Finding the ideal TK teacher: A challenge of credentials and preschool experience

When Zulya Nuñez moved from teaching in preschool to a transitional kindergarten classroom, she was shocked at the differences.

Play, potties, preschool: TK for All

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

This story is part of a special series on transitional kindergarten in California.

California is now offering TK to all 4-year-olds. What does quality TK look like? Who should staff it? And a new challenge: How can teachers manage a class and help kids not yet potty-trained?

This series explores those issues and more.

Read more: Inside transitional kindergarten: Where play, curiosity and early learning meet

Read more: California expands TK, but thousands of 4-year-olds remain unenrolled

Coming Friday: Younger 4-year-olds who aren’t yet potty trained are creating a huge challenge for TK teachers

“It was a lot less play, a lot more pens to paperwork,” Nuñez said.

Nuñez has a lot of experience and expertise in teaching 4-year-olds — she holds an associate degree, a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in early childhood education, and taught preschool for five years in the Coronado Unified School District in San Diego County. But she did not have a teaching credential, one of the requirements California has set for transitional kindergarten, often referred to as TK. So, in the San Diego Unified School District, Nuñez co-taught TK alongside credentialed teachers. 

Her co-teachers had not taught 4-year-olds before and had expectations that did not match their students’ developmental stages, she said. For example, one teacher told families that students could not bring stuffed animals to school for emotional support.

“I’m like, ‘Why not?’ This is the first time they’re going to be separated from their families,” Nuñez said. She said emotional development takes time, similar to learning how to walk or run. “You can’t expect them to be running when they haven’t even crawled. There needs to be progression.”

Some teachers also wanted 4-year-olds to write in lowercase letters, Nuñez said, when many children are too young even to hold a pencil correctly.

“You’re asking them to grasp a pencil and their bones are not even fully developed. You have to start with lines that are basic. That’s why preschool does uppercase,” Nuñez said. 

Nuñez’s experience reflects a big challenge facing school districts as they roll out transitional kindergarten for all — to find teachers who have both the early education expertise to teach 4-year-olds and a teaching credential.

That can be a little like searching for unicorns — teachers who have a credential often lack experience and preparation for teaching this age group, while preschool teachers who have the experience and early childhood classes often lack a teaching credential.

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

By numbers alone, staffing TK has gone better than expected. In 2022, the Learning Policy Institute said the TK teacher shortage was extensive, saying districts would need between 11,900 and 15,600 new TK teachers by 2025-26. Now, the organization says only 1% of TK teacher positions have been vacant for long periods of time.

“This is going to be a turning point where we need to focus on instructional cohesion and quality of the learning environment,” said Hanna Melnick, director of early learning policy at the Learning Policy Institute. “We can stop focusing so much on filling the spots with teachers, but really, what are we doing in TK?”

New requirements that went into effect this fall now require TK teachers to have both a teaching credential and early childhood education experience — either 24 units in early childhood education or child development, a Child Development Teacher Permit, or other experience with young children that the school district determines to be equivalent.

According to a survey conducted by the California Department of Education and analyzed by the Learning Policy Institute, 52% of TK teachers statewide in 2023-24 had 24 units of early childhood education or child development, while 51% had professional experience that school districts considered equivalent. In some cases, teachers may have been counted in both categories.

School districts often consider preschool or TK teaching experience equivalent to early childhood education classes, but Melnick said many also consider a year or two of teaching kindergarten equivalent.

“If a kindergarten teacher moves into TK and has very strong coaching and an instructional leader who understands the difference between teaching 4-year-olds and 5-year-olds, that could be great. Where it gets concerning is if you have districts that don’t have strong expertise in preschool,” Melnick said.

California established a new credential in 2024 — the PK-3 Early Childhood Education Specialist Instruction Credential — to ensure new teachers gain the knowledge in early education to better teach TK. But the programs offering this credential are so new that the Commission on Teacher Credentialing has not yet published enrollment numbers.

Helping credentialed teachers gain preschool knowledge

Before Amairani Sanchez began teaching TK at Manzanita SEED Elementary School in Oakland four years ago, she worked in an after-school program with kindergartners. She was hired with an emergency credential and is currently completing the classes she needs to obtain a credential.

When she started teaching TK, the students were mostly older 4-year-olds who turned 5 in the fall. Each year, as the program expanded, she has had to learn how to teach younger and younger students.

“The first year, I was able to do more academics. My classroom was set up more with desks and kids had assigned places. I was able to do an activity with them on the rug for 15 minutes. As I saw the age change, I was only able to do an activity on the rug for 5 minutes,” Sanchez said.

An early childhood education coach from the Oakland Unified School District helped her understand more about teaching 4-year-olds and change her classroom to make it look more like a preschool classroom, more focused on play.

“I was used to working with kindergarten and even first grade and doing a lot of reading and academics,” she said. “My brain had to completely shift to you’re playing with them at all times.”

Jorge Ramirez, a professor at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, has taught early education classes for TK teachers from the San Gabriel Unified School District.

“I think a lot of the conversations from the teachers is, ‘Whoa, this is a whole different playing field,’” Ramirez said. 

He said even the setup of a classroom for 4-year-olds is different from a traditional elementary school classroom. He described an ideal TK classroom with an area where children can build with blocks, a library with books to read, a dress-up area for a dramatic play, an area for exploring science with plants or pet fish or lizards, a table where children can make art or work with Play-Doh, which helps children work on their fine motor skills, which will later help them use pens or pencils to write. 

Credit: Andrew Reed / EdSource

“The idea that it has to look like a kindergarten classroom is beyond me,” he said. “If you really look at TK, it’s preschool. You know, it’s just different funding, it’s different terminology. But the children are still the same. These are still 4-year-old children that developmentally need a lot of emotional support, that need those opportunities to explore.”

Many TK teachers have told Ramirez they struggle with the challenging behaviors of 4-year-olds and asked him how they can get children to listen.

“A lot of teachers have this expectation of children coming into TK, because it’s in an elementary setting, that they need to learn how to sit there quietly and listen to the teacher and do what I say, not as I do,” Ramirez said. “Children, emotionally, they’re not there yet. They’re very egocentric because developmentally, that’s where they’re at. And if your environment doesn’t foster that, if your instruction doesn’t give them that opportunity, then you’re going to have children that can’t sit still.”

Helping experienced preschool teachers get credentials

Preschool teachers have more experience teaching children under age 5 and are more likely to speak languages other than English, which experts say would also enrich TK. According to the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment at UC Berkeley, 20% of TK teachers surveyed in 2020 spoke more than one language, compared to 46% of preschool teachers working in child care centers and 39% of family child care providers, who care for children in their own homes.

“We are still very concerned that there aren’t adequate pathways for preschool teachers to become TK teachers,” said Elena Montoya, associate director of research and policy at the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment. “There’s a lot of knowledge that early educators can bring into this that is not being tapped into.”

Preschool teachers can count some of their experience toward California’s new PK-3 credential, but they still have to enroll in a teaching credential program. That contrasts with rules for teachers who have taught in private elementary schools, who can apply directly for a credential without enrolling in a program, Montoya said.

Jim Sullivan, Central Valley director for the English Learners Workforce Investment Initiative, which co-authored a report called “Ensuring a Multilingual-Ready Pre-Kindergarten Workforce,” said more classes should be offered at night and online for preschool teachers who can’t afford to give up their jobs to join a credential program. It can be especially difficult for preschool teachers in rural areas, he said.

“When you’re so far away from a college, you have to drive half an hour or 45 minutes to school, and then to get to a university another 50 minutes after work,” Sullivan said.

Some programs do exist to help people who already work in education get their teaching credentials. Nuñez, the former preschool teacher in San Diego, earned her credential at San Diego State University, with the help of the Future Educator Support program through the Butte County Office of Education. They helped her apply for a grant from the state’s Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program, which reimbursed her for tuition, books and test fees.

She said the credential program helped her understand education research and how to create more intentional lesson plans.

“I think I’ve grown, and I can blend both aspects of early education and traditional elementary education,” she said. “It’s made me understand both sides of the coin, and I can choose which strategies are best for the students in my class, depending on where they are developmentally.”