My new job at a play-based childcare centre.

By the time I finish on this post, I would have finished my first week at the new long day care centre in Wyndham Vale. It is a centre that employs a play-based program to the Australian Early Years learning program. Yup, I am now no longer working in a Montessori centre!

Surprise, surprise!

It is not that I do not want to work in a Montessori centre any longer, but having worked in three different Montessori centres in the past two years, I realised that leadership and management is one of the key elements that could make or break the sustainability of loyalty and morale in the workplace. 

I have been taking my time getting to know the children, learning about their routines, and teaching them new transition songs. Today I had to do programming and finally learnt a little more on how to use Storypark.

Storypark is a premium subscriber based online Australian website platform used for early childhood programming for the Australian early years curriculum.

The beauty of Storypark is that you can upload the pictures on the website, and then you log in to finish the work even at home using your own computer/desktop/laptop/iPad etc. It is designed to work in real time so once you have published a child observation/Learning Story, the children whose parents you have tagged will be notified of the post and will view it in real time. 

In a way, it is its own version of Facebook but with higher levels of security and only limited to parents who are already registered to it.

I would not say that StoryPark does not have its technical difficulties (as I just experienced one after finishing this post over the weekend!). I had published a learning story and even printed off the post, but upon returning home, I realised that the post had not been saved and it was one of the moments when I looked in horror just realising what had happened!! 

Fortunately, I was able to fix the technicality due to some networking, and managed to fix the post and it was all good at the end of it. At least I learnt that we need to always double check our work, and nothing is ever full proof, even if the system has already been set up. 

The first week at work has been a smooth experience. Doing the fortnightly lesson programming is far more easier than I thought, as I only need to do one copy specifically for the Early Years learning framework. 

I also have a wonderful student teacher,J, also doing the second week of her uni placement. She is in the fourth year, and has many wonderful ideas for the classroom. She has been of much assistance in the classroom and gets along very well with the children. She will do very well when she graduates and starts working. 

My new employer manages 180 centres Australia wide, so it even has its own social media network across all the 180 centres (and more every month!). It is a little over my head at the moment just taking every thing in, so I am trying to pace myself and take each day as it comes. 

For now, I’m just going to enjoy the long weekend and wait till next Tuesday to start work.