These past six months or so have been very tumultuous for me...I've gone through a huge transition from being a nanny and part of three children's daily lives to zero contact with them. I've been unemployed with ample time to see myself and my life. I've spent two ~~gluttonous~~ glorious weeks in New York City. I've bounced around from school to school substitute teaching. And most recently, I've been challenged to stay put in a long-term position as a preschool teacher.

As a preschool teacher, I've learned a couple things:
1. What my parent's taught me growing up will always be true: You never know what's going on in someone else's life. So many of the kids in this class come from families that mean well, but are so overwhelmed and under resourced that there is often stress and dysfunction in the home. Which of course overflows into the classroom and the children's behavior with their peers and adults. It's virtually impossible to get 20 children focused on you at the same time.
2. I am an expert in child development. I recently engaged in parent-teacher conferences (after working with the kids for four days...) and through these conferences I gained a new confidence about myself-my background in education and my common sense, as well as my ability to be genuine and connect with families. It felt very vindicating...to know that my time and (grandmother's) money was well spent on my degrees.
3. I do not want to work with preschool age children.
4. I do however enjoy the lesson planning process and diving into best practices, according to the things I've learned in my family studies and child development programs. This realization has me thinking about looking for a job that is based on curriculum building and/or research.
5. I am way harder on myself that I should be. I've heard over and over again that you need to talk to yourself as you would talk to a loved one. And for the most part I am pretty gentle with myself. But through this process I have chastised myself for not being patient enough, for not being experienced enough, for not being engaged enough...
6. I am enough

All this to say, I so badly want to bail on this assignment. I want to run from the anxiety and the self-doubt and the feelings of iniquity. But I'm also trying to listen to the universe and accept that I am here for a reason-that there is something to be learned or gained (or maybe even released) from this whole experience...Until then, I'll dream of the light at the end of this daunting tunnel.

xxo