Along with movie and lake outings, family trips and newly-licensed driver adventures, 16-year-old Jordan Hilton’s summer 2023 memories will be sprinkled with the daily rituals of her first real job – diaper changing, playground monitoring, speech translating and everything else that goes with being a teacher in training for 2 and 3-year-olds at the Del E. Webb Family Enrichment Center.

The FEC, an early childhood teaching laboratory on the YC Prescott campus, is also where Jordan spent weekdays every summer and every season between infancy and kindergarten while her mom, Stacey, worked in instructional design at the college. “Personally, because I work at YC, I knew the quality of the FEC. I felt really comfortable leaving Jordan and my son Jake here. I knew it was a high-quality facility and I knew it had a phenomenal teaching staff.”

Jordan followed her older brother to school at the FEC, becoming one of the first arrivals in the infant room when it opened in January 2008. Fifteen years later, the Prescott High School junior is a summer student in YC’s Earn to Learn program, combining classroom study with teaching practice at the FEC. Graduates of the accelerated program earn a stipend along with an early childhood education certificate.

Jordan learned about the Earn to Learn program from her mom, who now serves as YC Dean of Instructional Support. She enrolled to explore education as a potential career path and to experience the FEC from the opposite perspective. “It’s so nice to be giving the care and learning experiences that the teachers once gave to me. I’m making new memories with these kids,” she said.

A weightlifter, Jordan is contemplating teaching physical education and/or becoming a personal trainer. She has taken multiple health and wellness-related classes at YC and is working toward earning a fitness training certificate while still in high school. The Earn to Learn program, she said, is a valuable addition to her academic record. “This is a good opportunity for me to get my credits and actually work with kids.”

Jordan has fond memories of the FEC as a child. She remembers her two best friends by name, her favorite toys and, while wearing a toy crown and jewelry, “walking around like I owned the place.” One of her most vivid memories: “Someone brought a pony and we got to ride it around the little grass area outside.”

Jeannine Skousen, a longtime teacher and immediate-past FEC director, remembers Jordan as a happy baby with a surprising sense of humor – “even at the early age of seven months.”

As an early childhood educator, Jeannine said she always wondered about the FEC’s impact on students. “I never imagined that I would have the opportunity to work with them as a young adult, so it brings me so much joy to see Jordan now, a wonderful human being who is now paying it forward with our young children.”

With her summer teaching and learning experience rapidly advancing toward a graduation celebration, Jordan said she doesn’t regret giving up summer teenage indulgences, such as sleeping in or no-homework weekends. And while she might not have had quite as much time as she would have liked to spend with friends this summer, she did get to play “house” regularly with her FEC charges. “We tucked each other in and read stories to each other,” she said. “It’s cool seeing how a child plays.”

Jordan said she’s learned a lot in a relatively short period of time and has been amazed at the development she’s witnessed in the children she works with, especially in terms of being able to communicate verbally. She said she has enjoyed her first teaching experience and getting to know the children and their families. Her least favorite aspect of her summer apprenticeship? Post-nap diaper changing when, she said, “the children are usually a bit moody.”

Still, Jordan looks forward to what’s next in her young teaching career, including possibly parlaying her early childhood credential into a job at another child development or daycare center. Or, she said, referring to the place where she spent much of her own childhood and is now learning to teach, “I could see myself starting out here.”

For information about Yavapai College’s Early Childhood Education Program and the Earn to Learn opportunity, visit https://www.yc.edu/edu.