Changing Pace

I have embarked on a new path - one that I resisted for a long time.  I joined an agency with my day home, and became licensed and accredited.  There are many perks in doing this, and the biggest one is that I will now be making more money.  You see, the government in my province has this great funding program for licensed Family Day Homes where they pay you an hourly wage on top of your rates if you have an education in early childhood.  For me, since I have a teaching degree, I didn't have to get any other education to qualify for the top wage.  So, now I hold a Level Three Child Care Qualification, which makes me a Child Care Supervisor.  So, that's good, and makes what I do a little more worth while.  There are about a million other things I have to do to go along with it, so my day home has become much less casual. 

I have always done educational activities with my day home kids, and we play and go for walks and do all sorts of fun stuff, but I haven't done a lot of extra work or planning for it.  Now I have to.  I have to program activities for each child in my care based on learning goals set out for them that are appropriate for their ages and interests.  Then I have to log all my hours of planning and I must provide visual evidence that I actually did all these things for licensing.  It's beginning to sound a lot like teaching!

I opened a day home so I could stay home with my kids until they are both in school, and then my plan was to move on to something else, preferably in my field, which is middle school.  Now I find myself essentially becoming a preschool teacher in my home.  I must say, this is not the direction I thought I would be taking in my career.  I love kids, and more and more, I enjoy working with the younger ones, but I didn't foresee this path.  Now that I have signed my contract and I'm fully licensed, I have realized that I have delayed this for so long because I am not ready to let go of my teaching career for this.  Signing that contract made me feel like I am stepping into a whole new game, and it made having a day home much more real.  It made it more legitimate in a sense, and that is something that I feared.  I wanted this to be that in-between-thing-I-did-while-my-kids-were-young kind of thing, not a new career direction, which is what it now feels like.

Right now, I am trying to come to terms with those emotions, and though I fully realize that I can quit anytime and find another job, my circumstances make it unlikely that I will do this in the near future.  I don't know how others do it, but I can't afford child care for two kids, so I am the one who provides it.  The permanency of having to actually sign a contract weighs on me, even though I still planned on doing this a few more years.  Now I need to put more focus into expanding my education and learning some principles of early childhood education. 

This is a great change of pace, but one that comes with a little bit of reluctance.  I don't know if I need to just let go of those old aspirations and accept what I have, or if I need to just put them off for a later date.  Either way, I need to focus my attention in the here and now, and stop being so reluctant to jump right in.  I guess the biggest thing is that I feel as though my long and expensive education is going to waste right now, because I am not teaching and haven't been able to make it in the field, even though I graduated in 2004.  I should have a permanent contract right now, and be doing what I originally set out to do.  But here I am, almost seven years after earning a teaching degree and I have almost nothing to show for it.  Even now, I feel my stomach sinking at the thought. 

But I digress.  I have embarked, however reluctantly, on a new path in my career, and I just need to accept it and move on.  I need to dive right in and immerse myself in all things early-childhood/pre-K, and focus my energy into making this the success I know it can be.  I have got to stop being reluctant and regretting my decisions.  I think it's holding me back from really doing an amazing job and truly being able to enjoy myself.

Are there things in your life that you thought would be different?  How do you deal with changes in your life plan?  For me, it's a hard pill to swallow because I am one of those people who has a plan, and I hate divergences.  How do you accept what life throws at you?