Daycare

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed by my job and what I'm going to have to do to follow the policies for the company I work for.  I've been in training for the past few days and it felt like all I was hearing was, "You must do.." or, "You must never do...".   I want to let every person know this: even though I will be working for a daycare company, I AM a teacher.  It may not be recognized by other companies or apartments, as far as being able to get a discount.  To say that someone who works in a daycare setting is not a teacher is absolutely wrong.  From infants to pre-K to after school programs, the staff that work at daycare centers influences every child's way of thinking about learning, about their peers, and about themselves.  So I guess this is my tribute to daycare teachers everywhere.  We don't get the same respect and influence that public school teachers have, and they don't get all that much either. We teach at the daycare centers because we love our kids.  We love working with the younger children and seeing them grow in many ways that teachers in public schools will never get to see.  We see the very beginnings of language development, math development, and social development.  No amount of money will be able to make up for that.  That's why we, or at least I, will take a job that pays very little monetarily but that pays a lot in the joy of children.  Over the summer, I worked with a group of four year olds.  While I was playing football with a few of the boys, they began to talk about what they wanted to be when they grow up:
Boy 1: When I grow up, I'm going to be a football player, and a basketball player, and a soccer player.
Boy 2: When I grow up, I'm going to be an astronaut.
Me: When I grow up, I want to be a teacher.
Boy 2: (smiles) No! You're already a teacher.
That's when I realized that even though I don't work for a public school, I AM a teacher.  The children see me as a teacher and that's what counts.  I don't work there for me or my bosses, but for the kids. The words I say, the environment I set up, and the lessons I plan will impact these children for the beginning of their public school careers, if not their lifetime.