ABOUT
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Kia ora, I'm Jessie! I'm excited to be part of the Aihe intake for Dev Academy in 2022.
I'm based in Christchurch and live with three cats, two bunnies and one husband!
You can read more about me and my learning journey in my blog posts and the About page.
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Prior to working in tech, I was an early childhood teacher for 5 years. It’s a challenging job and very stressful, but can also be very rewarding.
Not long after I finished my qualification, I started working at a center that I found had very poor practice. Teachers would routinely get up in small children’s faces, grab them by the shoulders and yell at them - for things like a newly-toilet trained two-year-old having an accident.
The atmosphere was full of snapping, barking orders, and blame, and I felt very uncomfortable about the way the children were handled and talked to. After spending the previous year studying what good pedagogy was - and having several years experience in much better centres, I decided to bring it up with management.
In short, it was a complete and utter disaster. The manager was awkward about it, then brought in the owner (who was a lawyer, had no interest/experience in education and just treated the centre as his cash cow) who essentially told me I was being unrealistic and this was normal. I was then ostracized by most of the other teachers, even the ones that had supported me bringing up the issues, and my hours started being cut.
I quickly got a new job nannying, and was out of there - but it was the worst experience of a job I’ve ever had, by far. I was exhausted by the end of it - filled with self-doubt and terrified about going back into a centre. Fortunately my next centre was best centre I ever worked in, with high standards of care. I considered reporting the other centre to the Ministry of Education, however I never ended up doing that due to a lack of knowledge about the process, a lack of support and a fear of the repercussions on my career.
Looking back now, I’m proud I stood up for the children, despite the personal cost. At least while I was there after that, I noticed they were much better to the kids. However I do wish that I had ended up reporting the centre though, as it was definitely atrocious practice.
This was about 8 years ago and I’m older, wiser and more confident now and wouldn’t hesitate if I saw something like this again. Teaching is a very personal thing, and a teacher’s culture, upbringing and personal experiences get pulled into it. It’s very hard to separate them.
Through reflecting on this years later I learned what I would have done differently; I would have bought up one small incident (as opposed to providing a list of documented interactions I witnessed) and gone from there - it would have given me time to judge the reaction and possibly enlist more support before I got the rather brutal backlash. The teachers who were treating the children this way genuinely thought it was okay, so I would have approached it more gently, backed up with research if I did it again.
In saying that… I don’t think that situation ever would have worked out for me and I’m glad I left.
I can see how my values, identity and culture have developed from both my childhood and the people around me. A few key things are:
My mum and I both have (and nurture) an almost childlike excitement and enthusiasm towards small things. It’s the trait I like the most about her. I think as you grow up the world can find all kinds of ways to kill off that childlike enthusiasm - however I still have it and intend to keep it around. I find it helps me be very motivated, curious and want to learn constantly.
Life throws all kinds of things at you, and when I was younger I used to get frustrated at myself for not being resilient enough. Strangely enough though, one of my friends, when asked, said one of the main words she’d use to describe me is tenacious. Looking back, I have been, and I think having my friends and my husband around during these hard times have really helped to grow my belief that I’m actually coping well with whatever the situation is, and find a way to move through it.
I grew up in a family that was a strange mix of very dysfunctional along with very privileged - I had constant opportunities to learn and have fun but there was a lot of high emotions that I had to help with. Growing up, I ended up finding I’m highly productive in both my work and hobbies - I do things fast and usually pretty well, but it stems from having a bit of an anxious spirit. I need to keep busy and engaged. By-and-large it works out for me, but it’s something I’m very aware of and closely monitor myself to ensure I don’t burn out. My husband is someone who can very easily relax so he’s good at balancing me out.
As mentioned, some of my strengths are resiliance/tenacity, and high levels of productivity. I don’t usually struggle with motivation and can focus for long periods of time - something I really appreciate.
Another strength that I think will help with this course is that I tend to have pretty good humour, even when things are a bit crazy. So if I get too busy with this course I’m hoping that will get me through!
Despite the motivation to learn and being pretty good at studying, I don’t feel that I have a natural tendency to pick up coding languages. I’ve taught myself it a fair bit in the past, but it’s a decision that came from logic (this is a good career move), rather than some kind of innate desire to pull apart the way computers work.
However - I do find I enjoy learning it, I just struggle with it. I’ve always ended up getting stuck at Javascript so I’m both excited and terrified to get to that part.
In terms of career development, I’ve had a very good couple of years and am already in a great tech company that I’ll be staying with. A limitation here though is that most people in my role or higher have a three year degree, minimum in computer science or similar - not a BA and a grad dip in early childhood! Also being a female in a male-dominated industry makes me second guess myself - I find myself being less assertive than my male colleagues.
In my last early childhood job, I was at a centre with a lot of older teachers, who had been doing it for 20-40 years. I found it was a bit of a challenge because they had a set way of doing things - and that was the way things were done in the 80s and 90s. I had just come from a very innovative centre and had so many ideas but they were all shut down! I tried a range of strategies including:
There were mixed results, but a lot of push back in general. I ended up swapping classrooms to a room with a much younger demographic of teaching staff and that was fine. In hindsight though, I learned:
Don’t start making changes until you’ve been in the role at least a few months and learned what they do and why, as well as the personalities of all involved.
There were some things in that room that worked really well that my previous centre didn’t do.
Courageous conversations with the people involved are crucial.
A lot of things are top-down in the end - we didn’t have a manager for most of my time there. Not long after I left they got a new one who forced through all the changes I had struggled to make!