Zoe Girl
9-20-16, 10:37pm
I will say it is going pretty well. I have a LOT of little kids. My primary childcare program has 50 kids, 20 are 1st grade and another 6 are kindergarten, that means less than half the program is 2nd-5th. I have other after school clubs that are really full, I have had to make adjustments because they are so big and I can't give my teachers that big of programs. That is a great problem to have. I already have about 180 kids registered for at least one program out of a school of about 450 and some are 3 and 4 year olds that I can't serve.
So the positives are the full programs and lots of happy people. Good relationship with the school and principal. I am functionally staffed, not critically short staffed. I am getting a lot of support for my mindfulness work, a struggle to get the time to make this work but it feels like it supports me. And I think I get to go to an amazing conference and represent our department.
The negative are the f*ing paperwork and crap. I got an email that my goals are due, goals cascaded down from the department. Nothing unusual there, although the timing of the deadline sucks for me starting school 3 weeks later than any other school. And what really bothers me is that these goals and KPIs look very much like the ones I wrote for my site 2-3 years ago, now the whole department is doing the same thing. However no one has every given me comments, feedback, etc. for when I had those goals. There are 3 things that I am seeing the department as a whole adopting that I started, without anymore more than minimal support without any type of conversation or feedback, which feels a little like stealing my ideas? But not really. Again nothing unusual in the workplace, but that leads to the other challenge, ...
the workload. I am there every morning at 6:15 and leave about 6:30 pm. I can take a break in the middle of the day and have done some DR appointments and one nap. My staff is very new and needs a lot of hands on training. So I am trying to write goals like 89% of youth will report being challenged after school, in actuality I am dealing with things like staff having drawing paper out before program starts. I am trying to hire, and the HR system is messed up and I am the hiring manager. So I need to fix it so that I can get my morning hours back, but I am working morning hours which means I don't have as much time.
I can see this settling within a month when my staff is more trained and I have some people through the hiring process. I feel like writing this out is helping actually, I am more positive than I felt on my drive home.
So the positives are the full programs and lots of happy people. Good relationship with the school and principal. I am functionally staffed, not critically short staffed. I am getting a lot of support for my mindfulness work, a struggle to get the time to make this work but it feels like it supports me. And I think I get to go to an amazing conference and represent our department.
The negative are the f*ing paperwork and crap. I got an email that my goals are due, goals cascaded down from the department. Nothing unusual there, although the timing of the deadline sucks for me starting school 3 weeks later than any other school. And what really bothers me is that these goals and KPIs look very much like the ones I wrote for my site 2-3 years ago, now the whole department is doing the same thing. However no one has every given me comments, feedback, etc. for when I had those goals. There are 3 things that I am seeing the department as a whole adopting that I started, without anymore more than minimal support without any type of conversation or feedback, which feels a little like stealing my ideas? But not really. Again nothing unusual in the workplace, but that leads to the other challenge, ...
the workload. I am there every morning at 6:15 and leave about 6:30 pm. I can take a break in the middle of the day and have done some DR appointments and one nap. My staff is very new and needs a lot of hands on training. So I am trying to write goals like 89% of youth will report being challenged after school, in actuality I am dealing with things like staff having drawing paper out before program starts. I am trying to hire, and the HR system is messed up and I am the hiring manager. So I need to fix it so that I can get my morning hours back, but I am working morning hours which means I don't have as much time.
I can see this settling within a month when my staff is more trained and I have some people through the hiring process. I feel like writing this out is helping actually, I am more positive than I felt on my drive home.