Daycare

By Cheryl Jahn

CNC

Early Childhood Educator program welcome

Mar 13, 2026 | 3:30 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – There are a few around town. Daycares. And the College of New Caledonia (CNC) is broadening training opportunities for early childhood educators.

“Jessica Fee is one of our instructors, and she’s been taking this on,” explains Candis Johnson, CNC’s Coordinator for Early Childhood Learning. “She’s been able to go into the childcare programs, take four courses at a time, implement them directly with each educator that’s in the program, works through all of the course objectives, takes those real life events that are happening within the child care program, and then build the theory around that.”

In other words, the early childhood education happens in the environment in which the kids themselves are learning which has had tremendous success in Fort St. John.

“Northern Lights does offer it and we’ve seen some real success,” says Lynette Mikalishen, the Director for Childcare Standards for the local YMCA. “We’ve seen just the mentorship rate in the program. And so learning to deal with those real life challenges and be able to apply those principles or maybe go back and learn more about how you could handle a situation differently or what that child might be going through. So all of those things really blend well together through integrated learning.”

She says it helps her operation when folks can get training without having to lose their presence in the workforce.

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“It helps those folks that are maybe not fully certified yet can do that work and still be here and be part of our ratios and part of our staff team. So that’s fantastic. I think it also helps there’s initiatives out there that pay so much better now that there’s a $6 an hour top-up once you’re fully certified.”

The lack of early childhood educators has been a chronic issue in this region and Candis Johnson says having options for young aspiring childhood educators is helpful.

“We’re dying for early child educators in our field,” she says. “We need more and more early child educators. And this is a way that they can actually do their training at the same time they’re working.”

So what would inspire someone already working in a child care capacity to take the plunge to venture down this path if they’re already working in the field? Lots of reasons, says Johnson.

“There are fantastic government initiatives right now if you actually want to become an early child educator, there’s initiatives of extra money per year.”