Meet the Teacher - Part 2: Learning to Teach

Introductory blog #2 from an up-and-comer. If we haven’t yet met, and you want to hear the story from the beginning, click on the link:

https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@ask.the.teacher/meet-the-teacher#comments

Following a bit of ‘finding myself’ post-high school, I decided to study early childhood teaching in New Zealand. After I graduated, I managed to get a starting position teaching in a mixed-age Montessori setting, despite having no Montessori training. There was a great deal of bluffing my way through, as I commenced a correspondence Diploma of Montessori Education and tried frantically to catch up to all the experts around me. For New Zealand teachers, there is a process of continued study and field work after graduation, called ‘Teacher Registration’. Without undertaking it, one’s Bachelor qualification becomes null and void after, if I remember correctly, five years. It’s a two-year-long process involving a lot of extra paperwork on top of your paid work hours. Between part time distance study of my diploma, the Teacher Registration, the fulltime teaching job and maintaining a side-income as a singer by night, I was rather run off my feet. Two years down the track and I was entirely burned out. The sad thing is I hear this is not an uncommon story for teachers starting out.

[One of a number of time-consuming resources I made for my Teacher Registration criteria]

For me, it was time for movement, and a last shot at a pipedream. I made what I thought would be only a temporary move to Australia in 2015 (I was trying to get onto ‘The Voice Australia’ but that’s another story!) Then, again, as they do, plans changed. While I was gone, house prices skyrocketed back home in N.Z. (and of course I didn’t own one yet). Meanwhile the Australian Government modified some of its rules about Australasian residents moving back and forth across the Tasman Sea, so I kinda got trapped. A long-term stay in Melbourne it was to be then…

In that first year in Aus, I did ‘relief teaching’ (day-to-day temping) and would have worked in around 50 services that year. I saw a lot of quality and a lot of, well, unquality. And it got me thinking, how did I want to raise the next generation? What were my goals for them? What would a successful world look like in 20 years’ time when these children reached the life-stage I’m at now? These questions will be addressed in depth in blogs still to come.

Meeting the 'Natives' on a relief teaching job... It's a stick insect, to clarify...

Although the temping lifestyle suited me well when I was first settling, and was idyllic in the sense that I could decide on a daily basis whether I felt like going to work or not (everyone’s dream right??), irregular work hours and declining motivation puts a strain on the bank account, and I was definitely failing at saving money. Time for a permanent position. Which turned out not-so-permanent. I worked for a year in a ‘music kinder and childcare’. I thought the music part would suit me well, but I felt so limited in terms of decision-making around the program I was to deliver. In short, I got tired of being bossed around fulfilling someone else’s vision that didn’t align with my own. Probably a very common story!

After a few interviews, fortune, if not skill, granted me a new position at the teaching environment I’m in now; what we call ‘sessional kindergarten’. This differs from many childcares in that it’s not-for-profit, and I have a set group of 24 children, who attend for all the same hours (at only 15 hours per week). Where I worked previously, there was an owner making money off the 30+ children on my roll who all attended different numbers of hours, on different days of the week and at different times of day, from as early as 7am to as late as 6pm. Great for working parents, but hardly conducive to quality teaching…

Rewind for a moment - you may have got stuck on the ‘15 hours per week’ bit. What do I do with the rest of my week? Well, I only work part time for starters, but on top of my 15 hours of teaching, I get 12 additional hours of ‘non-contact time’. You see, being a teacher these days, at any age level, requires a great deal of observing, documenting, program-planning, resource-making and parent-liaising etc… All stuff that takes nearly as much time as the teaching itself, if not more, yet I hardly used to get paid for! It is the planning time that allows a teacher to provide a quality program.

I’m pleased to report that five years on from graduation, and a bit over a year into my new job, I finally have a good thing going in community kindergarten. And the best thing about working part time - I now have discretionary hours left in my week, during which I can begin to find my niche in the bloggers’ Cryptosphere. Wish me luck! And feel free to follow along as I begin to address the weightier issues surrounding early childhood today.