Hello,

I am new to working in a daycare for school age kids, I am not very experienced in a daycare setting however have worked with kids through various jobs when younger (babysitting, high school teaching course, church preschool, etc.).

My coworkers are not very nice people and they tend to use inappropriate techniques with the children for getting them to listen and throughout the day(at least I think it's inappropriate).

One coworker who has been at this center the longest, always has a bad attitude and yells at the kids. She will mock kids for crying in front of all the other kids (as in "waah waah, if you're crying then you need to leave" in reference to a kickball game they didn't know how to play). She will talk about the kids in front of all the kids ("If I had so and so for a kid, I couldn't handle myself" etc.) or mention in front of everyone that some kids are too sensitive and cry all the time.

One time, a 7 year old girl was asking me a question quietly and I naturally bent down to listen and answer her question. This coworker came over and said "Stop babying them" then looked at the girl and told her to go sit down.

The worst of the problems, is these coworkers on field trips, will take pictures of the kids sleeping on the bus, send the pictures in a group chat and laugh at them. I am unsure how to go about this, as they are not posting these to any social media pages or publicly, but it seems so wrong.

Also on field trips, taking phones out to take selfies.

They tell me I need more bass in my voice and that I need to be louder-as in they think yelling at kids is the technique we should be using to direct the kids.

I also have seen them bully another coworker because she is more soft spoken.

Me being new, with no experience at a daycare, is very conflicted emotionally with all of this. I am soft spoken but my common sense tells me how the treat the kids and act is wrong.

Even the director says I need to be more stern. I told him I shouldn't have to yell for them to listen and he stated back some kids I have to. That's not a very good approach to working with children from my perspective.

I am planning to tell our facility trainer but want to know, maybe I am being overly sensitive to these situations.

Any thoughts or advice? Thank you!!

Reply