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.