All praises to teachers

I went with the kid's class to Tibet-Butler Preserve today, and came away not with new knowledge about nature but with even more respect for teachers (and as the daughter of a teacher, my respect level was already pretty doggone high).

Even though each child had a parent present ostensibly to keep everything under control, the energy and noise levels were incredibly high. Frustratingly high, in fact. Somehow, though, the preschool teachers managed to enforce order and, when warranted, encourage silence with a minimum of fuss. It was amazing.

They have skill sets I don't possess. It would be difficult for me to keep that number of children from accidentally maiming themselves each day.

Power and respect to them. They should be paid more highly.

Repost: Choosing a preschool is no fun

I've contributed to the Orlando Sentinel's Moms at Work blog since 2010. The blog is changing content management systems and my old posts will no longer be available to the public, so I'm reposting them here, in the order that they were originally posted.


Feb. 6, 2013

OK, I'll admit it: I'm in over my head.

As my husband and I try to determine where almost-4-year-old kiddo will attend school this fall, we're completely overwhelmed. It's hard not to be, what with the applications, open houses, evaluation sessions, and in most cases, sheets of paper detailing registration and tuition costs.

I think I've collected more preschool brochures and website information than I did when I was trying to determine which college I wanted to attend.

I'm not even sure how we'll make a final decision. The schools all seem to be of similar quality, so I tell myself that they're the same and it doesn't matter which one I choose.

But each time I try to convince myself that choosing a preschool isn't a big deal because she's still so young, I'll read or hear about something disturbing happening at a preschool and want instead to question everything I know, have heard or am told about various schools.

What we've found, though, is that there just aren't that many differences between the school that prides itself on its academics and tightly-knit community and the one that instead touts its...tightly-knit community and academics.

Even though we'd prefer to choose a school based on unimpeachable empirical evidence of its superiority, that doesn't seem to exist (it's still preschool, after all), so we're really left to make a decision based on our feelings.

We've got a few weeks before we'll make a final decision, so we'll continue to muddle through our options.

How did you choose which school was best for your small child?