Joy Farmer

“I’ve been doing childcare from the time my age was a single digit to now, when I’m considered a senior citizen. It’s kind of followed me around my entire life, so much so that I sometimes feel like there is some force, like a higher power, guiding me down this path. My mother was a teacher for over fifty years, and when I was a child, around this time of year, I would help her prepare for her first grade class. We would get her curriculum ready and make bulletin boards even when I was five or six. Then, when I was only nine years old, I got my first job working at Branches Nursery in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They gave me a class there, and whenever I had time off from school, I cooked for them, changed diapers and did anything I could to help. Throughout all of my teenage years, I continued to work with kids; my friend and I opened a summer school one year and I would always babysit. 

After college, I moved to New Rochelle and was working in retail. It was really my niche, but one day, when I was working at an Annie Sez, this woman came up to me, and told me I was in the wrong line of work. She said that she’d been watching me work with the customers and noticed that the kids always approached me when their moms were in the dressing rooms. She asked me if I ever wondered why that happened. In shock, I asked her who she was. She told me she was Michelle Washington, and within one week, I was teaching at her daycare. Ever since then, I’ve been working with kids. 

I love that in early childhood education, you get to meet children on a really foundational level. They’re just getting started, and daycare can provide this lab for them to safely explore and discover. As a teacher, you get the opportunity to build a relationship with the kids and their families that can last a lifetime. I’m still in contact with kids who are now in their twenties; I feel like they’re part of my family. My experiences with child care have led me to truly understand that working with children is my purpose. I feel relief knowing that I am a real part of a forever growing community. I am forever grateful that I have been shown my path.” - Joy Farmer