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.

First few weeks

I've been abandoning the blog the past couple of weeks, not because there is nothing to report, but rather because there is so much and I wouldn't know where to start.

The first week open was probably what you would expect for the first week of a first-time manager and staff with minimal training and preparation pressured in to opening before they were completely prepared. Programming was minimal, the daily schedule was nothing but a draft, and we were still in the midst of installing gates to keep the children from getting in to the kitchen and running out the building.

I quickly realized that staffing was a major issue, which I won't get in to, just that it's difficult to work under a Board that doesn't really have any understanding about how group size influences the quality of the environment and that ratios are legislated for a reason. I've also had almost an entire staff turn-over, replacing 2 of my full-time staff within the last two weeks.

I've been busy this week writing proposals to the Board identifying how I believe our donations and fundraising should be put to use, as well as writing a proposal to the association that pays our wages to amend our contract to add more full-time positions.

Things are getting better, slowly, as we get used to the routines and the children are more familiar with the environment and each other. Before taking these last two days as sick days, I managed to get some programming done just for this week, but it was something.

For now I'm going to spend all my energy getting rid of this illness and hopefully be back to 100% to try again next week. Also to watch all of season 9 of Grey's to prepare for the two-hour Season 10 premier next Thursday!

Open house

As some of you know, just yesterday we had the open house, with the grand re-opening taking place tomorrow! The Open House was a hit, with tons of parents bringing their children and engaging in so much play! I'm SO proud to present to you the new look of the centre (staged for the Open House):

Remember what it used to look like?? 

all hands on deck

It was all hands on deck today as all of my full-time staff (3 caregivers) were in for the first time to start the next step: putting everything in its place! It's finally starting to look like somewhere children would like to spend their days! Still lots of work to do, but it's certainly shaping up :)
What we really need to warm the place up is some area rugs!

The "quiet" side for the preschool/kindergarten area: 

Art table and art supplies: 

The reading/puzzle corner: (hopefully to come with some nice children's couches/chairs or bean bags)

Small loose parts (many of which would make for excellent items used for art):

The "louder" side:

Sensory tables in the back - one for wet, one for dry and one for 4 of anything!

Dramatic play area: 

Dolls, tools, (coat hooks will go on the walls for dress-up clothes), dishes, food, etc.: 

Larger loose part: 

The infant area: 

Don't worry..the bookshelf won't be staying there up and out of reach!

 I know it still needs some work in order to have all the caves, watering holes and camp fires that we should have, but it has been quite difficult when there is such a limited amount of resources here (and the fact that we are using only shelves as walls to separate the infants from the older children). Hopefully we'll get everything on our wish list through funding. What we could really use is a loft for the older children to give them a private area underneath, and a nice separate area up top to escape from everything.

I'm completely open to your ideas for anything... set up, fundraising, what have you.

Changes

We had a VERY exciting day today at the Daycare. There's quite an expensive list of repairs and aesthetic changes to be made before we're able to reopen, and today we were able to cross off many items from that list!

This morning I got a call from one of the members of the Board, announcing that we've received a donation of 10 gallons of primer and 10 gallons of white paint, and that if we needed more, it would also be donated. This was great news, since the sale we had this afternoon was meant to raise money to buy the paint. Only about 15 minutes later I got another call from her saying that one of the mining companies up here is donating a brand new fridge and dishwasher (and paying for shipping, which would have been REALLY expensive for us). This is SO exciting because the dishwasher we have now is not functional and we don't have an in-house cook, so the caregivers are responsible for washing all dishes. When it's tricky to meet ratios, the least amount of time spent on dishes is exactly what we need.

Then this afternoon we had our sale! Within the first half-hour, almost half of everything was sold! We ended up raising almost $500, which will be used to pay for the paint tint and any of the materials we need for painting, like the rollers, painter's tape, etc. Another company is donating the mud we need to fill the pin holes in the walls, so this weekend we are getting started on that in order to get painting!

Here are some pictures of the time just before and just after the sale:

 Before: 

Woohoo!! A really terrible photo of the paint and primer donated to us today!! 

The room where we are storing what we're keeping:

After! 

It's almost a blank canvas! Just a few more books and outdoor toys to sell (and some pretty old and dusty construction paper..) and we'll be well on our way! 

This weekend we are starting to get ready for painting, which is so so so exciting for us!

If you have any ideas about how to set up the space, colours to paint the walls (I'm thinking 2, and maybe painting a mural at some point), things to put up on the walls, etc., please share them!

P.S. if you read my sister's and BIL's blog, you could check out my guest post! (theirs is an invite-only blog)

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!!