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Mornings at Durham Bulls Athletic Park tend to be a quiet time, but if you listen closely, from behind the iconic snorting bull sign above left field, you can hear tiny shrieks of joy and delight.
These are from the students of Kate’s Korner Learning Center, and they’re the primary beneficiaries of owner Kate Goodwin’s “empowerment model” of child care.
“We basically took the pyramid of hierarchy and turned it upside down,” Goodwin said.
A broken market
Over the course of her career in early childhood care and education, Goodwin has had an insider’s perspective on what Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other top economists recognize as the market failure of America’s child care system.
“Child care is a textbook example of a broken market, and one reason is that when you pay for it, the price does not account for all the positive things it confers on our society,” Yellen said in a 2021 speech.
The vast majority of human brain development occurs in the first three years of life. Decades of evidence has shown that strengthening neural connections during this period leads to improved health, lower incarceration rates, better educational outcomes, and greater workforce readiness.
Lack of public investment in early childhood care and education has resulted in a gap between what parents can afford to pay early in their working careers, and what it costs to provide high-quality care and education. The market is kept afloat by high tuition and low teacher wages.
That’s where Goodwin’s empowerment model comes in.
A healing model
Goodwin has made supporting early childhood educators the focus of how Kate’s Korner operates.
No one on staff is paid less than $18 per hour, and lead teachers are salaried. Educators are provided with health insurance and free child care, plus professional on-site therapeutic support, four-day work weeks, paid time off, and financial support for continuing education.
“We are taught every child needs to be seen, and to be heard, validated, championed,” Goodwin said. “That is no different than an adult because we all operate on our childhood experiences.”
Referencing the expression that you can’t pour from an empty cup, Goodwin take things a step further. She reminds her staff that what’s in the cup belongs to them, but what overflows from the cup flows into others — especially their students.
By making the well-being of educators her top priority, Goodwin knows the students and their families will benefit.
“Educationally, we set the standard of the love of learning,” Goodwin said, “and we’re creating caring, nurturing human beings who care about themselves enough to care about their neighbor.”
See the benefits of Goodwin’s work in this video, produced by EdNC’s Liz Bell.
