Is it time for a job change, or can I make this work?

January 21, 2019 2:21 PM

If it is time for a change, where can I turn? And how can I cope with my current job while looking for something else?

As the long weekend comes to a close, I'm feeling the same dread and anixety that I feel at the end of every weekend. Except this time, enough is enough and I want to stop feeling like this.

I work in a preschool currently, as a Pre-K teacher. When I was hired, I was told this is a classroom of four-year-olds. After joining, I found out these are three year olds as well, and my boss continues enrolling children who have just turned three, cannot follow the Pre-K curriculum, and disrupt my class whenever I try teaching. A majority of them also have behavioral problems, such as climbing shelves, and throwing toys at each others heads and at teachers as well. I have a coteacher who doesn't do her share of the work. She went on vacation last week when it was her turn to teach without writing any lesson plans, and I wore myself out picking up her slack.

Parents complain about my classroom, saying I am disorganized and my room is a mess; not realizing how difficult it is all day. Not realizing that I was duped when I interviewed. My boss blames me, saying I'm not "firm" enough. She knows that I have PCOS and possible fibromyalgia, that I live in pain daily, that I can't work late...yet she keeps me a half hour past my shift daily, due to us being short-staffed. She never gives us planning time, (I was met with silence when I asked), and I end up taking work home in addition to a very long and tiring work day. Not to mention, this place is very ungrateful. I stayed until 8:30 on a Friday a few weeks ago to help organize the classroom, and never even got a thank you.

A little background on me: I'm a 30 year old woman and have a Bachelors and Master's in English. My aspiration was to work in a university as an Academic Adviser or in Student Affairs. I haven't been able to get into the field for years, and I finished my degree in 2013. I interviewed for an Enrollment Management position a few years ago, and was declined after three interviews due to not enough relevant experience. I can't wvwn get an Administrative Assistant position in higher education, because of being "overqualified." I find this ridiculous and have therefore stopped looking for the past 8 months or so. I also live alone due to a very abusive family, so all the cooking/cleaning/adulting is on me, in addition to my painful health issues, and anxiety and depression. I also have a significant other who's been with me five years, but still won't move in with me.

I don't know where to turn anymore. I'm exhausted, mentally and spiritually. I'm overworked, underpaid, disrespected, worn out, and unfulfilled. I still want a higher ed job, but I don't know if that's meant to be. I've tried for so long. I do enjoy working with kids, so possibly an educational assistant position at an elementary school is an option. I could look for other desk jobs, but I don't know what could be fulfilling for me, and I know I enjoy working with students. I could continue trying to make this current job work, (because I do enjoy the four years olds), but I don't know how to improve the situation. I'm just confused, and would like some help with finding a direction to go in.

Thank you in advance.

posted by summertimesadness1988 to Work & Money (9 answers total)

Best answer: I was you about 25 years ago,but at the high school special ed level. I was also in my early 30s and single. Took a new teaching job and figured out by the second day that I’d been lied to in order to get me to take the job. It was beyond horrible, and I woke up every day knowing that I was going to go to work and fail. I completely know what you mean when you say you’re feeling exhausted, disrespected, worn out, and unfulfilled. I couldn’t even get away from the stress on the weekends because I would already be dreading the upcoming week. My heart really goes out to you. That is no way to live.

I saw a therapist to help me with coping strategies. My therapist very quickly helped me realize that I didn’t need strategies to help me stay—I needed strategies to help me get out. I ended up breaking my contract and leaving at the end of the first quarter. I took a full time retail job to pay my bills and figure out what to do next. For me, that ended up being leaving teaching. But the point is that for my physical, mental, and emotional health I had to leave that job and its toxic environment in order to figure things out. It was literally the hardest choice I’ve ever had to make. I have NEVER regretted it. Not for a single second.

If there is ANY way that you can leave, I would strongly consider it. I know that’s easier to say than to do. It’s ok if the next job you get isn’t your dream job—if it allows you to pay your bills and sleep at night it’ll be worth it. I can’t emphasize this enough—You need to be healthy to make decisions about your future, and it doesn’t sound like your current job is healthy for you at all.

Please feel free to memail me if you’d like to talk to someone who has been there. I sincerely mean that. Sending a hug your way if you want it.
posted by bookmammal at 3:05 PM on January 21, 2019 [11 favorites]

Your job sounds very tough and lacking in appropriate support. I think you are 100% right to want to quit and move on.

I still want a higher ed job,
Are you looking across your region (or even across the country?) Are you looking at Big State U, small liberal arts colleges, community colleges, historically women’s and black institutions?

There are a lot of higher ed places, so I’d suggest putting all your frustration into job apps, and considering expanding your search.

Also the bit about a 5 yr partner who doesn’t want to cohabitate may be worth thinking more about. In my world, that’s a fine arrangement if you both want to live separate, but a bit off in the case that you want to live together and they are against it.
posted by SaltySalticid at 4:46 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

If you need a job to pay the bills while you find something more suitable, temping is an option. Contact all the temp agencies and have them find you a job filing papers and answering the phone for a few months while someone is on maternity leave or whatever. Less stressful and if you're lucky you can get some kind of experience to add on your resume.
posted by Green Eyed Monster at 4:59 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

It sounds like you don’t have any training about how to teach 3 and 4 year olds? Why do you have lesson plans? What’s the ratio? It doesn’t sound like a good scene at all, and you should just find a temp job ASAP.
posted by schwinggg! at 6:21 PM on January 21, 2019

Response by poster: No, my educational training was not in early childhood. I am trained at the job. But when I asked for help/training on how to cope with the children who climb shelves, all I got was “you need to be firm.”

Our lesson plans consist of planning activities for the kids. We are required to do them; although, my boss has been rudely stepping in with activities of her own. I feel like she’s heavily implying that I’m doing stuff right but she still won’t give me the information I need to do better.

The ratio is 10:1.
posted by summertimesadness1988 at 6:35 PM on January 21, 2019 [1 favorite]

Ask your boss to show you how it’s done, how they manage and react when two or three start climbing and throwing at once. You might learn something, or perhaps convince them that they need to change something sooner rather than later in this (seemingly untenable) situation and current approach.
posted by SaltySalticid at 6:49 PM on January 21, 2019

Best answer: Honestly, I would just leave as soon as you're able to find a job that seems like a better fit. Your boss sounds very unsupportive and it's hard to do a good job in that kind of environment. Life is too short to feel this way long term.

My mom was a preschool teacher until she retired a couple years ago and she dealt with many of the same issues, especially constantly having to do work at home. She was basically working for like 5$ an hour once all of the prep time, cleaning, etc. was factored in! I have come to the conclusion that preschool teachers are incredibly underpaid, undervalued, and overworked, and that the job is incredibly difficult because it's managing numerous small children (and 3 year olds range from little kids to large toddlers in demeanor) WHILE trying to educate them. Plus dealing with the parents *sigh*.

You have my sympathy, and a recommendation to find a better working environment that will utilize your skills without making you feel like this. I'm not familiar enough with the child ed field to recommend specific jobs, but I think it would be worth casting a broad net (while sticking to working with actual kids in some capacity since you enjoy it). Maybe there are non-school jobs that would fit the bill? While you're looking take the temp suggestions above, and ask any suitable contacts in the field that you might have to put out feelers for you. Best of luck whatever direction you go in!
posted by DTMFA at 8:11 PM on January 21, 2019 [2 favorites]

A friend of mine was in a similar situation except with kindergarden and first graders combined in a room. It's a losing proposition to combine two mixes of extremely small children and what drove her out of teaching altogether after that year. She got canned for not being able to separately manage the two groups and gave up on teaching any more after that. And trying to get into university administration seems nigh impossible these days (someone told me that there were 200 people up for a job in their enrollment management department recently). A master's degree rules you out of assistant jobs and I guess the "haven't done the job before" rules you out of the rest. Unfortunately they ask for the moon these days and get it when they hire.

I fear you will need to try a third career altogether, or possibly job hunt in other areas and leave your partner behind (I'm not going to attempt to figure out that one but I wouldn't hold up life plans to be with him if he doesn't want to progress further). My ex-teacher friend has been making it with a bunch of tiny Internet jobs--not TaskRabbit but similar--and while I can't speak for her finances, she seems happier. At this point you might need to give up on "fulfilling" and just find anything else you can that's less stressful. Unfortunately from what happened to my friend, I don't think that is a job that you can succeed at, so I'd say to string it out as long as you can but plan to try to find something else after this year is up.

People tell me that desk jobs with the state will pay you more if you have degrees, so maybe that might be an option for you to look at in your state. And well...removing the master's degree from your resume might be a good idea when applying for jobs that don't expect you to have one.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:04 PM on January 21, 2019

So I wanted to come back to hopefully offer some more concrete ideas and reflections, based on having had my kid in an absurdly wide variety of daycares and preschools between the ages of 2 to 4 -- church basement, corporate for-profit, public, unlicensed above a liquor store on a terrible corner, Montessori, non-profit ...

First of all, I think the BIG thing you should know is that teaching (and managing) preschool is a PROFESSION. That is - people get degrees in this, there are often extensive licensing requirements for the facilities and their day-to-day operations, there are professional associations, there is research and researchers. It's not the kind of thing you can do with no training, badly designed facilities, and poor management. That's not to say that small, humble preschools can't be good (of the above list, the "unlicensed above a liquor store" was actually an extremely nurturing place that was fantastic for my kid at a tricky point in his development.) But, you can't just run a preschool without a great deal of organization, care, and experience. It really sounds like you're getting none of that. So my #1 advice is: leave, ASAP. And don't spend a second thinking that the problems you had were something about you alone -- you're obviously in an extremely poorly run and supported setting.

The rest of this advice is based on the premise that you can't leave yet. So:

- Schedule and routine. THIS is what you need instead of lesson plans -- a schedule that you use every single day with the activities timed to the minute. You teach the kids what happens next and how to follow rules in a group setting. Yes, you will have to prep the activities, but the "plan" is really the schedule and the routine, not the activities. Have the activities be super simple and brainless -- even just coloring in a worksheet, studying one letter a day, having a different kid stand up and give a weather report, rotating toy stations where the kids get to chose where they play for 20 minutes.

- Teach rules. In my kid's well-run classrooms, teaching RULES was really a huge part of the day: we sit for circle time. We line up for the bathroom. We hold onto the rope or our buddy's hand to walk outside. Figuring out how to teach rules should be what you're using your time for, not to plan activities.

- The bad kids. My kid was one of these. You need to split them up with the other teacher and always devote extra attention to them. That's the only way it works -- the bad kids get extra attention. Sorry! Ignore as much bad behavior as you can, praise as much good behavior as you can, and limit negative attention as much as possible. The better you get your routine, the better you'll do with the bad kids, because they are often the kids who need the routine the most.

- Training. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) is a great organization with a TON of information on their website about preschool. Here's one training you could do on developmentally appropriate practice for preschoolers.

And here's NAEYC content that is tagged classroom management.
Good luck!
posted by schwinggg! at 8:46 AM on January 22, 2019 [2 favorites]