Here we are racing to the end of another calendar year.  The miles just keep speeding past as we navigate the race of life.  I wonder how many runners have come to mile 12 in a half-marathon and wished he had prepared better?  That was certainly my feeling the first half-marathon I ran a couple of years ago.  I'm not sure what I would have done more to prepare, but surely there was something I missed.  That last mile seemed endless and my knees and hips felt like they were becoming disembodied.
Most of us who are approaching the 'later years,' probably have a few thoughts about what we wished we would have done to prepare.  For example, I sometimes wished I had continued on to medical school and become a doctor.  Maybe I would have been able to save more money for retirement!

Early childhood educators have the opportunity to help prepare children for a future that we can just imagine at this point.  We can arm them with thinking skills that will help them in a world that will include many things that have not even been invented yet.  Building the brain connections in young people should be a top priority because it will increase their capacity for the future.  I recently told some students that I wished my early childhood teachers would have stretched my thinking capacity more so that I could understand statistics a bit better.  I said it as a joke, but I certainly hope to never hear that 'joke' from one of my former students.  It surely contains more truth than humor.