ExchangeEveryDay Past Issues

Keep the comments coming. Our whole team at Exchange Press is listening—and learning! We are already overwhelmed with compassion and admiration for what you all are doing, for your honest appraisals, and your optimistic flexibility and persistence on behalf of your employees, teammates, children and families. We will be reviewing what you have to say in-depth and will respond! We are with you all the way. THANK YOU!

My biggest concern is the fact that our college has allowed Classified Staff- which our ECE at are center are; to choose an exemption instead of just mandating that all Staff are vaccinated and boosted!! So we have 2 ECE who have the exemption and are the only fulltime staff of 9 who have gotten COVID and the recent variant;( How do we get Early Childhood Educators to realize how vulnerable children are when their teachers are not doing everything they can to protect them and how selfish they are being by not doing everything they can to protect these little ones??
Thank you,
Tammy

How is the omicron surge affecting you and your work

This whole Covid Pandemic in general has done both good things and bad things for us at my work. While on the one good hand it has shown in general just how essential we are as an early education field for the very young who are still too young to engage in the primary academic educational institutions know as elementary schools. Parents are now able to recognize just how important we are in order for them to go to their jobs everyday and know their children are safe and learning in an environment that we are working hard to keep sanitized and healthy.
For the first 18 months of the Pandemic, we were able to stay open and only had to close down a couple classrooms but not our entire center. When this Omicron variant came around things took a turn and just got crazy. Because this variant seems to really be hitting our population hard, it has been quite challenging and the fact that the CDC kept changing its quarantine rules definitely made it even more challenging for us to keep things calm and orderly.
We were given skewed information from week to week and sometimes even day to day and hour to hour which didn’t help us at all. We had different guidelines and confusion as to when a quarantine ended for a family member and when another family members quarantine started. We were also told 5 day quarantine and then back to 10 day quarantine and then told to have the families show us Positive PCR test results and didn’t accept Rapid Antigen tests at first because one was more sensitive than the other and it was just like getting whiplash from the health department. This gave us and families less trust in what they said and they got their information from the CDC which didn’t help us at all.
We had to close down four different classrooms because of exposure from someone who was vaccinated but not boosted and so they were asymptomatic and didn’t know they had caught the Omicron variant of covid. This person wore a mask all day and still managed to get sick. We also have children who come to our center after they are done at their K-3-K-5 classes and interact with the other children who are here at the center all day and so we had to close all the rooms this person was in and call parents to come get their children. Some parents were not happy because their children had to be quarantined again after just being quarantined 2 weeks previously.
I had parents that were upset with us because they had run out of sick leave already in the first month of the new year and others who didn’t have family here to help them out and so they needed to miss work all together and stay home with their kids because they had no one else to watch their kids.
We do charge 50% rate when classrooms are closed but when parents aren’t working that is still a lot of money they have to dish out and pay when they can’t use our services.
It kills me to hear our kids crying when they leave because they don’t want to go because they just got back to school and now had to be woken up from their nap because we had to close their room down again.
Our parents are usually very patient and understanding with us when we tell them things we have to change in our center but because of the misinformation we get from different agencies its gotten to a point where they are starting to doubt what we are saying which really sucks.
We now have a teacher on quarantine who just recently tested positive and is asthmatic and had other health issues and now has found out that she has pneumonia and will not be able to return after the 5 day quarantine because she is very sick. This whole surge has just made things much more difficult for us and is taking both teachers and children out of the center and into quarantine constantly for the last few months.
Even though this has devastated the field in general, our teachers and some families are learning to really be there for each other and checking on each other which gives me hope that we will come through this stronger and have even better relationships in the future.

Yes, hardest time indeed! I think mostly it's psychological exhaustion as we directors try to navigate the repercussions of the decisions others make that can have a huge ripple effect on the center. Meaning, exposures that could have been avoided had families been open and honest about symptoms (even minor) that happened at home the day before. Now it's become our responsibility to educate and become experts on quarantine time periods and the effectiveness or noneffectiveness of at home tests vs. PCR. The stress of trying to find subs at a time such as this, and anxiety over potentially getting sick myself and what that could do to the center. Some centers have closed for a week or more, due to the circumstances (staff having COVID); I'm so hoping that will not be our story. Honestly, my faith is what has gotten me through and working in a faith-based center.

All of us are faced with frustration and anger over things we can't control: COVID-19 and its consequences, climate deterioration, the Other Political Party, supply chain shortages, insensitive and underfunded policies toward early childhood, and too many other etc's. We need to acknowledge this anger and frustration, so it won't sneak over into anger at people and activities we can control. We can then channel that energy, most often, into doing something positive that will help real people, like ourselves.

We are seeing more COVID cases than last fall or summer. The difference this time versus 2020-2021, is that children are getting the virus and can be asymptomatic. The other difference is the symptoms of Omicron are more similar to the common cold and people seem to be less cautious in staying home. However, in general it does not seem much difference than the beginning of COVID, with the exception being less stringent guidelines allowing classes to remain open.

We can do this! We are needed and resilient

During the Covid pandemic our early education program has learned to pivot multiple times. We have adjusted to varying masking rules and learned to be a flexible staff. Our team works cooperatively to make sure children and their families are put first, but at the same time recognizes staff and their potential work stress. It might be as simple as our staff cheering on our Kansas City Chiefs or even sharing out growths we have observed in the classroom, but overall we are working together.

My preschool is in its first year..
I have been open since April 2021 .
Since January 10, I have closed down two times.
The first time from January 11- 18, and recently
January 24- 31. I find myself worried about the next closure. Families are going to become frustrated with this.. perhaps even keeping them home once again..
This is a very difficult time to be in a new business.
I have a small center 18 Children total. When we are asked to close for a covid 19 exposure. My entire school is closed. My thoughts are with the children and families who need care. I keep looking at my tuition policy... Do I offer a discount? Or extra care in the future? Do I keepChanging this policy as we evolve with the pandemic....
And staff there are only two.. paying them as well is important.

My thoughts are with everyone in the field..
I am a small business, it must be extremely difficult for a large center.tracking etc! My Wish for Early Childhood
I hope we can all get through this and keep our families and children safe in these unprecedented times.



I'm

This was my Facebook post a few days ago.

Consider this a “canary in the coal mine” public service announcement from your teacher friend.
It hit me today that I started working on my master’s degree two years ago this month. I thought I’d be done by now.
From the beginning, I understood the commitment of time and financial resources. To be sure, both are valuable commodities of mine as a teacher and working mom.
Getting my master's has been a long-term goal of mine, and with our kids finishing up their college years, the time seemed right.
Then everything changed in March 2020.
Teaching through a pandemic has been traumatic. Traumatic, is that hyperbole, you ask? No, I can attest.
Remote teaching for months, figuring it out as we went. Turning my dining room table into a video lesson studio and home office.
Seeing the sadness and confusion on my student’s faces, trying to cheer them up while keeping the learning going through Zoom.
Face-to-face teaching before vaccines, implementing all types of new protocols while teaching students that had not set foot in a school for the last six months. Trying to balance their extra emotional needs while carrying out extra health precautions and “catching them up” academically. After all, we still have the same standards to teach and benchmarks to meet.
Trying to ease their fears and make school as normal as possible while wearing masks all day long.
Carrying on with the typical “ho-hum” daily duties of teaching interspersed with active shooter training, DEI training, sexual abuse prevention training, and implementing a new curriculum.
Carrying the weight of constant worry.
Worry for the health and wellbeing of my students, their families, my colleagues, and their families.
The constant fear of bringing Covid home to my husband with a family history of heart problems or our daughter with asthma.
It has been relentless. We’re past the point of “grin and bear it”, folks. We are struggling and demoralized.
Furthering the insult is the fact that teachers receive laughable wages in return for the expectation of so much.
The commitment of time and energy.
Exciting, engaging lessons using research-based teaching methods.
Culturally respectful relationships and trauma-informed care.
Helping all types of children learn and become their best selves.
Lesson planning on the weekends. Continual professional development.
Expecting sub plans when I’m out sick. (Seriously? I’m sick. Figure it out.)
It goes on and on and on.
By July, I’ll have another diploma to hang on my wall and will regain some of my free time.
But reaching my breaking point as a teacher? I don’t know. Only time will tell.
Just as teaching in a pandemic has been traumatic, the future holds the promise of more trauma for our entire society if we do not make significant changes.
The pandemic has laid bare the dysfunction of our present-day educational system. We need to treat it like a hemorrhaging wound. It’s time for immediate, life-saving action.
Either society will make the necessary changes or the educators that truly care will be used up, driven away, or lose all hope.

Post script: Today I turn in my resignation. I will focus on my masters and then find a supportive work environment. I am more determined than ever to protect my mental and physical health and fight for high quality early childhood experiences and qualified, SUPPORTED educators.

We totally agree...this has been one of the roughest patches yet. We have had to quarantine rooms every week. We have one room that had 4 quarantine stints back to back. They would finish up, come back for a day or two and then start another. The last time when one of the parents came to pick up, they burst into tears in the lobby. Up to this point, you could count on one hand the number of children who tested positive, now the quarantines are mostly coming from our little guys :(. Looking forward to the day when we can post an exposure to COVID like an exposure to STREP.

STRESSFUL, FRUSTRATING, FEAR (I'm 57 years old...harder to fight off illness). "Everyone is going to get it" is what I keep hearing. But...no one exactly knows what the long lasting effects will be on the heart/lungs.

Our association has 1 preschool/Pre-k and 10 SACC locations. I want the staff to stay home if they are not feeling well. But...we don't have enough staff/substitutes to cover all the shifts. Licensing inspectors understand, but we are still cited if we are out of ratio when they visit. Schools have relaxed mask, social distancing and quarantining requirements. Schools are now saying "positive case but asymptomatic = no isolation needed". Our licensing agent has not relaxed requirements. Our SACC programs are held in school buildings. Two different sets of rules for school day and after school. SAME GROUP OF KIDS.

One of the recurring questions I get, as an early childhood consultant and trainer is how to explain young children the need to isolate/quarantine as it varies from child to child (depending on exposure, etc.). What makes matters more challenging to explain is how one "type of cold" requires isolation and another one doesn't. Children get sick all the time, and is hard for them to grasp that sometimes that requires isolation, and sometimes doesn't. In addition, how to explain the virus without children fearing for their and their loved ones health/lives.