Labor Market and Career Information

Kindergarten Team Leader
Laura Dimmitt

	Introduction "We're giving them their very first experience of school. If they enjoy kindergarten and feel successful and good about themselves, that's going to progress with them to the next grade level," says teacher Laura Dimmitt. And on through their whole lives. In a society that demands that people learn and grow throughout their lives in order to succeed, Laura helps kids love to learn. Laura is a bilingual kindergarten teacher and team leader at a well-respected school in central Texas. She is in her fourth year of teaching and her love for the profession has only grown over time. Since her school serves a largely immigrant and low socio-economic population, Laura often finds herself balancing the personal needs of her students (many of whom have unstable or inadequate home situations) with their academic needs. Sometimes it seems she has to be as much a social worker as a teacher as she deals with parents who have little positive experience with school themselves. Nevertheless, she loves her work. The rewards, after all, are profound. How many people can say that every year they make a difference in the lives of more than twenty children--differences that will shape the adults those kids become? And the difference Laura makes is positive. The students that leave her class and go on to first grade know how to read and get along with others. They love learning and school. And they love Ms. Dimmitt. You only have to see her former students running up to hug her to know that. Over the years, her legacy of love and high standards will be realized as these students become leaders and teachers and contributing adults themselves.

	What exactly do you do? I'm a teacher, but I'm also a team leader and committee member, so I have to wear a lot of hats. As a kindergarten teacher, I give the kids the opportunity to socialize and learn skills, such as respect, good citizenship and trustworthiness. A lot of kids don't know how to share and take turns, and that's a big part of what I teach, especially in the beginning of the years. Later, the focus is on getting the kids to read. As a team leader for my school, I'm in charge of keeping the team members informed and organized, largely by relaying information. My team consists of all the kindergarten teachers, pre-K teachers and PPCD teachers (teachers for younger students with special needs) in my school. Every grade level has its own team leader. All the team leaders meet regularly with the principal and vice principal. We bring our teams' concerns to the meetings and we report back to our teams afterward. We also attend district team meetings, where all the kindergarten team leaders in the school district get together. Recently on the district level we worked on creating a new curriculum (plans to teach the kids) and we created a new report card and objectives because we changed from the TAAS to the TAKS test. Finally, as just a teacher, not a team leader, I'm on three committees that meet frequently. One is the Social Committee. We have a special luncheon one day each month to celebrate the birthdays of our staff members. We plan Beginning-of-the-year, Christmas, and End-of-the-year parties for the entire staff. We try to create an opportunity for staff members to bond in a different environment. I'm also on the Multi-cultural Committee, which tries to encourage tolerance and understanding among students of different backgrounds, and the Translating Committee, which meets to create vocabulary that is uniform across the school. That way, all teachers will use the same terminology to keep consistency. We also proofread any handouts that get sent home in Spanish.

	What and how do you teach your kids? We read a lot of stories and talk about them as a way to increase the kids' oral language skills and get them to love reading. A lot of them haven't been read to at home. We learn songs and poems, too. We also spend a lot of time on phonics and letter recognition. We focus on one letter a week and brainstorm all sorts of words that begin with that letter. We trace the letters and mold them out of clay--anything to help the kids learn and remember them. We learn basic math skills as well. I'll have the kids do hands-on activities, such as using blocks to form and then extend a pattern. In the beginning of the year, they learn about colors and shapes and that helps them with the patterns. We also graph a lot of things, such as the students' favorite colors, types of pets at home, and so on.

	What's the coolest part of your job? I get to act like a kid. If I'm bored doing something, a 5-year-old will be bored. So I'm always trying to keep it exciting. I get to dance around and sing and do artwork and freeze dance and measure kids with cubes and balance twenty books on top of an egg. It's just fun. I entertain them as well as myself.

	What's your favorite part? When the kids get it. When they're proud of themselves and they've done a good job and I know I've gotten through to them. It's just a really cool thing to see when they've had a huge breakthrough, especially the struggling students.

	How do people react when they learn what you do? They say, "Oh cool, you get the summers off." They think it's an easy job and you don't put in a long workday, but almost every teacher I know takes their work home with them. Especially the problems our kids have. There was a time when I was crying every day, thinking about the home lives of some of these kids.

	Describe a funny or unusual incident that happened at work. Earlier this year I left my class (with an assistant) while I had a twenty-minute meeting with someone. When I returned, I saw that Elizabeth, one of my students, had cut her own bangs. It was pretty obvious, but when I asked her if she'd done it, she said "No." I reached out my hand to touch her hair to show her that it looked shorter and a bunch of cut hair fell out! She couldn't really deny it then. The worst part was that it was minutes before the kids were to get their photos taken for picture day and Elizabeth's mom had already purchased one of the big packages with the 8X10's. It was pretty funny.

	What's the part you like least about your job and how do you handle it? All of the interruptions. It seems like there's always some sort of meeting planned, or something that comes up, or a note that has to go home that day, or testing that's going on so you can't send the kids to certain programs. In addition, it seems kids are always being pulled out of class for Special Ed, oral language, and speech, to work with mentors, focus on oral comprehension and more. While these programs benefit students and give them an opportunity to work in a smaller group setting, it is difficult arranging a schedule that can accommodate everyone's needs. There are a lot of interruptions during the day and then meetings after school and a lot of paperwork and hundreds of emails to read and answer. It's rare that I can just teach!

	How did you become a teacher? When I was very young I wanted to be a teacher but then I wanted to be an actress and I actually went to Drama school after high school graduation. Then my brother and his family moved in with my parents and me for a year. I had a big role in taking care of my 5-year-old nephew and my baby niece and I realized I wanted to be around kids all the time. Though I was one semester short of my Associate's degree in Drama, I dropped out and moved from Pennsylvania (where I'd lived since high school) to West Virginia to attend college. I worked full-time for two years to gain residency (for lower in-state tuition) and then put myself through school.

	Why are you a kindergarten teacher? When I was getting my degree, I never thought about kindergarten. I student-taught third and seventh grades and loved them both. When I interviewed at my current school--my first job after college--they had two positions available: kinder and 5th grade. I'm not sure what made me choose kinder. I think I was a bit intimidated by the TAAS test, which the fifth graders had to take, and the emphasis that's placed on preparing kids for the test. Now that I've taught kindergarten, I don't think I'd want to teach anything outside a one or two year radius of that because you get to be there from the beginning. They come to you just wanting to learn. We're giving them their very first experience of school. If they enjoy kindergarten and feel successful and good about themselves, that's going to progress with them to the next grade level.

	Why are you a bilingual teacher? I became a bilingual teacher because I already knew how to speak Spanish from living in Mexico from send to ninth grade. (My father was an accountant for an international firm that had a project there during those years.) I continued to study it in high school back in the States. I took so many Spanish classes in college to keep increasing my skills that I ended up getting a specialization in Spanish and a certification in teaching middle school Spanish. Also, I knew I wanted to move to Austin to be near my family. In Texas, bilingual teachers are in great demand and earn extra money. Now that I've taught for a while, I appreciate the students I get to work with as a result of being a bilingual teacher. My students come from different backgrounds and often seem more eager to learn than some of the English-only speaking kids.

	What pleasantly surprised you about your job when you first started? The staff. I like all of the other people on my team. We work well together and we're friends outside of school. We're always in contact so we don't even need formal team meetings very often. And it's not just them. The teachers from other grades are always willing to help out. And the administration always backs us up.

	What disappointed you? Realizing how much I needed to learn. When you're in college, they teach you how to teach kids to read and write and do math problems but you don't realize all the different levels of abilities your kids will have and how difficult it is to manage everyone and help them where they're at. It's a challenge to keep the more advanced kids interested and engaged in activities while trying to work one-on-one with the kids who need more special attention while somehow not forgetting the average kids who can sometimes get lost.

	How has your job changed over time? I became team leader my second year of teaching, which means more responsibilities and more pay. Teaching itself has gotten easier. I don't use the same plans year after year but I've learned what works and I stick with that. I've become more adept at picking and choosing what's effective. And I'm better at adapting my teaching styles to the different learning styles the kids have.

	What will kindergarten teachers be doing ten years from now? First, kinder is currently not required in the state of Texas and that will have to change. The state has strict guidelines about what third graders need to know. In order for them to meet those requirements, kids are going to need to learn certain things in third, second and first grades and in kindergarten. Overall, I think the biggest changes are in expectations. When I went to kindergarten, it was more about playing and eating glue and having parties. Now we're expected to have the kids reading by the end of the year. As the demands get greater for elementary and older kids, it'll keep coming down to kindergarten. And I think that some of the demands that are being placed on kindergarteners are unreasonable and not age-appropriate.

	What are some of the most important skills and abilities needed for this job? Patience, compassion and the ability to create structure while remaining flexible at the same time.

	How much of that is learned and how much has to be natural aptitude? Some of those qualities, such as compassion, are innate. Others aren't. I do think, for example, that you can learn to be more structured based on the needs of your kids.

	What information do you need to keep up in your field and where do you get it? I need to keep up with what we're required to teach. I need to get ideas about different ways to teach and approach topics. I need to see what new bilingual books are coming out and more. To remain certified, teachers have to attend a certain number of professional development workshops throughout the year. We encourage everyone to take at least one workshop each on reading, math, science and computer technology. Our school and district provide a lot of the training we need. Some workshops are mandatory. In our district, for example, we all need to attend training on understanding poverty. We have staff meetings to get updated on different kinds of training. We have specialists come in to help us prepare students for the standardized tests. We also go to specialized training, such as the kindergarten reading academy and conferences around state. We get ideas online and from talking with other teachers. There are a lot of resources and you need to keep up.

	What advice do you have for people who want to enter this field? Do it! Be open-minded. Be willing to make a difference and put in a lot of hard work and get emotionally sucked in at times. Be prepared to constantly change and grow.

	What do you wish someone had told you before you left high school that would've helped you with your career? I wish I'd been encouraged to discover what it was I wanted to do. I didn't even plan to go to college when I was in high school. I graduated without applying to a single school. Since I didn't have a plan, I wasted some time--years when I could have been studying or working in my field.

	Quick Facts
	The Job in Brief
	Title:	Bilingual Kindergarten Team Leader
	Description:	Teach young children social skills and how to read.
	Education level required:	Bachelor's degree and teaching certification What Laura has: Bachelor's degree in Elementary Education and Early Childhood with a specialization in Middle School Spanish. Teaching certification. Bilingual certification.
	Equipment used:	We have two computers in the classroom and we also take the kids to a computer lab where they each get their own PC.
	Workload steady or fluctuating:	Since I teach summer school, my work is pretty steady year round. It'd definitely more hectic the first month of school, though.
	Dress code:	We model what we want students the students to wear, so we dress modestly and appropriately. On Fridays, we can all wear jeans and with t-shirts in the school colors.
	Work environment:	Elementary school

	Demands on Worker
	Works hours (time and duration):	7:30 am-3:30 pm (7:15 am on days when teachers have Morning Duty) Laura's hours: 7:15 am - 6:00 pm and then 2-3 more hours at home plus at least a few hours on the weekend.
	Travel involved:	Score: 2 When I do go, it's to conferences. (1=never; 5=very often)
	Average stress level:	Score: 5 There's a lot of stress. (1=none; 5=a lot)
	Amount of teamwork needed:	Score: 4-5 We're always helping each other. (1=none; 5=a lot)
	Level of self-motivation required:	Score: 5 Even if you are having a bad day, you don't want the kids to see that. You have to stay positive. (1=none; 5=a lot)

	Labor Market Information
	Employment outlook:	Employment of kindergarten teachers is expected to grow at the average rate for all occupations through 2008 (at least).
	Typical Texas salary:	$30,157 - $36,859