Our staff had a lovely retreat last weekend in the Hocking Hills. Our retreats are usually fun-filled playing together with a little work mixed in. I don\’t know of other preschool staffs that take time to really socialize and have fun together but it\’s been a tradition to have several staff retreats each year since the school started in 1969.
The professional development portion of our retreat was a discussion of different personal styles of teaching and being with children. All of our teachers work together to be consistent using the SYC philosophy but we are individuals who bring different strengths, talents and joys to our teaching. So while each of us may go about dealing with situations in our own style, we each have the same goal — to support the development of each child.
Through the years of working with and learning from each other, we have developed a way of talking and listening that could be call the \”SYC way.\” I think this general style is really just listening and responding to children with respect and focus to determine what support might help.
Parents sometimes tell us they wish they could consistently handle their own children this same way. But no one — including us — can do things \”the SYC way\” 100% of the time. During our classes teachers usually have enough help and support to be able to respond and focus for our 2 1/2 hour class periods, but as parents ourselves we cannot always do the same thing in our own families.
SYC philosophy is a great framework to guide us, but we all bring our own personalities and styles and enjoy learning new ways to approach teaching from each other through work and play.
… Stephanie Rottmayer, Director