Sharing

Recently I've been experiencing situations where it's not good to share and where more sharing should be allowed to happen.

For the first situation, the central office is trying an experiment with my class and the class next door in which we have to share a classroom aide. They want us to prove that a classroom aide is needed because they would like to save money by not having classroom aides anymore. On Tuesday, we spent about 2 hours together trying to figure out how we could all get our breaks, that are required legally, as well as have the proper supervision ratio of teachers/students, which is also required. It was pretty much impossible. We figured out a way to do it, if the office would allow the lunch aide who serves both classes to get an extra half an hour added to her time each day so she could be with us when we are outside so we can get our breaks. I'm guessing it got approved, because we went ahead and put our plan into action today, and it went smoothly. If this alone doesn't prove we need them, I don't know what will.

The part that didn't go smoothly as a result of our plan was our actual class schedule. The outside times have to be at certain times in order for us to have the lunch aide there to help us, so we have to adapt our schedule to that. The morning class went okay. We were all a bit frazzled because it was the first day and we are learning by trial and error of what we each need to do to make things work. The afternoon class, however, was a flop. We ended up have an extra hour of time and so we just let the kids play in the classroom. They couldn't sit for more than 5 minutes at the circle, which is expected for 3 year olds, but 4 year olds usually do at least a few minutes longer than that. Granted, it was only the first day, and we understood that. The main problem we have is a huge block of time after outside time that we don't know what to do with the kids when they've already played in the classroom for an hour before outside time. Outside time is already 45 minutes instead of the usual half an hour, so when it gets cold and that is shorter, we will have a lot longer time to fill in the classroom. The schedule feels so disjointed and backwards to me. Part of that is also because we can no longer have a half an hour arrival and pick up time like we used to and kids have to be served food at certain times. Mmmm that's where that extra time came from!

Overall, the first day wasn't that bad. Tomorrow the second half of each class will come and it will feel like Groundhog's Day because we will be doing the same exact things, even down to what we are eating for snacks and lunch. Fun! I'm just a little nervous to have all 16 kids come on Tuesday! It will be absolutely insane. We will handle it, though, I'm sure.

The other aspect of sharing I mentioned was a situation where we should be able to share more. On Tuesday we were told by HR the difference between exempt and non-exempt employees. The teacher is exempt and the assistant teacher is non-exempt. Exempt means that the teachers work until the job is done, whether it takes more than their required 40 hours a week or less.  They do not get paid overtime. Non-exempt means assistant teachers (like myself) are required to work 40 hours a week and they get paid time-and-a-half if they work overtime. HOWEVER, federal regulation for our program says that no part of the federal funding can go toward paying overtime, which means, if assistant teachers work any overtime that is not pre-approved by our director, we will be subject to disciplinary action. Yikes.

What this means in real life is, that as soon as the clock hits 4:30 pm, I HAVE to leave otherwise I am going against the law and could possibly be fired. With that said, I could be helping clean up the classroom or preparing the classroom for the next days activities (which I may be in charge of teaching) or there might be some paper work or other project the teacher needs my help doing and I will HAVE TO leave when my 8 hours are up and leave the rest for the teacher to do. If I do go over, I will have to leave early on Friday, which is my preparation day. This all leaves very little time for the teacher and I to talk to each other about the class or coordinate things on a day to day basis. It also means the teachers get the short end of the stick and have to carry the heavy load of responsibilities all by themselves. It's ridiculous. They also said no "volunteering" my time to help the teacher or working at home. So... when am I supposed to get done what I am supposed to do, like planning? I know it's a legality issue, but if that is the case, why not make assistant teachers exempt? Seriously, because most assistant teachers will most likely "volunteer" their time or work at home anyway and lie on their time sheets anyway. I can't honestly do that myself, but it will be really hard to not be able to help my teacher as much as she needs me to help her. It will also be hard to not have enough time to do what I need to do for my own teaching preparation.

On a more positive note, one of the kids that came today only could remember my name from when we visited her house so she kept calling the other teacher my name. It was cute. Then to have the kids try to say my name is really cute, too. The kids in the afternoon class really wanted to include me in their dramatic play and I absolutely loved it. One little boy wanted to play "house and robots." I was a robot and he fed me lots and lots of "food." Yum.