Personal Narrative: The Joy Of Working With Children

When I was just 4 years old I went to Funtastik Preschool and Daycare. I went there for an entire year. It was a very fun school. Usually in the mornings I would get dropped off with all the other kids and all the kids would get to play inside with toys. Then we would have breakfast. After breakfast we went outside and played on the playground. After the playground we went inside to have a nap. Most of the time after a nap we would go and watch a movie on the carpet. Then we would go outside once again. At the end of the day we would go back on the carpet and watch another movie and wait for our parents to arrive to pick us up.

By the way of introduction, I am Aleem Punja's cousin and he suggested I reach out to you to explore possible opportunities at the Children's Aid Society of Toronto.

I have been a preschool teacher, teaching mixed age children from 18 months to 5 years, for over 10 years. I started as a work study employee, while attending the Community College of Philadelphia in 2006, to a part-time teaching assistant while attending Temple University in 2010. This led me to a lead-teacher position after graduation and then to a program coordinator. I have developed effective working relationships with children in the past years. This position has helped me improve my teamwork and interpersonal skills by cooperating with other teachers in planning teaching materials according to the Reggio Emilia approach and by sharing teaching resources. I decided that working with children, understanding and assisting in their education,

Like many people everyone wants to find their calling and figure out where they belong. My parents moved to the United States risking their lives on a boat from Haiti but soon separated while in america . My mom did a great job raising four kids on her own and I being the second child took part in raising my two younger siblings. In elementary school I struggled in many subjects but excelled in art, when I finally learned to read and went to middle school my grades were high enough to have honors reading and social study classes and even apa classes in highschool. I continued to excel in a lot of my classes, turns out I was smarter than I thought and all I need to do was learn to read and have people who took the time to teach me.

Maybe I was too little, or maybe I was too short, but either way I did not make the jump. In the second grade I was your average eight year old, who always wore her hair in ponytails, and enjoyed playing tag at recess. One day I saw the fifth graders on the monkey bars at recess doing something I had never seen before, they were jumping to the fourth bar. I waited untill Kids Inc. that day to try the jump, but it was no use I was acting like a scared baby.

It was hour four. I glanced at the tiny digital clock on the dusty, outdated, desktop computer. “Five minutes left in free play!” I yelled over the jumbled sound of Mario Kart, xylophones and freeze dance. The daycare had almost a club atmosphere at this point as muffled dance music blasted through the speakers; the only partition between the high-energy fitness center and us was a thin wall of glass, littered with sticky handprints. There were currently thirty children ranging from ages 3 to 12 and it was up to me my coworker to watch all of them, do payments and update the roster. She was busy with the infants, leaving me to take care of everything else. Much like a general getting ready for war, I prepared myself. Sometimes, the room would have up to 40 kids in it at once, so I had to be an authoritarian. I knew I had it in me; I had practice using my voice working at the preschool.

Well, I am a student and I’ve been doing volunteering for the past four years. A lot of it had me involved with kids and I absolutely loved the experience. I also love dancing and doing theater with other people and I’ve actually had the chance to teach theater classes to young kids last year. I had a lot of fun and the kids were actually attached to me, because I have an energetic and funny personality and I think that’s exactly what kids want to be around of.

The biggest accomplishment outside of the classroom I am proud of is my volunteering period at Plasp Child Care Services. Through this experience, I was able to make an impact on the lives of the children as they looked forward to meeting me every Monday. As a result of this experience, I was able to improve my valuable skills of leadership as I was required to look after the children and make the most out of their time there. Moreover, this experience has allowed me to create a unique connection with each child that will last for a long

The Middle Tyger Community Center’s volunteer coordinator, Donna Dawkins, was very excited about my interest to volunteer with their This is My Child early education program. She was able to work me into the agency’s busy schedule and was also super understanding of my packed agenda and limited time. My first volunteer experience I spent in the one year old classroom. The teachers have a routine based schedule that is performed every day. Each student is to be dropped off, find their assign seat, eat breakfast, throw away their OWN trash, and then wait their turn for their health check. When their name is called, each of the children know what they are expected to do. He or she comes to the sink, brushes their teeth, and climbs up to the changing

I was a responsible seven year old, I would say, considering my mother trusted me enough to leave me in charge of my sister as a toddler when I was still a child. This was not the first time I was in charge of my sister for a short amount of time, so nobody thought anything of it. In these twenty minutes, things took a turn for the worse when I made a simple but tragic mistake; I went to the bathroom for around two minutes, at the most. I heard Mia screaming, and so my sisterly, protective instincts kicked in.

Preschool was really cool I made a few friends I remembered their faces but not too many memories. One thing that stood out was when I had to get my mouth washed out with soap it was the worst thing ever I can still the taste of the soap as I type this, yuck. Cleaned my mouth up literally and figuratively. I can remember graduation from preschool I was super excited but I think my mother was much more excited than I. She was so happy and smiling so big I can tell she was proud of me to this day she has that same feeling as I accomplish things in my life now.

Today was a hard day for me. I wasn’t feeling well when I got up this morning, but I push through and I’m glad that I did. There is one baby in the infant classroom that want go to anyone except for me; which make me feel good in a kind away. Mrs. Wright keep on trying to work with her, but she’s very slow to warm up to people. It will just have to take time for her to adjust to the teachers. Maybe next week once I’m not in the classroom she will start to warm up to them. I know for me at times it was hard hearing her cry for me, but I couldn’t do anything because I was attending to the other babies in the classroom. It was a challenge for me, but I got over it and learn how to multitask. I couldn’t go to planning with the teachers today

Developmentally appropriate practice as already influenced my career in relations to working with children. I have worked with special needs children from different cultural backgrounds for several years and have always been able to modify any work presented to me to that of the child’s ability plus adding a little more challenge to the work at hand after they have mastered the basics of the work presented.

I have limited experience working with children. I have tutored children from my neighborhood and family members. I would help them out with their homework and prepare for exams, in social studies, reading, and some math. Tutoring included having discussions with the students, parents, and teachers to figure out what material to go over. After these discussions, I created assingments and study guides to help the students, out of the tutoring

I meet my teaching practice goals by being professional at work and out of work. It's just shows alot to the parents when see in public. That the same person they see taking care of their children is the same outside of work.