ECEC 202 - Learning Narrative

      I learned a lot of administration strategies when I worked at UBC Daycares, from my mentor's, the managers of Acadia Daycare and Coho Infant Centre. They told me about the responsibilities of administrators, with very few extra benefits of having a promoted role. I put the strategies I had learned into practice when I began my current job as an ECE at a preschool attached to an elementary school. As it is a new school, the administrators have many roles, and as a result the ECE Director is not always available. In January, the director was unable to come to our professional development days, and had recently fired the floater position due to lack of funds. Myself and 8 other ECE staff were left with the task of making each of our schedules, the students schedules, and distributing the role of the floater position to each staff.
      I believe that during the four professional development days, I exhibited all of the learning outcomes of ECEC 202. I played an integral role of developing goals and schedules, but beyond the paperwork, I strove to ensure our program be of a high quality and meet provincial and federal standards. Myself and a co-worker were still doing our ECE programs at the time, and we would often joke about the "best practice" we learned from our textbooks compared to the reality of what we had to deal with. It was a humbling experience that made me think twice about wanting to be a Director of my own ECEC one day.
     In addition to all the planning we developed, we also made a case of what resources we required and took it to the two owners (the board) to discuss budgeting and finances that were desperately needed. In the end, we made our case and they agreed to find room in the budget for to hire a floater. We also argued for a sandbox, and took our case to the parents association and are fortunate to now have two large outdoor sandboxes.
      Lastly, we advocated for having external presenters for our professional development days. Our school has hosted other early childhood educators to come and look at our space and discuss our program philosophy, but we felt that we also needed to go out and explore other programs. I am very excited that I have a child's psychiatrist coming to discuss social-emotional health issues with the staff at my centre, after I recently reached out to the community due to some issues I have had difficulty dealing with for a student of my class.


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