Meet the Staff! Q&A With Yashmina
Welcome to the CAAS Staff Spotlight! This month, we sat down with Head Start teacher Yashmina to learn more about her experience in the classroom! She shared her experience planning curriculum and working with parents to create healthy and engaging classroom environments. She also reminded us of just how much we can learn from children while we teach them!
How did you get started in this field?
I graduated as a teacher when I was 17 years old. I got my bachelors in Honduras in special education in 2000. I got a job as an Elementary’s teacher and worked for more than 10 years. I had never worked with preschoolers during this time. I came here in 2013. I volunteered in one of the CAAS classrooms at the Mystic Project. One year later, they called me to work for them as an assistant teacher from 2014-2015. I went to work in a Spanish immersion program preschool, but after that I came back in 2018.
I feel a lot of differences between Elementary children and preschoolers, because elementary kids are more independent and also are easy to teach. Preschoolers learn by singing, observing things, playing, pretending, watching faces, responding to voices etc. is a long term process.
What’s your role? How long have you been at CAAS?
I have been working here since 2018. I’m a lead teacher at a full day classroom at The Jack Hamilton Center. As a lead teacher, my job is to provide guidance and mentorship to other teachers, write lesson plans, and to help the families that I work with. Each month we teach a specific topic to discuss. For example during this month of March, we’re doing projects. We decided as a team that kids could learn nursery rhymes, and we did a big project with them. For example, we did Humpty Dumpty, so we had the kids make a wall, with cardboard, paint, design the Humpty Dumpty with paper mache, learn new vocabulary words, make predictions such as “If we throw a boil egg and regular egg which do you think it will break”. We plan our lesson by covering all areas of Child Development (Social Emotional, Physical, Language, Cognitive, Art, Literature, Science and Social Studies).
Our population is largely Portuguese speakers. There are three Languages spoken in my class( Portuguese, Spanish and English). We teach in English, but if for some reason our children don’t understand what we are saying, I speak in their Home Language.
What have you found challenging about this work?
Sometimes you don’t understand the reason why a kid is acting out. Families might not always give you proper input. So sometimes you’re wondering “why is this kid yelling or pushing others?” and later you understand because they tell you “oh, they went to bed late so they’re tired.”
One of the biggest challenges is ensuring that all students have access to the same opportunities and resources. This can be a challenge because head start students often come from diverse backgrounds and may not have the same level of access to resources as their peers. Another challenge is helping students develop the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in school and in life. This includes helping them develop social, emotional, and academic skills.
Another challenge is parents not feeling ready to leave their lovely ones with us teachers. We need to support them until they feel comfortable.
What keeps you energized around this work?
The one thing I love is to see how my kids are growing up. Not just physically, but in social, emotional, and cognitive development. See how they play, and how they use their imagination when they play.
Our program has a lot of kids with trauma, and they display behavior problems. So to see the kids, how they started and how they have progressed now is my pill of energy. To see how they become a different kid is AMAZING!!
What was an exciting project or big win that you’ve experienced here?
When I started here in Jack Hamilton Center, I remember I had one kid with bad behavior problems. I think they hired me specifically to work with him! He had a lot of trauma. Now I feel more confident handling kids with behavior problems. I try my best to understand them and why they’re acting like that. You miss the kids that give you a hard time the most. This is because their period of misbehaving is challenging .All these opportunities help me to be more open minded.
What do you like to do for fun outside of work?
About a month ago, I started doing yoga. My back was hurting a lot. To improve my health, I’m doing yoga as a fun thing. I like to read books. I like to watch cooking shows. But I’m not cooking–my husband cooks for me.
It’s difficult when you work as a teacher because sometimes you go to the store and want to buy this for one of my kids or for an activity. It’s difficult to disconnect work from real life. I think most of us do the same thing, because every Monday we come in and say “Oh, you know what I bought for the kids?” You go home and you’re still talking about them. My husband works at a program too, and every lunch we talk about them.
When you love what you’re doing, you feel like my students are part of your life. I like when I hear them say“I love you, I miss you.” because Children are very honest and true to their feelings.