<< - >>

#309 - The Story of School & Daycare, Part 1
11.23.02 @ 2:01 am

I am very drunk on the words of Anne Rice once again, having just this evening finished Blood and Gold. I can't comprehend what it was that made me put it down the first time, because since I took it up the second, I've done nothing but think of it constantly! So, once again, lyrical speech-patterns that aren't my own. And no clue as to if you'll even notice.

So, Anne is slightly less her manic self in these, her latest two books of Marius and Quinn, and they've been wonderful tales. But now I am suffering a horrible timing of insomnia, so I want to tell you one of my stories, from beginning to not-quite-end.

This is the story of School and Daycare. For never was there a story of more woe...

The story really begins in 1996, as I was finishing up my Bachelors in Psychology at the UW. I still didn't know what I was going to do with my life, but I knew I loved psychology and somehow I wanted to help people. Then, in that last quarter, two things became very clear to me: I didn't think I could ever practice psychology, and if I did indeed want to try, I couldn't do so without the further years of study required for a Masters degree. I had barely survived (literally) the five years it had taken me to complete this degree. I had no desire to take my schooling any further.

And so I went about looking for "civilian" employment. I became a receptionist. Then later a bookkeeper for the same company. For a time, I was quite happy. I liked the people I worked with, and even liked the work I was doing. But quickly the novelty of it wore off, and depression came again and again.

Over the years, I wondered and wondered: what was I going to do with my life? I thought about Social Work. Bah, more schooling!

And then one fateful night, not unlike this one, I was laying in my bed unable to sleep, and I had a "vision". Of being a Kindergarten teacher. It had always been my way to fear new tasks that I couldn't comprehend how I would go about them. When I was 18, I was scared to death I would never find a job I would be able to do well enough to support myself. The same thing happened in 1996 when I was looking for a job. The same fear had plagued me while considering ways to find a more rewarding career than the one I currently had.

But this vision made it look so easy. And I became convinced. I was quite shocked at myself, because I had hated children for so long, and had only recently come to adore them. And when in high school I had considered the path of teaching, it turned my stomach: mixed feelings of dread and boredom. Still, this was something I felt capable of. I remembered my Kindergarten year. How challenging and yet rewarding it had been. So I became convinced: I had found something I thought I could do. And do well.

And then came the miserable reality: Washington State only allows a handful of schools to have teacher certification programs. Actually, more than a handful, but they are all universities, with expensive costs, inconvenient class schedules, impossibly high standards for entry, and, most incomprehensively, an entry system that required applying to the school nearly a full year before being allowed to take a single class!

When I was searching the web to confirm this by looking at the offerings of the local community colleges, I found an answer: North Seattle Community College (NSCC) offers an outstanding program on Early Childhood Education: aka, the education of preschool teachers.

At first, I thought it would merely be a stepping stone. A way to earn credits, experience with children, and familiarization with class schedules and demands all over again. With an AA under my belt, surely the UW would look at my background and dedication in a light so favorable as to overlook the deplorable scores I would surely achieve taking the entrance exams?

And so after flirting with the idea for almost two years, and coming upon the decision to go forward at an almost impossible time when my husband was technically unemployed, I became a student at the NSCC.

The first days were new and exciting and left me a little queasy, wondering what I had gotten myself into. I had set myself up with way too difficult of a schedule for my first quarter: 20 hours working in a daycare, 18 hours working as a bookkeeper, and 15 hours taking night courses. I remedied that by dropping a 5 credit course within 48 hours.

However, it would have been better for me to have quit that daycare. I didn't even realize what I had done until it was too late. I knew I needed 2.5 hours a day, 3 days a week, to be a volunteer with preschool-aged children. But I prepared a nice little resume as something to get conversations started with the centers I would approach. And for some reason, with the resume under my belt, I decided to send them out, to see what would happen.

And I was hired within 24 hours of my first interview. Except: instead of 7.5 hours a week as a volunteer, she wanted 20 hours from me. 5 days a week. "Oh, we can pay you." She said. And somehow I forgot all my guidelines, I was just so happy that someone was going to pay me to work with children! I still have no clue how I lost sight of what I wanted so easily.

So I was going to school. And everything was great there after the initial dropping of courses. About a week in, the head of the program, who was the teacher of my Curriculum Planning class, announced that he was going to show us something life-altering. He is a great speaker. Amazing. But upon hearing this from him, I felt like someone was about to force me to sit through an Amway presentation, gritting my teeth and wringing my hands, waiting to flee the scene and get away from this evil cult.

And then he turned on the video. And I saw magic. Little stepford children they were. Cleaning up together, without adult supervision, without prodding or pleading, without whining or begging off. And they played and ran and laughed all the while. And they all worked together and got it done. And then grabbed hands and sang SPONTANEOUSLY when they were done.

I was astounded. The whole classroom was. These were 4-5 year olds. Kids who didn't even really know how to read. Kids at an age known for it's defiance and independence and lack of sharing or taking commands.

I did once call them stepford children to my teacher, and immediately wondered if I had hurt his feelings. Sometimes, people just don't get my sense of humor. Dry and dark and sometimes deadpanned, sometimes with just a smirk that may be interpreted to say that I am either kidding or truly heartless and evil.

Because I could tell they weren't stepford children. They were happy munchkins who liked each other and their teacher and respected their center enough to know that keeping it clean should be something they had an interest in.

I was hooked.

Ever since, I have seen countless miracles delivered by this man, and only once or twice disagreed with him. And he sees this all as perfectly fine. He likes discussion and independent thought. He's had 20+ years of this under his belt, so there's no persuading him that he's wrong and your right, but he'll let you debate it with the class to try and convince each other. He is truly a miraculous teacher. We all wonder what on earth is going on at other schools, that they don't use the skills he's arming us with.

Because truly, at least for me, it is a battle. A battle against the Evil Center Director (ECD).

I was so happy when I started there. I was in a class of 4 year olds, about 10 of them. And they were all so wonderful. Some of them more difficult than others, one of them just a gorgeous beacon that I fell so in love with I've since spent less and less time with her so that no one will think I play favorites. I developed a special bond with the difficult one in the class. He does not perform miracles when I'm around, but he does let me get close to him sometimes, and it's in the relationship and modeling being friendly and respectful that maybe I can make a difference with him some how.

And the teacher of this class I really, truly respect. Partly because she seems the type to be reserved, and yet she gushes over how much she appreciates me. Partly because she has the respect of the children, who only really listen to me when it suits them. And partly because she's graduated from the NSCC program I've just started, so she already does many of the things that I'm just learning.

In school, in one of my classes, one of the few men in the program told a tale of a center he worked at where he was not provided proper assistance with his children. He said he had too many children for that age (still in diapers) to have just him during diapering periods. And he couldn't control them from running from the bathroom while he was diapering another child, because once they're on the diapering table, you can't leave that child. And the center director yelled at him as if he was a bad teacher, when it was her lack of foresight and her poor hiring practices that had gotten him into a situation he couldn't possible handle on his own. They got into a 2-hour shouting match after which he quit.

A day after telling me this story, on my 2nd day of classes, my 2nd day at the daycare, he told me that the center he had talked about was the center where I now worked. And the center director who had berrated him and convinced him to quit was none other than my center director. I was shocked. But already, I was having odd feelings about this woman.

And soon she became ECD. I was very sick my first few weeks. Everyone told me this is normal. In fact, I'd been hearing from coworkers how evil daycares are in that they spread sicknesses round and round all year round. I was miserable, but I was coping as best I could.

But while I was sick, the Assitant Center Director spoke with me about something troubling. I had been hired on specifically as an assitant to the class I was in. It was on all the documents I signed those first days of training.

Asst. ECD told me that the numbers in that class weren't high enough to warrant an assistant there. They had hoped the numbers would pick up, and in fact still believed they would, but for now they were considering moving me to another room until that happened. I was terrified. I had grown to love these kids. I'd seen some of the other women at the center, and something about them bothered me. They looked mean.

I must have looked like a deer in headlights, because the Asst. ECD immediately said that I could continue working in my current class without pay, if I so desired. I thought it over for about 2 seconds and said that if it came down to that, that would definitely be what I preferred. In fact, in my head I realized I could work less hours since I would be volunteering, and then bump my hours at my other job, and actually be making more money, and maybe be less stressed.

And a mere few days after this, during the period that I was told I was still being paid while they waited to see what would happen with the numbers, the ECD herself came into our classroom in the middle of the day. She had a brilliant plan. To move me to another class where the teacher there desperately needed an assistant, and how had she not thought of this before? Once the teacher I worked with gave her ok, I was whisked off without even a moment to ask me what I thought, let alone the consideration to grab my things.

We tromped upstairs to another room. And empty room. Oh. The class was outside. ECD led me outside to the back of the building play area. Here I was introduced to the new teacher, told that this teacher would tell me what kind of things she expected of me, and this is where I would be until either a) her numbers dropped, b) my other class' numbers went up, or c) this new class room had it's plumbing installed. Without mentioning to me a time line or guesstimation of when either of these things would happen, ECD left me there without another word. Or chance to comment on anything. Or question anything. Like where the hell had my right to an opinion gone, most specifically, where had her consideration of my ALREADY VOICED OPINION gone?

I was outside. I was quite sick. My water bottle was not there. I had no tissues. It was very cold and damp. I had no coat. And before I could get my wits about me, the teacher left to go diaper two kids, leaving me in charge of the rest of her class. I thought I could cope. There was another teacher there with her class. There seemed alot of kids, but obviously if they had been out here just the 2 of them, they were within number requirement ratios. So I didn't dare leave to get my coat until my teacher came back. But she didn't. And then quite suddenly this other teacher was walking out with... hey, wasn't that one of MY new kids? Yep, she called back that she was taking him up to my teacher to join the others getting changed. Um. I was left with all the kids by myself.

I was dumbfounded. I was about ready to fall apart. I was freezing and sick. And any moment I expected someone to come forth and announce I had passed a psych test, for surely this was hell and I would be informed as to why it had to happen, right?

Nope. Ten minutes later the teachers came back and everyone went inside for lunch. Did I mention I didn't have a lunch and I was hungry? While sitting with the kids watching them eat, I realized there was a mirror at the correct height across the way so we could see ourselves in it while we sat. And I couldn't believe the look on my face. I couldn't believe I wasn't balling. In fact, sitting there feeling like a prisoner and watching myself in the mirror, I thought for sure I would at any moment.

I went home after that instead of to my other job. I found Sweetie just coming out of the shower and I literally collapsed into his arms balling.

last - next