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Inside the Work Day

Careerleak's Typical Day Series goes behind the scenes in everyday careers, with articles written by the employee themselves. Find out what they are excited about, what issues they confront and more.

A Typical Day as a Kindergarten Teacher

My day as a kindergarten teacher always started at 5:10 a.m. when I’d leave home for work. I had a 20 minute commute that includes highway and interstate driving, and it’s often very foggy in the South. I’d arrive at school by 5:30, unlock the door for the day, and haul in anything I’d taken home to work on the night before.

I’m always perkiest in the mornings, so this was a great time of day for me. During the two hours before school started I spent my time planning lessons for the future and prepping materials I would need. By the end of the year the kids could do their own coloring and a lot of the prep work, but a beginning Kindergartener generally can’t use scissors much less cut anything out. So I’d do it for them.

My planning included the numerous different subjects I was teaching. I was also responsible for turning on the computers, cleaning the room, and emptying the trash. Prior to 7:30 I had to go upstairs and get my mail, communicate with any other teachers I needed to speak with, and use the restroom.

At 7:30 the bell would ring, and the children would come trouping in. During the next half hour I was expected to keep the children busy, take lunch money, fill out attendance reports, talk with any parents who came in as well as anyone else who needed anything, and help children who had trouble leaving their mother’s that day. After we said the Pledge of Allegiance (yes, they still do that in some schools), I’d start my first class.

We did calendar and morning message (a short note I wrote to the class each morning to help them learn to read and write). We put up arrows counting the days of school, and towards the end of the year we took down a star each day as we counted down (subtracted) to the end of school. Then we settled in for phonics and reading. Within the class there were children who came to school already knowing how to read, and others who weren’t able to learn reading all year long. I had one boy who read 2nd grade level, but if I tried leaving him to read on his own while I worked with the others, he spent his time smashing crayons in the lid of his desk.

Kids don’t just listen to a dry lesson any more, either. A teacher needs to sing and dance their way through the day just to keep the audience. By state mandate, reading lasted two hours, which meant I had prepared several different activities to fill each day. After reading there was a half hour that needed to be filled with any of several different lessons. Sometimes we did grammar, sometimes art projects, sometimes stories. It all depended on the day.

We went to lunch at 10:30 which made short mornings. I was expected to line the kids up, keep them quiet in the halls, and go to the lunchroom with them in order to pass out trays and make sure they got their milk, ketchup, or whatever. Since all of this was done during my own lunch period, there were many days when we teachers had no more than 10 minutes for lunch before they’d bring the kids back to us.

After lunch was math. I taught four different math curriculums in the four years I was at that school, and each one of them took new prep and materials which I was expected to come up with on my own. Kids are always keyed up after lunch, so trying to do math in that time slot was a challenge. We did a lot of manipulative activities which at least helped wear off some of the lunchroom anxieties.

Following math we had either science or social studies. There was no curriculum for this, so I created all of these lessons by myself. One year we studied the presidents. We talked about one per week starting with George Washington, and we sang a song that I “wrote” based on the tune from The Twelve Days of Christmas. “The men who run our country are called the president. George Washington, John Adams…” By the end of the year I had children who could spiel off the entire list of presidents.

Following this was my only free time each day. By the time the aides collected the children for recess and brought them back early; I had about 20 minutes free of children during the day. Most days I didn’t get to use the restroom until I was back home again around 3:30.
After recess and dealing with the resulting fights and tears, I read the children a carefully-selected story. Then it was their turn for SSR (Silent Sustained Reading). This was a time when they could choose a book from the book rack and read by themselves. We did this for about ten minutes prior to getting ready to go home.

At 2:30, we had to march the kids out the back door and around the building in case any of their parents were waiting out on the side of the building. The children who weren’t grabbed walked clear around to the front porch with me where we waited with them until the “bus” teacher showed up. If it was a high school teacher’s turn, we might be there indefinitely. If we were lucky, we got back into the building by 3:00 when it was time to go home. Back inside I’d gather up all of the things I needed to take home and work on that evening, turn off the light, lock the door, and go home to start getting prepared for the next day. Little ones are fun, and I love teaching, but it’s not a job for the faint-hearted. It’s a lot of work, and you have to answer to a lot of people.