I am at a standstill right now with my carrier. I am at the point where I do not know what to do with myself when it comes to my carrier. I am a child care provider/ pre-k teacher, but for me I feel I am so much more than that. I feel like I am a voice for what these children need in their lives. When I decided that I wanted to open my own child care years back I never knew that it would consume me so much. I never knew it involved so much more than just watch other peoples children, and making sure they were properly taken care of. And if you are a child care provider and that is all you and you are fine with... then maybe you are in the wrong line of work. These people who we are caring for are tiny little bodies of endless possibility and wonder. The things I have learned about children and from them amazes me more and more every day. They have untappable amounts of wisdom and potential. Children are seriously the greatest. What frustrates me about children are ADULTS, plain and simple. Everywhere I turn I have to deal with ADULTS trying to conform these children into cookie cutter, one sided learning, clones of themselves. ADULTS who expect me to set goals, and do observations on these children like they are lab rats, rather than letting them be children and be creative and have fun. These children are expected by their parents to start kindergarten even though they do not make the age cut off. They are expected to be reading sight words by the time spring arrives. These adults expect to see PORTFOLIOS on their four year olds!! Your child do not need a portfolio at 4 years old. Your child needs imagination, and creativity, and the ability to zip his or her own coat by themselves, NOT test scores, and grades, and assessments.
I hope I am not confusing any of you. I do think that education is important to young children, and this age is the perfect time to introduce letters and numbers, and the sounds letters make, and the concepts of reading and writing, I just do not think that we need to be setting big huge goals for individual children, and then revamping everything we do as educators to make sure we are meeting those goals for those children and putting a dead line on it. I do not think that as a Pre-K teacher making next to nothing that I should be made to spend hours upon hours making elaborate lesson plans, with written out goals for each specific child on my time off, and get paid the same amount of money as someone who isn't expected to do this. I just do not.
