No Stress

Well, that's what I'm hoping for at least. Truth is, I am stressed. There's 3 reasons for this...

1st: February is licensing month for us. The licensing guy can show up at any time during the month of February. We're all hoping he comes this week. The boss is beyond wigged out right now and snapping at everybody. Staff, parents, her husband, the kids, everybody. We just want it to be done and over with ASAP so that we can stop walking around on egg shells.

2nd: My 2nd assistant quit. Just up and quit. She had valid reasons, which I won't get into here, but it's put us in quite the bind. We're over ratio by 2 every day. This doesn't really affect the running of the classroom, or the lesson plans, or really anything within the structure of our day. However, licensing wise it looks bad. Really bad. If we get written up for it, which we probably will be, we have 30 days to fix the problem and then the licensing guy will be back. Problem is, with 30 days to interview, hire, and train a new 2nd assistant, we run the risk of hiring somebody just because we're desperate. This is bad news for everybody involved.

3rd: Next Monday I'm getting 4 new kids. They've been signed up for awhile. We were fine, ratio wise, until the 2nd assistant quit. Now, with these new kids starting we'll be over by 6. I have no kids I can move to the next level--they're all too young. If we move them now it changes the ratio requirements for the next room and they'll be over ratio as well.

Additionally, with these 4 new kids I have name tags, coat hook tags and cubbies to finish for them as well as a 6 page assessment on each of them. The name tags, coat hook tags and cubbies have to be done before they start. The assessments have to be completely within a week of their starting date.

So it looks like February will be a month of stress. I just hope the licensing guy doesn't come during our Valentine's Day party. Knowing my luck though, he probably will.

2009

I've been milling this post over in my head since before New Year's Day. I haven't had to guts to put it into words though. Now, hopefully, I will finish this post.

January of 2009 saw me living at home with my mom after a failed job in Atlanta. I was down and out. There I was, 24 years old, 3 degrees to my name, 8 years of experience and I failed at my first 'official' job. My finances were in the crapper big time. The cost of moving from Michigan to Georgia and back in the span of 3 months destroyed most of my savings. Living with my mom made me eat some humble pie. I was living in fantasy for sure. I denied my failures, blamed the job, the people, the city, anything and everything except for myself. Truth was, I couldn't hack it--the job that is. I was angry and everybody knew it. I said a lot of mean, hateful things.

I began applying for jobs relatively close to the area my mom lived. Numerous interviews, 2nd interviews, college transcripts, driving and trial runs. After all of that was through, I was offered a part time job at one place and a full time job at a second place. I took the full time job. Not solely for the money, though that was a big motivating factor. Then I moved, again.

February 2009 saw me in a new apartment, a new job, and many many fears of failure. It was quite the learning curve when I began the job. The lead teacher didn't like me, I was basically her cleaning lady. Everything I did was wrong. I was called into the office 3-4 times a week regarding issues the lead teacher had with me. I tried to change, tried to please her, tried to please the office staff. Nothing worked...I was still being called into the office for the same issues over and over again. On a day when I had nothing left I arrived home to find that my apartment had been broken into. At the time, I didn't have renters insurance. With no way to recoup my losses and a feeling of insecurity I began the hunt for a new place.

March 2009 I moved to a new apartment. Again, my finances took a hit. Braking a 1 year lease after living in a place for a month is quite expensive. I tried to convince myself that a feeling of safety was more important than money. It is, but it was quite depressing having over due bills, overdrafts on my bank accounts, a credit card that i couldn't pay in full for the first time EVER in 6 years. Work continued to be a juggling act between pleasing the lead teacher, proving myself to the parents, and being bollocked by the office staff.

April, May, and June 2009 were similar to March, minus the moving. Once a week the boss would have me in tears. Literal tears running down my cheeks. She would come down on me hard. In front of staff, in front of students, in front of parents, it didn't matter. When she was pissed, all that mattered was getting her point across in any way possible.

July 2009 lead to having a student teacher in the classroom. Her compliments of how i ran the classroom bolstered my confidence. I was still fearing failure. I was pushing myself to the limits, my budget was stretched, my bank accounts were slowly growing, I had lingering credit card debt that I hadn't been able to pay off, I was tired due to not sleeping, and I had a massive caffeine addiction.

August 2009 dealt 2 severe blows. I lost my last grandparent and a dear friend. It was tough. At work we were gearing up for the start of the new school year. The boss was running around like a chicken with its head cut off, yelling at everybody about everything. We were doing 2 hours of training a month at a place 30 minutes away from work, which was an hour away from my apartment. The lack of sleep got worse and worse. I was eventually running on 3-4 hours of sleep a night, depending on coffee and Diet Coke to fuel me through my day. My lead teacher was pregnant and cut her hours due to exhaustion, leaving me to pick up the slack. At the end of August came another blow. The lead teacher had quit. I was now the lead and all prep work for the new school year was up to me. I came to find out, in the span of 3 days, that the lead teacher had done absolutely NOTHING to prepare for the school year.

September 2009 I hit survival mode. I had a new assistant teacher-(not new to the center, or child care, but we had never worked together before.) I tried to train her, while running on empty, doing paperwork, and prepping for the new school year. I was learning things regarding the classroom that were being done wrong by the previous teacher--the teacher who trained me. I was taking the heat for all of the problems in the classroom. I was given a specific amount of time to turn it around or I risked being dropped back to an assistant and being moved to a different classroom. It was make or break time for me and I had to prove my worth to the staff, the parents, and the kids.

October 2009 was stressful. By far the most stressful month at the job. Sleep dropped to nearly nothing. Caffeine was my only fuel. I stopped eating for the most part. My one meal a day was at the center, for lunch. The end of October came and I was concerned. My time was up to turn the classroom around and I was worried that I hadn't succeeded. I regularly went 24-48 hours with no sleep, simply because I had so much on my mind I couldn't sleep. Then, the last Friday of October, our Halloween party, I proved myself. That day my assistant teacher called in sick. Nobody told me, nobody called in a back-up. I was on my own with 17 excited, sugared up kids. I pulled it off. I don't know how I did it, but i did.

November & December 2009 moved along. I began getting more sleep, I was able to relax and ENJOY being a teacher, our accident reports diminished measurably. When I began in the classroom the accident reports were on average 8-10 a week. Now, we can easily go 2-3 weeks without an accident report. The kids are more independent. The changes to the classroom are both physical-(we've changed the layout, put more toys on the shelves, limited the number of children to each area, etc.)-and mental-(the way we talk to children, the way we expect the children to talk to each other, more positive reinforcement, simple and concise discipline.)

In short, it's been quite the year for sure. Here's to hoping 2010 allows more sleep, less caffeine, and less stress.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday's to all!

Parents-Part 1

Sometimes working with parents can be harder than working with kids. Certain things that parents do irk me to no end. Parents like....

1. The parent who is so focused on the child's achievements that they overlook the child.

These parents are overly concerned about the fact that their 2.5 year old isn't potty trained yet, can't balance on one foot for very long, can't write their name, can't draw a perfect circle, doesn't hold scissors correctly, scribbles instead of drawing a pretty picture, etc.

It's frustrating and sad for me to deal with these parents. I can explain until I'm blue in the face that 2.5 year olds aren't supposed to be masters of all of these skills. It is a process that cannot be forced. 2.5 year olds DO scribble, they DO generally lack the coordination to use scissors "correctly", many do not even recognize their name much less write it. 2.5 year olds don't have the best balance on 2 feet, much less on one. Potty training is a bodily maturity thing and has nothing to do with how smart a child is.

The sad part, for me, is that I think these parents overlook or just don't see what qualities their children DO have. The great personalities, the glimmer in their eye when they figure something out for themselves, the way they love unconditionally, the way they help other children, the way they can accomplish a task if given the right guidance. I could go on but I won't.

I feel like these parents are setting their children up for failure. If the parents are always focused on what their child CAN'T do, they miss what their child CAN do. Children pick up on that. They generally want to please their parents and will attempt to do what the parent wants them to do. If what the parent wants them to do is above their abilities, they get frustrated and discouraged. This can lead to a cycle that is not good for anybody involved. The child is frustrated, the parent is frustrated, and the child cannot grow and learn as well as they could before they were pressured to do what they did not have the ability to do.

Update in Bullets

October

* My co-lead contracts H1N1 and is out for the last 2 weeks of October

* First week she was out she had all supplies for her part of the lesson plans set and ready to go

* Second week, she hadn't gotten a chance to get the supplies together. Her part of the lesson plans were finished though.

* After trying to get supplies ready and projects put together for the second week, I scrapped her lesson plans-(with her ok)-and put together my own.

* Second week went okay. Kids were a little off because she wasn't there. They thrive on routine and when we change it, it shows.

November

* My co-lead came back, still a little weak, but okay. Kids were excited and off the wall

* Kids calmed down after the first week of her being back. I started getting a chest cold.

* I now have a full blown chest cold.

* I got a $0.50 per hour raise.

Update of sorts

Well the room is coming together finally. All of the painting is done, the shelves are in place, and I loaded them up with toys. My biggest aggrivation at in the classroom was the fighting that happened between the kids. It wasn't the little tit for tat stuff that happens every day, it was the all out brawls--hitting, kicking, spitting, and biting that was going on. These are 3 year olds, or nearly 3 year olds here. Perfectly capable of talking and not resorting to violence. Sure I understand that occasionally 3 year olds will forgo words in favor of physical but this was ALL THE TIME. Then something interesting happened. It stopped.

Once I put a bunch of toys out--not new mind you, just ones that had been put up for whatever reason before I began working there--the physical brawls have pretty much stopped. We have the occasional physical fight...but only about once a week and only with specific kids-(okay, 1 specific kid who is a holy terror and bully). My "run around like a crazy person and throw stuff" kids come in, find a toy, and they sit and play with it now. My cryers aren't crying nearly as much. My whiners aren't whining nearly as much. My biter has not bitten in 3 weeks. The house area is being picked up, the books are being put on the bookshelf--not stepped on and ripped. The couch is being used to sit on, not jump off of to body slam each other.

All of that because there's enough for them to do now. Ironically, I thought having more toys out would require more work on the teachers part. That just isn't the case though. The kids actually put toys away when it's clean up time, they want to know where they are for next time. Sure some stuff gets tossed in whatever ole bin is available at the time, but it's less than it used to be. In short, the kids are RESPECTING the toys more and more, resulting in less stress for me and more items for them to play with. The reasons behind WHY this is happening are numerous, one I will go into in another post. But for now, rest assured that although I am still majorly sleep deprived and the paper work is nowhere near done, the classroom and the kids are turning over a new leaf.

THAT my friends, is why I LOVE my job.

Meetings, Lack of Sleep, & The List

We made some progress on "The List" today. By we I mean myself and my assistant/co-lead. She isn't technically a co-lead because she doesn't have the credentials yet, but she's acting as a co-lead and doing co-lead things by her choice. Anywho, back to the point. We made some progress on our list today. A 4 hour meeting this afternoon did the trick. We're about 1/2 way through it. The other 1/2 of the list contains stuff that needs to be done while we're at work. That 1/2 of the list is going to be tough. We have limited time while the kids are asleep to get the stuff done--and that's only after we've both taken lunch breaks-(mandatory)-and cleaned.

I'm severely lacking in the sleep department this week. I've gotten no more than 5 hours of sleep a night and fueled myself through the day with coffee & Diet Coke. Tonight I'll get an earth shattering 6 hours.

Nonetheless, we're plowing through slowly but surely. Of course the boss and the director want everything done NOW, but it's just not going to happen and quite honestly, they can deal with it or do it themselves. They seem to think everything should run just as smoothly as before when there's been a massive change like this. Sorry, that's not how the world works.

I've got another meeting--a mandatory work related meeting--on Wednesday night. I've heard that it could go for as short as an hour, or as long as 3 hours. If it's 3 hours, which it very well could be because we have a LOT to go over, that means I'll be out of the house from 7am-9:30pm with one 30 minute break. Then I have to be up at 6am the following morning to be at work by 7 or 7:30.

So basically this week looks like another meetings, lack of sleep, and list working week. How far away is Thanksgiving?