Saturday, October 27, 2007

About Our Classroom

As this is my first post, I'll share a little bit about me and my classroom. This is my second year as a preschool teacher in a youth ministry of a Christian church. While we are a ministry, we do not teach any doctrine and welcome those of all backgrounds. Our jobs as teachers are primarily to set up the classroom environment so that kids can explore and learn about our world. Teachers are present to help children with social interactions and to learn about the environment. It's a play-based program. We can talk about curriculum in another post.

I teach with one co-teacher and one parent helper each day. The co-teacher I started the year with has had to move on to a full time position and ours is a half time program. My new co-teacher is new to teaching and relatively new to the program. We are learning about each other and trying to keep things fun while we're doing it.

I teach two mornings a week. We share the room with two other teachers on the alternate days, so we have to work to coordinate with them. While our class has several children that will turn 2 and 3, their class is primarily toddlers who will just be turning 2 this year. So we need to be aware of their needs and the possibility of toys that may not be appropriate for their bunch. They also have food allergies (nuts and shelfish) that our class does not. Last year my entire class was 3 before the end of the year, so we were able to do more things with toys that would be considered choking hazards for my current age group.

I have two children of my own. One is in the pre-K class in my preschool and the other is in Kindergarten. If it weren't for them I would never have figured out what to do with myself when I grew up.

Any questions? What do you want to read about? Lesson plans? How we deal with or prevent conflict? Working with parents? Do tell!

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