Impulsive changes

I have always been the kind of person to make impulsive decisions that end up changing my life dramatically. Just over a year ago, I made the radical decision to move to Nunavut to be a daycare manager in a small hamlet.  Over the last year, I met an amazing man, made tons of awesome friends and have learned an enormous amount about who I am personally and professionally. I have developed many new skills, improved my ability to adapt to new environments, and learned that I can't do everything, I don't know anything, and with an open mind, life can take you anywhere. 

Despite all of the things I have learned, and of all the ways I have changed, I am still one impulsive girl. 

Over the last few weeks some major changes have taken place in my life. 

I decided to sign a new contract with the daycare, this time with changes to my position.  My new title is the Administrator. After spending a year being responsible for all administrative, operational, human resources and programming duties, I learned that it is too much for one person to handle and to maintain any sort of life outside of work.  I was taking work home with me every night, constantly feeling stressed and that there were never enough hours in the day. Now, I'm responsible for the administrative side of management, including bookkeeping, payroll, invoicing, developing policies and procedures, researching and completing funding applications, and ensuring that we are in good standing financially as well as complying with all legislation and regulations. It has only been 2 weeks since I started in this position, and I every day it's is becoming more and more evident to me that I have a passion for policy development at the organizational level, but also territorial and federal levels. The contract is for another year, ending July 7, 2015. 

Another big change that was also rather impulsive, was to rent a beautiful 3 bedroom house across the street from where I'm currently living.  My nephew is just abou big enough to be needing his own room, and I have been craving to have a space of my own. The lease lines up perfectly with the end of my contract, and the house is close enough that I can still see my family whenever I feel like it. Though I will be seeing them every day, as my nephew will be attending the daycare full-time starting in August! 

Joining me in my new house will be this adorable pup (and major impulsive decision #2):

He's a mini schnoodle (schnauzer poodle x). Right now he's living in Hamilton and will be ready to come home to me August 2nd....

...which leads to impulsive decision #3:

Instead of simply having him shipped up in live cargo, this girl decided in the spur of the moment to book a two week holiday to go pick up little McGuff. As a bonus, I'll get to see most of my immediate and expanded family, a great number of friends, and run some errands that are impossible to run in the Arctic! 

I take off the 27th and can't wait for my summer getaway from all the mosquitos and limited bandwidth! 

7-10 Nights

It's been pointed out to me that I've been slacking in keeping everyone updated on what's going on with me these days.
So ok, here goes the update:

A few weeks ago I took a Supervisor's Safety Course run by the WSCC at which I learned a lot about how many safety regulations there are and how many I haven't been following as a supervisor/employer. Whoops! Our new policy and procedures manual will certainly be reflecting what I learned there. It was a 3 day course and really quite valuable. Scary, really, to think about how liable I am for all of the staff that I am supervising every day.

Work has been insanely busy and stressful and I am completely overwhelmed with all of the responsibilities associated with managing a barely functional daycare in the North. I have had a tremendous amount of difficulty with staff not showing up to work and constantly being understaffed and overworked. It has been a daily struggle to find casuals who are willing to come in or who aren't already working casually for any of the other programs in town. The daycare consistently has only half the staff showing up, making it next to impossible for me to get any administrative work done.
How much administration does a daycare possibly need? SO MUCH! Filling the role of the person who does the hiring/firing, staff discipline, etc.; the accountant (day-to-day accounting like purchase orders, invoices, etc., as well as payroll, paying bills, catching up on data entry), it's also year-end time...meaning T4s, funding applications, contribution agreement renegotiations and mega burn-out. I am totally the type of person to set expectations for myself that are way too high and that no one else has for me, but these are the things that I have to get done on a daily basis or everything will start to fall apart. For example, this morning on the way to work I realized I made a small mistake on all (42) of the T4s that I processed (my first time so cut me some slack) (and keep in mind that I have 5 staff at the daycare, so you can get an idea of the turnover in just 1 year), I also had to give half of my staff written warnings for AWOLs, send attendance reports to Cambridge Bay for funding, make invoices for parents and prepare a funding application that's due this Friday.

I am just hanging on to the ounce of hope that I have left that things will improve over the next couple of months once funding starts to pour in and we're able to maybe get some training for the staff. Keep your fingers crossed for me! I've been feeling so disheartened because things were going so well and I had staff showing up to work every day and it feels like now it is all falling apart again and I'm headed back to where we were when I first got here....just with a better paint job.

Anyway, I have been using my Aerogold Amex like mad so that I can have enough points to book my flights for May because I NEED a vacation. I'm thinking a Caribbean cruise of some sort for 7-10 nights.

Make it better

Despite all of the hard work over the past 3 weeks to get the renovations going, it doesn't look like we're going to meet our target to open by the end of the month. We've only had a few volunteers here and there, and with all of the repairs needed on the building, progress is way too slow.

I haven't been doing much aside from work, and life has been fairly uneventful since Mom & Dad left just over a week ago.

The teachers did get to town last week, so hopefully I'll get to know a few of them and maybe make some friends.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about how I can bring the best of who I am to my new position. One professor told me before I left that since she's known me, she noticed that I was always able to take something and make it better. I hang on to that now as I feel the struggle with the slow progress and I have to force myself to think about how it will be better, even if the process is taking longer than we expected. It's important that I keep in mind that change is an extremely slow process, and that not all change is going to happen when or in the way I would like it to.

There are some changes that are happening quickly. It's starting to get darker earlier (around 9:30), and the sky even gets completely dark for a few hours during the night. The sun still starts rising around 5 am, but the day and night light is becoming much more like what we're used to in the south.

I'm anxious to get the programming done for at least the first month so that I feel at least somewhat ready for when we finally get to re-open. I'm also anxious for staff training. It is so far out of my range of experience to do week-long training on every aspect of working in an early learning setting. I definitely have a lot that I need to learn before I can train the new staff. The training is such a crucial part of implementing a new program and making change, so I'm definitely open to any tips or advice from those of you who have experience in this area!

The Little one

I found these little guys in the garbage that someone had rummaged through. They didn't want me to go inside to work. They only wanted to play. I wanted to keep the little one. 

Calling all colleagues!!

Ok fellow early learning professionals...I am looking for some feedback on the daily schedules I've drafted. They aren't perfect right now, so I'm hoping you'll be able to help me make them perfect! Naturally, they are flexible, as some things may not take as long as scheduled or may take longer, but they give a basic structure to the day. Am I forgetting anything important??

 Please, please, PLEASE give me your feedback!!

Pushing Paper

I haven't been posting because there hasn't been much to report. I've been busy pushing paper.

I am looking forward to my parents visiting though! They get here Saturday and stay for 2 weeks. It's going to be a very full house!

From Start To Finish

 This was the progression of my day... minus a few things that don't make for interesting photos.

Sadly, I did not win.

The sun has started setting earlier in the night (11:30), compared to 2:30 a.m. last week. Tonight it's exceptionally beautiful. 

A work in progress

Today I started to redo my office the way I want it set up. It took me the whole day, and I'm almost completely set up. I'll have only a bit of filing to do tomorrow.

These are the before photos (in case you don't remember):

This is mid-reorganization - furniture in place but nothing is put away:

It's getting there...

This is how I left it! Feeling much better!!

Since the weather has been wet and cold this weekend, we opted to stay inside. I helped my sister make some char chowder this afternoon, then made my very first batch of banana bread. We have eaten some and decided that it is quite delicious. 

I'm excited to go to work tomorrow and get started on my new projects! 

First Day

When I got to work in the morning, this is the first thing I saw. I was sure that another staff should have been opening, so I thought there was no way this was the right building, despite the playground to the side.

I walked down to the health centre to double check, and they assured me I'd been at the right place. When I got back up the hill to the centre, one of the casual staff was there at the door. She introduced herself and I myself, and we were quick to learn that we had no keys. Thankfully, she had a cell phone and called a member of the Daycare Society to come and unlock the door for us.

Naturally, the first thing I checked out was my new office:

It isn't much, but it's still my very first office, so I think it's awesome. 

And now for the rest of the tour... 

The kitchen

The infant area

The colours in English and Inuinnaqtun 

The toddler and preschool area

A lovely mural :)

The kindergarten area

I'm so excited to transform this beautiful and open space into a quality learning environment. They have a pretty good start, but there's much to do with this newly renovated building.

As a first day, it was fairly uneventful. There are only three children attending the centre during the day, so there hasn't been much of a program created for them. I spent most of the day getting to know the children who were there and organizing the drawers and filing cabinets in my office. The most exciting part of the day was that a mother came in to register her son!

Today is Nunavut day, so the whole town is closed for some community celebrations, and I'm really excited to really be immersed in the Inuit culture and to make some new friends!

Commute

One thing that I am really looking forward to is the 10 minute walk to work. This 90 minute daily commute is draining me of all my time and energy.