I can still remember the exact moment I found out that I was successful in landing my first LTO. I had only been on the supply list for about a month and was less than a year out of teacher’s college. On my drive home from the interview, my phone rang so I frantically pulled over and found myself accepting a position teaching Kindergarten for the rest of the year. This was the moment I had been waiting for since I was three years old. My childhood, teenage and adult dreams were all coming true. As a little girl, I used to arrange all of my stuffed animals, “my kids”, in assigned seating for circle time where I would recite the exact same songs and lessons that my daycare teachers did. As I got older, my stuffed animal students all had names and personalities, which I still remember to this day. I would teach them, make work sheets for them, complete them wrong, and then mark them with a red pen which I had borrowed from my mom’s office. Can you tell I was an only child?
Here’s me, circa 1996 with my very first class. If you told this little girl she’d have her own class one day, she’d tell you she didn’t doubt it one bit. The resume building started as soon as I was deemed old enough to babysit. I spent most of my teenage and university years working with kids, loving it along the way and always knowing where I was headed.
Now I was 24 years old and it was all coming together. I was beyond excited to get started. Finally, I could put everything I’d learned in school, everything I’d practiced in teacher’s college and everything I’d pinned on my Pinterest boards into action! I’d have a place to call home, familiar faces every day and most importantly, students to call my own – even if just for a while.
As a new teacher, permanent employment seems so far in the distance that I often don’t even think about it. The reality is that our profession is one that many people want to be part of – and of course they do! Teachers get to change lives every day and our payment is to have our own lives changed by our students in return. It is this life-changing passion that we need to hold on tight to, even in times we feel discouraged. The road to permanent employment may be a long one, but the journey there is not one bit less important. For now, I’m proud to be an LTO teacher.
I began my first day as a Kindergarten teacher and immediately fell in love. I put everything I had into my planning, my classroom and my students. I woke up each morning feeling excited for the day ahead. I arrived early and stayed late after school. I spent hours thinking about what I could do next, do more or do better. I spent way too much money on things for the classroom, which my bank account can vouch for. I probably talked all my family and friends’ ears off about my class. Those kids became my kids. I knew them, I loved them and I genuinely cared for them. I lost sleep over them. I still think about them all the time.
As an LTO teacher, I will change lives and my life will be changed. Whether I spend three months or an entire year with a class, they become a part of my story and change who I am as a teacher and a person forever – and that’s what three-year-old me knew all along.
