Abby and Eason,
It is an exciting time in your growth right now – we are talking about jobs. Yeah – jobs. It is hard to believe you are that old.
I thought I would write you a few letters telling you about my previous jobs and what I learned. I hope that the letters will show you a little bit about the journey of figuring out what you want to do when you are older.
This will be fun!
My first job was teaching gymnastics. I taught at two places in the same time period, so I can’t really remember which one I did first but they were similar enough I will just combine them into one.
The place I am going to tell you about is a dance studio. My job was a gymnastics instructor and front desk staff. I was also teaching at a traditional gymnastics center at the same time, but I mostly worked at the dance studio.
The big reason that I chose to work mostly at the dance studio was that they allowed me to do homework between class start times, as long as none of the parents needed my help.
My front desk job was simple. I would greet parents, hug kids, help visitors know where to go, answer phones, collect payments, etc. I was the first face the kids saw when they came to dance, so I was responsible for making them feel welcome.
Classes rotated once an hour, so after the kids had started class there was often downtime. I took advantage of that time to do homework unless there was deskwork that needed to be done.
Later in the evenings, I got to teach gymnastics. I LOVED teaching gymnastics so much. I loved seeing the kids’ energy and excitement about learning new things. The kids seemed to love it too because our class size grew and grew.
This job was a great fit for me. School wasn’t easy for me, and having extra time to study was a huge help.
There were a lot of things I learned in this job:
- I learned about the importance of caring for customers. Learning to stop what I was doing and acknowledge the kids was a great lesson in helping others feel important and loved.
- I learned a lot about time management. I needed study time. It was important to me academically. But, I had a job to do. That ment, I had to figure out how to focus my time to do both. Learning to make the most of my time and push myself to move quickly and stay focused was a great lesson.
- I learned that you always need teachers. (funny story coming)
Almost all of my working hours were spent at the dance studio. I had experience teaching gymnastics but not tons. I was teaching in another place but only a few hours a week. So… that means I was figuring out how to be a teacher by myself a lot of the time.
Spotting is where you help a child do something they couldn’t do if you weren’t helping them. It is a requirement when teaching gymnastics.
Well.. funny lesson. Since I was mostly teaching myself how to teach gymnastics, I was also teaching myself how to spot children. And, I learned backwards… I taught myself to spot kids left handed.
While that doesn’t sound like a big deal… It is huge. When you’re spotting a child on difficult skills, they need to almost feel like you aren’t there. If you spot left handed they see you. The fact that I learned wrong made teaching harder for years and years afterwards. I eventually had to learn to spot right handed, but it never felt comfortable.
SO, my thought on job one is this. What can you learn? How can you grow? Will this job give you the support that you need to grow? What tradeoffs will you make? I traded time to do homework instead of time having another gymnastics coach teach me to spot correctly.
Stay open. Learning never ends. The more you learn in your jobs the more you will be prepared for your next job.
I love you guys!
Mom