts of his own life to write and illustrate Mr. Nakada’s Busy Day. “Like Kenji, I was born in Japan, where I had a friend named Brian when I was in elementary school. He was Korean and he helped me learn English, which came in handy when my father got a job as a research scientist in Chicago. I was 13 when my family came to the U.S. and I’m now the architecture section secretary at the Embassy of Japan in Washington, DC, where I oversee and negotiate contracts for maintaining the embassy building.”

He also brings a little bit of Japan home with him, where his hobby is writing books that he illustrates in the Japanese comic book style of Manga. You can see this style in Mr. Nakada’s Busy Day and in Shunsuke’s other children’s book about the loss of a family pet. Tobi Good Boy follows the journey of Tobi, a lively Corgi, after he wakes up one morning to the sight of his owner coming home from college with a sad expression on her face. Determined to lift her spirits, Tobi searches for something special to cheer her up. But as Tobi continues his quest, he receives a shocking revelation: he has passed away, and his owner’s sadness stems from his absence. Still, Tobi finds a way to say goodbye and comfort her with the help of an angel who arrives to guide him.

Sadly, there was no angel to save the day when Shunsuke’s nephews lost their family dog. “They were really sad,” Shunsuke says, “and I could empathize with how they felt since I also have a dog. So, I wanted to give my nephews a way to move on and accept the loss. That was the starting point for Tobi Good Boy.”

And it wasn’t the ending point for Shunsuke’s engagement with his nephews. “I do my part by teaching them math or giving them any other kind of help that they need,” Shunsuke says. “I also try to pass on the lesson that you should be kind to other people.” And Shunsuke has first-hand experience of how important this is because he received help from the members of his church when he first arrived in the United States.

“I go to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” he says, “and when I came to this country, they took good care of me and tutored me in English. They also gave me the chance to give back when they assigned me to do missionary work in Houston, Texas. For two years, I lived among Mexican people, an experience that allowed me to learn Spanish. And it still comes in handy since we have many Spanish-speaking contractors who come to work at the Japanese embassy. I’m able to break the language barrier with them, like Mr. Nakada does with Kenji,” Shunsuke says. And like Mr. Nakada, he also knows how to work with children.

“Before COVID,” as Shunsuke recalls, “I volunteered to assist in an after-school program at the Concord Hill School in Bethesda, a small city near Washington, DC. I showed the children how to draw and played games with them outside, experiences I enjoyed and that I illustrated in some of the pictures of my book.”

Shunsuke also drew inspiration from people he knows who work in the field of early education. “My wife, Heydi is a staff member at the Council,” he says, “and used to work at a child care center. So did my younger sister, who taught in a bilingual English and Japanese program in New York. And I asked them about their experiences before I wrote my book. I also interviewed several other people in the early learning field, and the major point they all made is how busy educators are all the time. Whatever, the day or season, there are always challenges since some children aren’t feeling well or they’re not having a good time. And sometimes, it can be hard to build partnerships with the parents.”

Shunsuke didn’t show too many of these roadblocks in Mr. Nakada’s Busy Day since it’s meant to be an upbeat book for children. “I wanted to portray an ideal situation,” he explains, “but I understand that working in the real-world classroom can be harder than what I show in the book. Sometimes, children won’t stop crying or they don’t pay attention to what an educator is saying. Yet our educators keep striving to give all children the best experiences they possibly can.”

That involves a lot of preparation, and “our educators should get more respect for all they do,” as Shunsuke points out. “Working in an early childhood setting is not like working in an office. Your day doesn’t end when the children go home. You need to have a plan for what you’re going to do in the days and weeks ahead.”

Mr. Nakada is planning a field trip at the end of the book, and Shunsuke will describe it in an upcoming work. “I’m going to have Mr. Nakada take his class to the zoo, where he’ll give the children some simple lessons about biology and tell them about the animals they see,” Shunsuke says. He’s now doing the research and sketching out his ideas, so he can show us another busy and fun-filled day in the life of a CDA.

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