Many people don’t know exactly what being a teacher can look and sound like. As I interviewed my mom who is a preschool teacher in Calvert County, she told me the small details of what goes into teaching that you may have not known.
Sitting down with her she explained that she had previously worked at Tower Federal Credit Union straight out of high school and never went to college but had to quit her job at the bank when she was pregnant with her third child. After many years of being a stay-at-home mom to take care of me and my siblings, we eventually grew up and she went to school full time. She then had no one to look after during the day. My mom’s friend, Jenny had worked at ‘Little Lamb’s Preschool’ at the time and called her one day asking if she would be able to be an assistant for a teacher for the next 3 months. The school had just lost one of its teachers and was in desperate need of extra help. My mom was reluctant just because she was still a mom to four girls but took the time to think it over and eventually called Jenny back to agree.
She never thought she would be working at a preschool, saying that “teaching was never in my plan” and it “just came to me.” As a year went by, and then another, she began to fall in love with the kids she worked with. She loved the flexibility of being able to work 3-hour days while still being able to be a mother. By this time, she was only an assistant but wanted more. Working with the kids made her want to have the title of a real teacher. For the past 2 years, my mom decided to enroll in the community college in Calvert County so that she could get her degree and be a full-time teacher, planning to graduate with her masters later this year.
Being a teacher for a younger grade range can be challenging because sometimes it can feel like you are babysitting, rather than teaching since most of the time you are running around chasing 4-year-old children all day. Although teaching young kids can be hard, there are challenges that can come with any age range. The kids at the preschool go to school Monday through Wednesday from 9-12. There is a lesson plan book that the teachers use to create a lesson for the day, so they can either use what examples the book has for what the students need to learn, or they can work around the book by making their own lesson. Most lessons are engaging ones that the teachers use to keep the younger students’ attention and focus. If a lesson is too much of just learning, the students can tend to zone out or will talk to their friends. With activities incorporated into the lesson, the students can have fun while also learning the material.
As I interviewed my mother on her journey to teaching, I was able to get an inside view of both the hardships and rewards of working with a younger age range of children. Overall, students tend to overlook the job of a teacher, but now knowing all that goes into the teaching field and teaching in general, they can realize what it’s like to be a teacher.
