My center is made up of five classes (infants, two toddlers, my preschool, and pre-K). We have 13 teaching staff (three of which are floaters), one break person, one sub, and three in the office. Each day we have 10 teachers, 2 office, and a break person scheduled. Today we had three people on vacation, our break person called out so we had to call someone in from her day off, one person filling in from the office, one person in the office for only a few hours, one lead teacher came in late and left early, and subs in two other classes. Thank goodness my classroom wasn't effected with staff.
Major frustration of the day: On Monday mornings Ms. H and I spend a good deal of time setting up the classroom for a new unit. Today we were constantly being bothered by pre-K to either let her (office person filling in for lead teacher) use our computer because she decided not to use the one in the staff room since the pre-K one was slow, she wanted some supplies she couldn't find in the room she was in, she wanted us to print something for her... I could go on. Why is that frustrating? We were kind and did what was asked, but the thing was it took away from our work, classroom, and children that were in the room. Staff changes happen, understandable. For our center we can pretty much expect someone to call out on a daily basis. When that happens, everyone has to be flexible and go with the flow. It's not necessary to interrupt other classes when they aren't affected by the changes. That co-worker could have easily come up with other activities that didn't rely on my computer or anything involving my class, co-teacher, or materials. If you've been in a center/school for any amount of time you can understand that materials are sacred and sharing, even though it's at the top of our list of what we teach and preach, is SO HARD! There's not a lot of funding and it's easy to become stingy and borderline hoarder as a teacher (guilty). What's EVEN MORE frustrating? She used to be my co-teacher. We were good friends before she got the office promotion. There's a lot of lines in education, especially in small quarters and even more so when you start as friends before becoming co-workers. We still haven't quite found our new comfort zones around one another.
High point: It's Monday. We had a new friend start full time with next to no tears! We started a new unit that I can't say I'm very interested in and the kids had a lot to share about it at opening circle. We've had a lot of parents bringing in supplies (toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, flashlights...). Best thing of the day? I never once felt like things were out of control. Yes I was super peeved with the staffing changes and the above frustrations, but my kids had a good day. AND we had 14 in today (last week we usually had around 9 because of all the vacations). Ms. H and I were dreading how the vacation kids would do, but it worked out.
We had a park ranger come in and do a demonstration/discussion for what we thought was only going to be a half an hour, but it ended up being almost an hour long.... My kids were over it after the first 30 minutes. Oh well. Luckily we applied our sunscreen before she came so we lines up along the rope and went for a walk outside right away.
Fingers crossed: Tomorrow goes as smoothly, if not more! We'll have a couple different kids in and out of the mix tomorrow. Too tired to count up how many we'll have, but I'm ready to get more into the theme. We weren't able to transform dramatic play yet, but hopefully I'll get to that tomorrow. I'm not going to get my hopes up, but I'm crossing my fingers that no one calls out tomorrow.
Personal goal: I'd like to work on being more open to change in the work place. I don't know why, but I find myself getting very worked up when there's the slightest change in schedule/staffing. Maybe I should start practicing yoga. (I was going to say taking yoga, but I know I'm not the kind of person to sign up for a class at the gym unless I go with someone.) Maybe I can try to do that once or twice a week at home. I saw they have it on the Watch Instantly section of Netflix. I need to mellow out sometimes! Being in an active, loud, and often times overwhelming environment needs to be balanced out somehow!
"For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind." -Ralph Waldo Emerson
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