Black History Month: Celebrating the life and legacy of Black Women Educators – Shawna Daniels

 

Shawna Daniels is an Early Childhood educator and advocate who has over 20 years of experience, working with children birth thru12 years old, their educators, and their families.  As the child of an Early Childhood educator, Shawna saw the good (supporting and engaging with children and families) and the bad (long hours, low pay, little recognition) of working in the field and never thought she would ever follow in her mother's footsteps. Just the same, the relationships she made as a toddler in that program became the foundation for how she saw herself and the world around her and obviously made an impact on the woman she would become - a message of the importance of Early Childhood learning she shares with anyone who will listen.

Even with several volunteering experiences during her undergrad years, Shawna was unwavering about not going into child care or education. It wasn't until the last summer of her Bachelor's degree, that she fell in love with the transformative nature of caring relationships in children's lives, after a summer at the Hargett Street YWCA. For several years after, Shawna's focus was on School Age Care that included managing YMCA Before/After school/camp programs in Monmouth County, NJ, teaching at a charter school, tutoring high school students, reading comprehension coaching in Durham, doing child care referrals across the US as an Employee Assistance program, and working in a Bright Horizons center in Raleigh, NC.

It was in her almost 10 years at Bright Horizons that Shawna found her true passion -- coaching, mentoring, and educating the practice of the adults who teach and care for children. Initially, she served as the School Age Lead Teacher, then became the Education Coordinator, providing small and large group learning experiences. She had come to the realization that if she could fine-tune the teaching practices of Early Childhood educators, she would impact more of the lives of NC's children. During this time, she also became very involved in WakeAEYC and co-created the Wake Early Educators' Community of Practice (WEECoP) because an NC Pre-K teacher in her center wasn't able to find a community of practice to join. WEECoP has since become the NC Early Educators' Community of Practice (NCEECoP) and is attended by a diverse group of educators from across North Carolina. This period of life also led to another revelation after her own experiences as a community college student -- there was a need for instructors in Early Childhood Education programs with a strong background in experience. With that acknowledgement, Shawna set on the path of earning a Master's in Adult Education and Community College Teaching at NC State. No one was more excited about Shawna's graduation from NC State than her son, Ohene (Oh-hah-knee) who asked her not to enroll in school again until he graduated high school. She agreed and spent the next 4 years coaching and mentoring educators across Wake, Durham, Nash, and Orange counties as a Technical Assistance Specialist and part-time community college instructor while serving on the Board of Directors for NCAEYC.

Currently, Ohene has graduated high school and Shawna is a full-time PhD student at NC State, focusing on applications for the Early Childhood Education system within the Adult, Workforce, and Continuing Professional Learning program. She continues to serve as the Secretary of NCAEYC, is on the Global Board of Directors for Breastfeeding Family Friendly Communities, and provides some consultation services to administrators, classroom staff, and families on a variety of topics that include classroom management, teacher/child interactions, child development, professional development, positive guidance; health & safety; diversity & inclusion, and ECE administration.

Shawna often amplifies the educational philosophy of North Carolina's own Dr. Dallas Herring, which "is a philosophy of total education; a belief in the incomparable worth of all human beings...We must take people from where they are and carry them as far as they can go" and applies it to the education and care of both children and adults.