A child care counselor is responsible for creating a safe and healthy environment for children in schools, group homes, and daycares. Usually, they work with children with behavioral, mental, and physical issues, ensuring that these children receive the support that they need, especially in between child counseling appointments.
One major task of a child care counselor is to monitor children's development by keeping records of their physical, mental, emotional, and social development. They share these records with other specialists as well as the children's guardians to maximize growth and development. Moreover, a child care counselor creates and implements daily schedules for children that include learning plans, play dates, and other activities that aim to support developmental goals.
An aspiring child care counselor must have at least a bachelor's degree in early childhood education, child care, social work, or other related fields. Depending on their employer, a child care counselor may also require additional training, as well as CPR and AED certifications.
To increase the chances of job placement, a child care counselor should also have experience in child care, time management skills, communication skills, and a patient and caring personality.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a child care counselor. For example, did you know that they make an average of $16.89 an hour? That's $35,121 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 11% and produce 81,200 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many child care counselors have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed emotional skills, organizational skills and problem-solving skills.
If you're interested in becoming a child care counselor, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 62.1% of child care counselors have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 8.5% of child care counselors have master's degrees. Even though most child care counselors have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a child care counselor. When we researched the most common majors for a child care counselor, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or associate degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on child care counselor resumes include high school diploma degrees or master's degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a child care counselor. In fact, many child care counselor jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many child care counselors also have previous career experience in roles such as sales associate or cashier.