Preschool

Before moving to the Dominican Republic, I was a teacher. I graduated with a degree in Early Childhood Education for regular and special ed.  With this degree, I can work in a variety of different careers with children from birth to 8 years old.  My first year, I taught a 4 year old at-risk classroom.  Then I spent three years teaching an Early Childhood Special Ed classroom.  When I decided to move down to the DR, I was actually in the middle of preparing for a new career as a Developmental Therapist, working with children birth to three years in their homes.  I have always been passionate about my jobs and I enjoyed going to workshops and taking classes to learn more.  It was my dream to go back to school and get my master's at the Erikson Institute in Chicago and maybe one day work as a Child Life Specialist in a hospital.  If there is one thing that I know about, it is how to teach young children.  I would not call myself an expert yet, but it is definitely my thing.

When I moved here to the DR, I started as the English teacher.  For the first school year I taught English to Kindergarten through 3rd grade.  However, almost immediately I felt led to get more involved in the preschool.  This past school year I taught kindergarten through fifth grade English and I started taking on some administrative responsibilities at the preschool.  It was nice for me because I was directly involved with every student at our school last year, but balancing the two was difficult and I was not able to accomplish everything I hoped to at the preschool.  This year I am focused 100% on the preschool.  I guess my title would be preschool principal or preschool coordinator.  Basically I am in charge of the preschool as a whole.  This new role is both inside and outside of my comfort zone at the same time.

It is inside my comfort zone because I am back to doing my thing.  I am very comfortable in my own knowledge of how to teach preschoolers.  God has given me a gift for understanding very young children, understanding why they do what they do, how they learn, how to deal with behavior problems, and how to build relationships with them.  I feel very useful in my new position and I am so thankful to be using my gifts to be helping the school.

It is outside of my comfort zone because I have never been the boss before.  I was used to being responsible for my own students and maybe an assistant.  Now, I am responsible for 80 students, 4 teachers, and 4 assistants.  Two of my teachers are first-year teachers.  When there is a problem, I am the one who responsible for taking care of it.  Of course, I have help from Shelley and Guille and Eddy. But it is my responsibility.

I have also never been responsible for teaching other teachers.  The teachers of the preschool are wonderful women and they are so hard-working and want to do their best for their students.  I am so thankful for the teachers our pre-school has been blessed with.  However, I am introducing many new concepts and many new ideas about how to teach and how children learn.  They are open to learning new things, but what I am teaching them is very far outside their comfort zones, plus we have the added difficulty of the language barrier.  My Spanish is improving daily, but since I had no formal Spanish classes, it can still be a barrier at times.  God is helping us all with this and I am so excited about the progress that has been made and the relationships that I am building with the students and the staff. 

Last week we had our first teacher work day.  It was my first time leading that type of meeting.  It went really well and I was very encouraged.  Next week our first grading period ends, so we have evaluations, report cards, and parent-teacher conferences coming up.  Please keep us all in your prayers as we continue to do our best for the children that God brings to our school.