Inside the walls of a preschool classroom, children at various developmental levels come together to face their first educational experience.  What can you, as a preschool teacher, do to create a comfortable and productive environment to meet the needs of each of the children in your classroom?

This book aims to educate preschool teachers about how children develop and when a child needs intervention. Armed with this knowledge, preschool teachers will be able to articulate to a director or parent about what is happening with the child and what services can help.

Preschool teachers need to learn how to teach children in different ways. They need to have many methods at their fingertips to assure that each child is experiencing an environment that is positive and appropriate. Teachers need to know why certain methods are effective, and how to explain the reason for this to both parents and administrators.

Children are the true winners in a situation where the administrators, teachers, and parents all work together to create a world that meets the child's needs at home and school. When at home, the child benefits from parents who know what they should expect from the child at a specific time in her development. Parents can extend learning opportunities for their children by bringing home the concepts being taught in the classroom. And, when the child is at school, she will bring with her the experiences from home, expanding her skills and knowledge with her experiences in the classroom.

Teachers who know what to expect from children reaching each developmental milestone will be able to determine if a child is falling behind in gaining and retaining skills. The chapters or classes in this book will address how children develop physically, cognitively, and socially. The child's development is viewed through child development theories that explain why the child is growing at the rate she is, generally called "typical development". Once this information is known, it will become obvious when a child is developing atypically. While a teacher should never diagnose a child, she should be able to share her observations with professionals.

The teacher's feelings toward the classroom environment can have a huge impact on its success, whether the children are experiencing typical or atypical development. The teacher must be willing to accept each child and she must be willing to change her teaching style along with all aspects of the environment to accommodate any child in the class. Soodak et al., (1998) conducted a study to determine how teachers felt about including children with special needs into their classrooms. One hundred and eighty eight teachers were surveyed and two responses were identified, one being hostility/receptivity and the other anxiety/calmness. The results indicated that the teacher's attitude and beliefs, the students' diagnosis, and the general sentiment of the school staff are relevant to both responses. This research reveals that a teacher's feelings about children with special needs affect the environment she provides and how she teaches the students in her class. This study also reports that the teacher feels more receptive to a child with a disability when she has experience teaching that child. These results are encouraging in that teachers who have a negative feeling accepting a child in the beginning of the year may have a positive feeling by the end of the school year. I

In most states, preschool teachers are required by law to have both education and experience to be able to teach independently in a classroom. In California, Title 22 mandates that preschool teachers have a minimum of 12 early childhood education units from an accredited post secondary school and six months experience in the classroom. Because these units may not include a course about children with special needs, many teachers who have children with disabilities enrolled in their class will not have formal instruction about how to provide an appropriate environment. That situation could both cause anxiety for the teacher and limit the disabled children's opportunity for growth.

Teachers in today's classroom are faced with many issues. They are expected to have more knowledge about all of children in their classroom and how they are learning and gaining skills. Preschool teachers are also expected to know about the child's life outside of the school day (Udell et al., 1998). They deal with parents who are concerned for their child's daily educational experiences. A professional preschool teacher should be able to notice when a child is developing at a slower pace than the other children or displaying behavior which is troublesome. She should be able to use different teaching methods to engage the child, and then be able to articulate to other professionals and parents about the child.