
Sarah Mills
How do you go from being a preschool teacher to working as a legislative aide in the Massachusetts State House?
For Sarah Mills, it’s all about loving the work of interacting with young children.
In elementary and middle school, Mills enjoyed helping out with infants and toddlers who were enrolled in her public school’s preschool program.
As a Syracuse University college student, Mills got a work-study job at her campus’ early education center.
And when she came to Boston to attend graduate school at Simmons University, she needed to work full-time, so she found a job at KinderCare in downtown Boston where she spent half her time working with infants and half her time working in the afterschool program.
“When I was younger, I just loved kids; they were so much fun to hang out with,” Mills recalls. “It’s really exciting being with kids who are ages zero to five because you get to watch them go through so many significant milestones, whether it’s their first steps or their first words. Being with kids at this age is truly joyful.”
“Another wonderful thing is that you get to know the families. I had a lot of families with first-time babies, and so I had the responsibility of helping to educate them and helping them to feel comfortable, because it’s scary to drop your child off for the first time with people you’ve just met. And I was working before the paid family leave law. So I saw parents who had no choice but to bring children who were six weeks or 12 weeks old to our program.” (more…)