这是Jordyn G.

幼儿教育毕业生

哈德逊山谷社区学院 幼儿教育毕业生 Jordyn Goldhaber has known she wanted to work with kids since she was one herself.

“I just love working with kids and seeing them grow and develop. 我一直都很喜欢. My mom is a kindergarten teacher and I knew since I was in second grade that I wanted to be a teacher too,Jordyn说, 他现在26岁了. “I actually attended the BOCES program when I was in high school for Early Childhood Education, and I graduated high school with my CDA certificate.”

Despite her preparation during high school, 她家人的支持, and her lifelong dream of becoming a teacher, several bumps in the road have threatened to put a stop to Jordyn’s college journey over the past seven years. But she has demonstrated that she has the perseverance to get past any setback—and she’s proud to know that when she crosses the stage at commencement this spring, she’ll have proven to herself and to everyone else that she can, 事实上, 成功.

After she graduated from a large high school on Long Island in 2017, Jordyn packed her bags and moved to Cobleskill to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Early Childhood Studies. “Initially, I went to Cobleskill right out of high school. I thought I was ready to be away from home and for that experience, but I wasn’t. I didn’t do very well there,” she explains.

So in 2019, Jordyn returned home to Long Island. Determined to keep her education on track despite leaving Cobleskill, she enrolled at Suffolk County Community College—but in her second semester there, 大流行来袭. 她的计划又被打乱了, 但她的梦想依然完整, she decided to take a break from school and focus on finding work instead—but was stymied by the difficulty of finding early childhood education jobs without a degree. Though the odds seemed stacked against her, she refused to give up. And after a few years, she was ready to give college another try.

“两年前, 我看着我的父母说, “我真的很想回学校,’”乔丁回忆道. “我发现了 职业生涯Next program, which gives students with disabilities a little bit of extra support, and a community.” Originally, Jordyn wanted to return to Cobleskill, which offers a 职业生涯Next program as well. She reapplied, and was accepted into the school, but there wasn’t room in the program for her. It seemed like yet another roadblock - but then, she found Hudson Valley.

“The director at Cobleskill said Hudson Valley had a 职业生涯Next program and if I went there first, I’d automatically get into 职业生涯Next at Cobleskill when I came back,她回忆道。. “一开始, 我说不, absolutely not—I didn’t want to go to another community college, because the experience I had at the first one was not great.” But her parents convinced her to take a tour of Hudson Valley, 到最后, she just knew: this was where she wanted to be.

有了新的计划, Jordyn took one more leap of faith and enrolled at a new college for the third time. 但这一次不同了. She moved into the College Suites, got involved with 职业生涯Next, and got to work on her 幼儿教育副学士. She found community through fellow students, 像职业生涯Next这样的学术支持项目, 还有她的教授, 尤其是她的学术顾问, Education and Social Sciences Instructor Diane Teutschman, who she credits with helping her get through some of her most stressful and challenging moments at Hudson Valley without getting too overwhelmed to continue.

“这所学校对我来说太棒了. Even the student teaching experiences I’ve had-- I’ve never seen a community college offer student teaching. I’ve been very lucky to work with all the grades I’ve worked with,” Jordyn says today. She began student teaching during her first semester at Hudson Valley, first in the Viking Childcare Center on campus, then at an early childhood education center, 然后在幼儿园, 最后是在幼儿园. The experience has only reinforced Jordyn’s knowledge that this is the career path that was meant for her; and Teutschman says that her student teaching performance has been “stellar.”

Today, as she gets ready to graduate from Hudson Valley, Jordyn is thriving. 她是Phi Theta Kappa的成员, the official honor society for two-year colleges, 还有卡帕德尔塔派, 教育专业荣誉学会. 在她上大学的时候, she served as co-president of the Early Childhood Club, and also received a 领导 in Education Award from her department this year. 她毕业时的平均成绩接近4分.0. And she is ready to return to Cobleskill this fall as a junior and finish her bachelor’s degree.

“My plan as of right now is to graduate with my bachelor’s and then go into the field for a year, and if I’m really not happy with preschool, then I’ll go back to school and I’ll get my masters to teach elementary school,她说。. “It’s ironic that I’m going back to Cobleskill, but it’s really nice to know I have another opportunity to prove to myself that I can 成功.”