-We are voting that this was the baby inside the eggs.

Erin Barnease and Marimar Pulido were once parents of children enrolled in Head Start, a federal program providing early childhood education and resources for low income families.

Now they've returned to the classroom, but as educators in a Los Angeles County Head Start classroom.

Their new careers are possible because of an initiative that trains Head Start parents for jobs in early childhood education.

-What is that?

-Thats a blueberry.

They eat fruits and grass.

- I wanted to be that person for someone my son to this day, loves his teachers.

And so I wanted to be that for someone else, for a different child.

The program is a partnership between the LA County Office of Education, or LACOE, and West LA College.

It's addressing LA county's early educator shortage.

-We have a shortage in teachers.

We have these parents who are really interested in going to school and having a career serving children.

So it seemed like the obvious solution would be to engage with our parents and offer them a pathway so that they could eventually become teachers assistants or teachers or and move on further in education.

-When we started this back in 2022, we were dealing with over 500 vacancies, throughout all of our programs at LACOE and then through our delegate agencies.

That number, I believe, is now, you know, well below 200.

Erin and Marimar graduated from the Assistant Teacher Pathway, which offers college coursework and hands on classroom experience to obtain an associate teacher permit.

Best of all, it's completely free.

-I mean, ding a ling a ling jackpot to get a free, education, completely free books, classes, tutoring, support, everything that we needed.

I believe that they've, provided laptops and tablets, for people that didn't have those.

And, also resources and spaces.

-At the time, my husband was the only one working, so I didn't have any, you know, I didn't have any income coming in from my part.

And so to us, it was a great help.

You know, I get to have this amazing career One of the things that we always think about in Head Start as we're serving the whole family, is how to lift the family out of poverty, how to empower the family, how to encourage parents to continue with their education or helping them in terms of what their goals and objectives are, if you have happy parents, you know, you're more likely to have happy, confident children.

-What is it you told me about?

Oh, theres duckies?

-One way the program supports the whole family is by being flexible.

Students can complete the four college courses in the assistant teacher pathway online.

-They have many, many different things that are happening in their life that they have to juggle.

So school sometimes, sadly, would always take a backseat.

But because it's online, they have the availability to do parenting stuff and then still be able to come -It's very flexible.

I was just a stay at home mom taking care of my kids, it just it felt perfectly for me.

I was working from home, in the mortgage industry and kind of post-pandemic looking for, a new job opportunity.

It's not just for the for the parent, for becoming a teacher to satisfy themselves is bringing this family into a stable job.

And giving them opportunity to grow.

So right now I am a teacher assistant.

And I am looking forward to, just expand and, you know, get a lead teacher position.

I love everything, starting from the children.

You know, the smiles that they come in, they just look forward to, coming in and talking and learning and playing and I love that, I get to, show them so much support.

The program graduated 41 new assistant teachers in 2023.

That number nearly tripled to 111 new assistant teachers in 2025.

Four other pathways have launched since the start of the initiative: associate teacher, teacher, transitional kindergarten teacher, and family development credential.

since then, I've been able to build, onto the LACOE teacher pathway.

And I'm now a lead teacher for a Head Start agency, which is where my kids went to school.

So it's been really, really satisfying, -It's so wonderful to see that they know what it is to be a teacher.

A teacher is not just a little silo.

No, no, no, no.

It's community outreach.

It's creating pathways not only for themselves but for others.

And so we don't want them just to stop at just this part.

We want them to strive to go get their masters.

We want them to even get doctorates.

The possibility is up to them.