Thank goodness an encounter during college did not change the course of Joleen Patton’s career and life.
“I wasn’t very good at my job at first, and a college instructor told me I needed to find another profession,” she recalled.
As a result of deep faith, Joleen believed becoming an early childhood education teacher was her mission in life. She refused to give up. On February 3, Joleen retires as program director of the Blessing Hospital Lauretta M. Eno Early Learning Center after 34 years of service. She is one of only four people who have served in the director role.
Joleen’s career began as a child care teacher at Blessing in the 1970s where she worked with Lauretta Eno, the nurse administrator who made Blessing the first hospital in the state to offer on-site child care for staff. Joleen then worked at PACT for West Central Illinois – a local Head Start agency – before being selected to begin the child care program at the former St. Mary Hospital in Quincy in 1989. She continued in the director role when Blessing Hospital purchased St. Mary Hospital in 1993.
Today, more than six-hundred children are currently enrolled at the Blessing Early Learning Center. The Center has a staff of 120.
During her Blessing career, Joleen and the teams she assembled have had a positive impact on the lives of countless parents and children. She has led two expansions of the Blessing Early Learning Center and the program’s accreditation and reaccreditation by the National Accreditation Commission, sponsored by the National Association of Early Learning Leaders. The Center also earned the ExceleRate Illinois Gold Circle of Quality Award for meeting or exceeding quality benchmarks in 15 areas of early childhood education center operation and performance.
Joleen earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree, and national and state certifications over the past 34 years, and held leadership positions on national and state early childhood learning organizations.
But one of her most memorable moments involved the sharing of tears with a new mother.
“I will never forget when I had a new parent in my office for orientation. She was enrolling her first-born baby. She took one look at me and started to cry,” Joleen recalled. “It was an emotional moment for her and for me. Letting someone else have your baby, while you work, is more difficult than anything a mother is asked to do. Eighteen years later I had the honor to have my picture taken with the child at their high school graduation.”
“Early childhood education is essential to lifelong learning, and the job of parenting is the most important job to society,” she continued. "The children we raise today are the workforce, caregivers and caretakers of tomorrow.”