Many educators have said<\/a> the process to get credentialed for TK can be frustrating, especially for preschool teachers without experience in the public school system. The state said it doesn\u2019t have data on how many teachers are coming over from the private preschool sector or from upper grades in public school. <\/p>\nIn conversation with LAist, educators who have made their way into TK classrooms say they’re glad they did.<\/p>\n
In search of more structure\u00a0<\/p>\n
At Price Elementary School in the city of Downey, Samantha Elliott is teaching TK for the first time this year.<\/p>\n
However, because she\u2019s taught preschool in the past, she runs her classroom with ease \u2014 and with the help of a state-mandated aide.<\/p>\n
Elliott earned a credential and bachelor\u2019s degree in early childhood development at Cal State Fullerton. This made it possible to move into TK without having to take on more coursework.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreschool was great,\u201d she said, \u201cbut [at that level, students are] still learning [the] fundamentals of how to be a human, in a sense. [In] TK, we\u2019re focusing a little bit more on academics, and I really was excited to teach the kids and get an early influence on their educational lives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elliot keeps her students engaged throughout the day with music. She uses songs to help them learn their ABCs, colors, shapes \u2014 even their sense of time.<\/p>\n
Often, Elliot has her students get up and dance. This helps the students get the wiggles out \u2014 it\u2019s also part of learning through play.<\/p>\n
![\"About](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765496410_901_\")
<\/p>\n
Samantha Elliott made the switch to TK after teaching preschool for two years. <\/p>\n
At Smith Elementary in Lawndale, teacher Lauren Bush lets parents know that while it may look like kids are just having fun, they\u2019re experiencing a lesson that she\u2019s crafted carefully.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou see kids playing with dinosaurs,\u201d she said. \u201cI see kids sorting by color, doing eye-hand coordination and visual discrimination. I see them using their fine motor skills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush has over two decades of classroom experience and has been teaching TK for three years, but she still spends a lot of time making sure her lessons are just right. When people see her working nights and weekends, they\u2019re often perplexed. \u201cWhy work so much?\u201d they wonder aloud, she said. \u201cYou’re just babysitting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bush gently corrects them: \u201cI’m, like, \u2018Oh my gosh, no! You have to have a special degree to teach TK.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
In search of something less rigid\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over at Marguerita Elementary School in Alhambra, teacher Lisa Vuong is working toward earning that special credential. On top of working full time, she\u2019s fulfilling her required coursework at Pasadena City College. (Statewide, 13 institutions, including Cal State Long Beach and Cal State Dominguez Hills offer the new credential.)<\/p>\n
Vuong is already credentialed to teach kindergarten through eighth grade. She also has 22 years of classroom experience and a master’s in education. \u201cBut this is a whole different beast,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She means that in the best way. Even though she comes in with a lesson plan, she said, being a TK teacher often means having to improvise.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have kind of a platform that you launch off from, and the kids go in 18 million different directions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
When Vuong taught upper grades, she spent a lot of time making photocopies and stressing out about her students\u2019 performance on standardized tests. TK \u2014 which is not graded or subject to those assessments \u2014 gives her a sense of freedom.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always say it doesn’t even feel like a job,\u201d she said. \u201c I don’t wanna discredit the whole program or anything, but it’s just so much fun.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"California needs thousands of teachers for its preschool program. Here’s what it’s like to be one Some are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,50362,31267],"class_list":{"0":"post-90787","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-anaheim","8":"tag-anaheim","9":"tag-anaheim-headlines","10":"tag-anaheim-news","11":"tag-preschool-teacher-credentials","12":"tag-transitional-kindergarten"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}