Serendipitous Edification

I’ve been thinking a lot about my future, where I should be in life, what I should be doing… and I know that fear of impracticality has been a major factor in why I’ve not moved.  I’ve been staying stagnant when I should be blossoming and I’m really sick of it.  Geoff used a term in conversation with me the other day that I’d not heard before, but really stuck with me, “Quarter-Life Crisis.”  That’s honestly where I’m at right now.  I’m 25 years old, and what have I done?  I’ve graduated from college with a degree that I didn’t really want.  I’ve been an insurance agent.  I’ve been a waitress.  I’ve been a museum educator and now I’m a preschool teacher.

As much as I’ve run from it, fearing that I’d be looked down on for it… I am a preschool teacher.  Yes, I can still be intelligent as a preschool teacher.  Yes, I can be creative. Yes, I can have fun.  Yes, I can actually be teaching without lecturing.  Working with preschoolers and twos has been a very interesting and different sort of educational experience for me.  I’d thought originally of teaching history and German in high schools.  That idea went down in flames during my semester-long practicum, where I taught high school freshman German.  I sucked and my heart wasn’t in it at all.  Then, I went to elementary– I’m still teaching!, I thought.  But… only Upper Elementary.  There I can still have intellectual conversations and really work with the students.

I did okay, and I did kindergarten too… but I wasn’t ready for it.  I told myself they were too young to do anything… so I closed them off to all opportunity in my head before I even got in the room.  I wasn’t ready to be a kindergarten teacher.  I didn’t want to be seen playing with kids all day… I wanted to be teaching them… conforming to my own, fascist, ideas of what education should be.

I worked at Science Station, and that really opened my eyes to what education can be.  It CAN be fun, it CAN be doing things, not just listening to the teacher ramble.  It was OK to say, I don’t know, let’s experiment.  I didn’t have to be the know-it-all expert.  I could be a facilitator, providing thoughtful questions and feedback, but mostly letting the students create their own learning.  That’s inquiry at its best, folks.

Now, I’m a preschool teacher, twos and threes.  I was terrified to start off with… now I really was playing with kids all day.  I was changing diapers, teaching how to use the potty, how to say please and thank you… I felt more like a mommy than a teacher…

But after living this life for a little while longer and dealing with my own fears of being looked down upon, less respected in my field and such… I’ve learned that I really enjoy this.  I love working with twos-threes, and making it my own sort of room.  I’ve done some research as to how lead teachers have treated this age group in my center in the past… I think that they taught these children as an extension of todder-twos, not as a lead-in to the preschool rooms.  Yes, this is a transitional age group (my center director is on the record saying it’s the most difficult age to teach) where we deal with biting, potty training, terrible/terrific twos, and everything that goes with it.  This is, though, a most magnificent age where verbal skills are exploding.  Where they really start to pay attention to how adults interact with one another,  where they learn how to deal with frustrations, excitement, emotions and just life in general.  This is a microcosm for society, and its fascination watching how it evolves.

And I get to teach them.  I have to be cognizant of not only the material I’m teaching them, but how I interact with them… this is where they learn how to work with people… this is where they learn respect, honor, justice… they may not know the names for these concepts, but this is where they learn what they are.  I get to be a part of that… I help them to make sense of the world, where as adults we know that nothing really makes sense.  I provide the framework for how they will view the world (along with their most important teachers, parents), and how the exist within it.

Oh, and I teach numbers, colors, ABC’s, fractions, foreign language, math, science, reading, writing, social studies, mythology & folklore, drama, PE, music, art, and everything in between.

Pretty sweet gig, if you ask me.

Now that I’ve got all that down and out, my revelation is this:  I’ve been running away from this.  I’ve been hiding in my ‘highly intellectual’ pursuit of history (don’t get me wrong, I love history and will continue to study on my own and eventually maybe do more coursework in it) and pretending that I didn’t belong in early childhood education.  I was afraid of looking like a dumb clod who couldn’t survive in more academic circles… but the more I do this work, the more I realize how it’s everything I want to be.  I want to be a role model, I want to help change the world, I want to make this world a better place… and how better than to help build the people of the future?  I can still be respected as an early childhood education professional.  I can join professional organizations and take additional coursework, and if I find the right program, even do my masters in Early Childhood learning.

So that’s me.  Elementary schelmentary.  High schmigh.  I’m a preschool teacher.