TMM Featured Career: Kindergarten Teacher

Hi guy’s! Welcome to the Featured Career part of The Monday Meeting. On the last Monday of every month I will be interviewing someone about their career in hopes of giving everyone some insight into different and interesting career paths for 20-somethings!

If you are interested in being featured on a future Monday Meeting Featured Career post, please contact me!

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This month please welcome Kelly from She Wears a Red Sox Cap. Kelly is a 20-something Kindergarten teacher in Boston.

Kelly had one of her students take this photo of her at work; all of her students wanted to take it so she had  to draw a name out of a hat!

1. What made you decide to be a teacher?

I am the oldest kid in my family, and the second oldest in a very close extended family made up of 21 grandchildren. In this way, teaching was sort of a natural choice for me. I didn’t decide right on the spot that I wanted to be a teacher, it took many more years of debating, but it always seemed to really fit with my personality.

2. Why Kindergarten instead of, say, Grade Nine?

I really enjoy the curriculum at the primary level, particularly teaching kids to read. A lot of days I think about how much easier it would be to teach older, more independent kids, but I just don’t think it would be as rewarding for me. That being said, Kindergarten was my last choice (I wanted to be a first or second grade teacher), but that is the job I ended up with. Since I began, I’ve started to really like the kindergarten curriculum because it is basically an introduction to everything.

3. What’s your favourite thing about your job?

I have two favorites. The first, is seeing kids learn something they previously had trouble with, or complete something they couldn’t do before. Even if it’s the monkey bars at recess! There is pretty much nothing more satisfying in life.

The second, is the fact that teaching kindergarten is never boring. There is always some new challenge or exciting moment.

4. How is your job different from most?

I rarely sit at my desk, I use the term “friends” more often than most people, You can’t measure my success in terms of money, I zip coats and tie more shoes than the average person, I have to be good at doing 1000 things at once, I try to predict the future, I always have a back up plan and I get a lot of hugs all day long.

6. What are some everyday challenges that you face that most professionals don’t?

I think one aspect of teaching that is very difficult and may not occur in some other professions is the amount of scrutiny involved. Since most people in the world have been to school and had teachers, many think they know how to do our job and/or exactly what is involved in it. This leads to administrators and parents trying to make decisions about classrooms that they do not truly understand. There is also a lot of entitlement involved - I’ve had parents come into the classroom and look for something on my desk etc. Would I go into their office and start looking around? Nope!

Another big challenge is that we are the business of educating children. It’s a very important job, obviously, but it’s also very unpredictable. We can plan, and plan, and plan some more and there are so many circumstances that are out of our control - a child’s mood that day, a child’s breakfast, a fight with mom, sister, or a friend, and so much more. In the ideal situation, most teachers would be able to easily teach all of their children every day. Except that, with kids, it is almost never the ideal world.

7. Being a Kindergarten teacher and working with children every day sounds pretty rewarding and fun? Is it like that?

It is VERY rewarding. In fact, the years that were harder, were a lot more rewarding in the end when the kids could actually function in a classroom I was pretty proud of myself. There is really nothing more rewarding in the world than teaching a kid to read. Reading is such an essential part of life and learning how to read is such a proud moment for all children.

8. What’s something about your job that people assume that is so not true?

Where do I begin? Probably the top “teacher myth” is that we only work 6 hour days and have tons of vacations and summers off. I work 8 ½ hours at school and then do private tutoring after that to make extra money, which usually equals out to be at least a 10 hour work day, sometimes longer. Also, I think it’s important to note that every minute a teacher is at work they truly working; there is no time for online shopping or blog reading.

9. Tell me what a typical day in your job would be like?

6:30am- I arrive at work and eat breakfast at my desk. I spend at least half an hour answering parent e-mails, and working on my weekly newsletter that I send to parents to keep them updated on what we are learning about. After that, I get everything organized for the day. In order to run a kindergarten classroom everything has to be well set up in advance because there is no time to search for materials or collect your thoughts. Kids this age also need a lot of visual cues, so I spend a lot of time drawing or printing out pictures and making examples. We are also expected to run small groups, so I often have to plan what the rest of my class will be doing and then what I will be working on in small groups. I usually plan 8-10 different lessons per day.

8:45am- The kids arrive. I talk to parents and get the kids started on their morning activities. Sometimes kids have separation problems in K, so it’s not that usual for me to have to basically drag kids into the classroom (don’t worry, they are fine after a few minutes).

9:00am-12:00pm- I teach the kids reading, writing and math. We go out to recess in the middle of all that.

12:20-12:50pm- I get to eat lunch with no kids, yippee!

12:50pm-3:00pm- The afternoon in Kindergarten is a bit more fun than the morning. We do a little more academics- handwriting, science etc and the kids have “choice time”. While the kids learn through play, I am usually meeting with kids in small groups to either assess their current skills or improve them in some way. I think Choice Time is the second most important part of the day for this age (recess being #1) so I never steal a kid away from play for too long.

3:00pm- In the afternoons I work with kids in second and third grade who are having trouble with reading and math. I try to do most of my planning for after school tutoring on the weekends so I can actually have a break when I get home at night. This usually works except during report card/conference time.

5:30ish- The “work day” is done, I can go to the gym, eat dinner, etc. I usually do bring some work at home with me each night, but not as much as I used to when I was a new teacher.

Thanks, Kelly!

So, tell me readers, have you ever considered being a teacher? And did you learn something new about being a Kindergarten teacher that you didn’t expect? Discuss in the comments.