About six years ago, an apprentice training to be a machinist in Washington state told her supervisor she would probably have to drop out of the training program after having her baby: She couldn’t find child care that accommodated her shift.
It was one of the first challenges Shana Peschek was tasked with solving when she became executive director of the Machinists Institute, which trains workers for jobs in the aerospace, manufacturing and automotive industries all over the state.
Peschek knew it was essential to do something for workers with young children.
“That worst shift, the new hires are going to get it. The new hires are generally younger people. They have little kids or they are going to want a little kid,” Peschek said.
“It’s beyond the cost of child care,” she said. “If they can’t find anywhere, we’re going to lose them.”
As Peschek worked on a way to address the situation, she also wondered how she could include apprenticeship in the solution. The answer: incorporating early educator apprenticeships into a custom-built child care center tailored to the trade union’s needs. Last month, The Hechinger Report wrote about San Francisco’s child care apprenticeship program.
“Apprenticeship is my jam,” said Peschek, who emphasized that apprenticeship is a mode of education, not limited to any specific profession. While the word apprentice is often associated with roles like machinists, it is just the term for an educational path that includes paid, on-the-job training. Early educator apprenticeships do just that, providing classes and training alongside paid work experience to help hopeful teachers earn required credentials and get full-time jobs. “I want that pathway available for our teachers and assistant teachers,” she said.
With a combination of institute money, grants and donations, the Machinists Institute bought land and is constructing Little Wings Early Learning Academy in Everett, Washington. Its name is inspired by the local economy, which is powered in part by a nearby Boeing factory. The center will serve workers in the trade union, who will be able to send their young children for care starting as early as 4 a.m. through as late as midnight. Care will also be available on weekends, to accommodate a range of shifts. It is scheduled to open this spring.
Machinists, maritime industry workers and other local tradespeople and apprentices will pay a discounted rate for child care, which will also be available to area residents to enroll their kids.
Peschek’s hopes are high, for all of the apprentices the center will involve.
That’s in part because of the experience some early educator apprentices have had. Apprenticeships have been a part of the trades for centuries, but they are relatively novel in education.
The option changed the course of Carlota Hernández de Cruz’s life. For years, with only an elementary school education from when she grew up in Mexico, she was the primary caregiver for her three children while her husband was the breadwinner. When her youngest child was still in child care, at a California Head Start program run by an area YMCA, she began working a few hours a day as a parent intern at the center.
She eventually encountered Pamm Shaw, who created one of the first early educator apprenticeship programs in the country for the YMCA of the East Bay, in California’s Alameda County. Shaw encouraged Hernández de Cruz to take classes and work toward becoming an early childhood teacher.
“I’m originally from Mexico,” Hernández de Cruz said, remembering her apprehension. “I came with zero English.” But Shaw was convincing.
Hernández de Cruz took classes, one or two at a time, balancing them with motherhood and homekeeping duties. Then her husband got sick and could no longer work. It took years, but she completed the courses for her associate degree. Just a few months before graduation, her husband died.
Hernández de Cruz, now 53, knew that although what she had accomplished was monumental, it wasn’t enough. Thanks to her apprenticeship, however, her bachelor’s degree coursework was paid for, even though it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the requirements of online courses and lectures in English, while solo parenting and working.
In 2019, Hernández de Cruz earned that bachelor’s degree but turned down a job running a child care center. She wasn’t ready. When she was approached again in 2021 about a director role, at the center where she was working, she agreed. There have been ups and downs: That center closed and she was back to teaching for a while. But now she runs the Vera Casey Center, a Head Start site for infants and toddlers in Berkeley that is part of the YMCA of the East Bay.
“I feel I can say financially I’m stable,” Hernández de Cruz said, and she said she is proud of herself and her children. Her kids grew up watching their mother work and study hard and have had opportunities she didn’t when she was younger, even though she said they all faltered, and flunked a few classes, when their father died. Her younger daughter just graduated from a nursing program and her older daughter completed a bachelor’s degree in child development and is now pursuing a master’s degree. Both daughters live at home with her, as do her parents. (Her son, she said, is still taking classes and finding his way.) “I’m stable but he’s not here with us,” Hernández de Cruz said of her husband, but “being in the classroom with kids, it helped me to heal. That’s what I feel at work. I still feel happy every day.”
Contact Executive Editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, on Signal at NirviShah.14 or shah@hechingerreport.org.
Reporting on this story was supported by the Higher Ed Media Fellowship.
This story about child care apprenticeships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.
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