The Early Childhood Education program at Centennial College is committed to ensuring you are prepared to be a leader in the profession.
As a student in the Early Childhood Education program, you learn to provide the high standards of care to children and their families that get our graduates respect as professionals. This highly-regarded undertaking teaches you to take responsibility for observing the needs of individual and groups of children, and create well-planned, stimulating and responsive programs. You come to understand the needs of infants, toddlers, pre-school and school-aged children.
Rich classroom experiences offer you a range of opportunities to understand content and professors ensure that a variety of strategies is used to help you practice and apply what you are learning. Your learning takes on a practical approach through Centennial College's two state-of-the-art early childhood education centres. Used as lab schools, these centres, located in East York and at Progress Campus, allow you to observe and/or practice in a high quality child care setting.
If you are energetic, enjoy working with children and adults, fun loving and dedicated to learning this is the program for you!
Companies Offering Jobs
Aisling/Discoveries Centre for Children & Families, Chartland Child Care Centre, Friends Day Care, Nellie's Hostels, Toronto Board of Education, YMCA, Ontario Early Years Programs
Program Highlights

Three field placements in the community, working directly with infants or toddlers, preschool and school-age children allow for real world experiences. To ensure your learning is optimized, placements are supported by qualified and experienced supervisors.
Available to Early Childhood Education students during third or fourth semester are opportunities to work in full-day kindergarten environments.
To support the student experience and maximize the ability to solidify skills, incorporated in semester three and four are a minimum of a one-week block placement.
This program is committed to responding to and reflecting current trends and direction in the field and profession.
Highly skilled faculty creates stimulating learning opportunities in the classroom, which address a range of learning styles.

Career Outlook

Early childhood educator in elementary junior kindergarten and senior kindergarten full-day learning classes
Early learning educator for literacy programs
Early childhood educator in child care settings
Early childhood educator assistant in child care settings

Further Education
To further your studies, you may attend Centennial College's graduate certificate program Early Childhood Resource Consultant (Special Needs).
Qualified graduates may also be eligible to participate in an articulated program with select universities. These partnerships will allow you to apply academic credit towards further study.
The Early Childhood Education (Ashtonbee) program's educational partners are:

Ryerson University (Early Childhood Education degree)
University of Windsor

Areas of Employment
Graduate employment, graduate and employer satisfaction have all consistently remained above 80 percent for several years, earning Key Program Indicator distinction awards for the Early Childhood Education program.
Among the areas of employment in which you will be able to launch a career are:

Childcare centers
Operating your own home childcare centre in accordance with legislative requirements
Full-day learning classrooms within the Board of Education
Drop-in centres, shelters and community service programs
Ontario Early Years Centres