The Boy Who Became an Early-Childhood Educator: Reflections, Memories, and Future Thoughts About Our Field

By Manuel Kichi Wong M.Ed

A male educator explores the joys of working with children in this inspirational account.

Manuel Kichi Wong shares his personal journal entries that consider the challenges and obstacles of being a male educator in a field dominated by women. Whether its cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, dealing with parents, or interacting with children, he does whatever it takes to get the job done.

Find out what it really means to pursue a career as an early-childhood educator. Wong discusses ways to

apply different methods to help children learn;
work with children in various settings, including at school and at home;
balance the demands of your job and personal life; and
communicate better with parents and fellow teachers.

He also provides candid stories about the questions a man fields when he is an early-childhood teacher. Life in this profession isnt easy, but the joys of giving and of working and being with children make it all worthwhile.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: May 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475984866

Manuel Kichi Wong M.Ed

MANUEL KICHI WONG was born, raised, and educated in San Francisco, California. He is a college instructor, an early-childhood teacher, and a volunteer for family child-care providers and community groups. This book is an expansion of The Last Nine Months: Putting on My Last Diaper in Family Child Care.

Book preview

THE BOY WHO BECAME AN EARLY-CHILDHOOD EDUCATOR

Reflections, Memories, and Future Thoughts about Our Field

Copyright © 2013 Manuel Kichi Wong.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8484-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8485-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-8486-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013906356

iUniverse rev. date: 4/23/2013

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

November 1994

December 1994

January 1995

February 1995

March 1995

April 1995

May 1995

June 1995

July 1995

August 1995

Moving On

1997–1998

Another Page, a New Venture

2001–2003

The Second Go-Around

2011–2012

Epilogue

2012–2013

This book is dedicated to my mother, Jane Hara Wong, who has shown me that if you work toward a goal in life, happiness (not wealth) will someday come to those who wait. It doesn’t matter how old you are when you find out what you want to do with your life, that day will come—through experience and pain, but it will come; and to my siblings—Jr. (Alvin), Hideki (Daniel), Alice, and Bambi—who gave me childhood playmates and lifelong memories of growing up in the Richmond district of San Francisco.

Rebecca Kresse was a student of mine at San Francisco State University College of Extended Education in August 1998. She was taken from us by an accident. Rebecca was a true teacher, full of life, a professional who wanted to make this world a better place for children. I also dedicate this book to her, for she has given herself to those she touched. And to her parents Sara and Tom, you are both an inspiration, for your loving nature is what Rebecca received from you. May we all work hard for what Rebecca stood for, and may more teachers have the strong attributes of caring that Rebecca lived every day.

PREFACE

As a child experimenting with career roles in play, my ambition was never to become a child-care professional. I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I still don’t. Or do I?

This book was originally published in 2003 under the title The Last Nine Months: Putting on My Last Diaper in Family Child Care. I have since added more chapters, information on interactions with children, and environmental considerations for teachers and parents working with young children.

In my journey in life as an early-childhood educator, I have changed many of my ideas as I gained more information in my studies. I have seen, heard, and continue working with children, which gives me more credibility. I have seen the deep sensitivity of the children I work with, and seen and heard the teachers speak about positive and negative working experiences in the classroom. I go back to my inner heart and see the true reason why I am still in the field of early-childhood education. Have you even seen a sensitive movie about families or children and right behind your eyes, you tear up with joy? Human beings touch my heart, especially in the education field. Still trying to find their way with each encounter, experience, and opportunity to play, children give me an immense feeling of this is life. Right at this moment of their brain growth and body growth, language formation and understanding, and social/emotional learning, children of today are making their way in our world. My true purpose in life is to see that growth and development and, in my little way, provide a conducive environment, offer encouragement verbally and nonverbally, and through my positive interactions give children the individual support that they need at that moment.

Those who have met me know that I am truly excited about the work I do each day. I am honored to have a career working with children and adults. I can wake each day with a smile on my face, ready for the true adventures of the day. Unexpected interactions of life are so beautiful if you take the time to give 100 percent of your real self to the children, parents, and teachers you work with each day. I hope you see the deeper joy I have with my work, through the tiredness, frustration, and growth. When I am tired, I see that I have really worked a day worth living, and I gain satisfaction with each waking moment.

For the past twenty or more years I have been working with children, a career aspiration that many men would not ever think about. I had somehow always known that I would be working with people. Those moments of reflection with my father in the hospital, those nice people helping us out, and the desire to help others came to me when I was just thirteen, on a bus passing the hospital where my father was. I was saddened by the fact that maybe he would never see his children (I have an older brother, twin brother, and two younger sisters) grow up to be adults. He would never know what career paths each of us would take. As I sit here writing, I think about all the struggles my mom had to go through in order to provide for her family when my father died that year. My mom went to school on a training program in bookkeeping for so many months, and we children were left to keep the house going. That’s where my story begins. At the time, I would never have thought that keeping the house in order would bring me so much happiness, yet so much pain, in the years to come.

I grew up that year, as did my brothers and sisters, in the realization that life does go on. We were all in school, got some support from the church and our relatives, and began to put our lives together. It was up to us kids to keep the house in order, do the grocery shopping, and do our homework. We boys also had paper routes at that time so that we could learn to be independent. I remember the shopping list that my mother wrote out each week. We had a budget of forty dollars, and with that money we were to buy food for at least five days and all the household supplies. (Do you know how much toilet paper a family of six uses? Rolls and rolls of it.) I guess I took it upon myself to do much of the cooking and looking after my little sister, who was seven or so. All of the older brothers had to cook. We all learned what specialties each of us had. One brother’s specialty was tuna casserole. You don’t know casserole until you’ve had it with the cream of mushroom soup, tuna fish, and frozen green peas. I didn’t know it then, but all those years of taking care of the family would give me an experience that no one could buy. At the same time, I resented having to do those chores, doing the shopping, washing the dishes, doing the laundry, and just having to make ends meet. The hardest part of my life in those years was how much of my feelings I kept inside. I was not known to complain. I was a good person in the eyes of all those people around me.

I did what I had to do in order to survive and keep peace in the family. I would not have wished my life to be any different. My mother is an inspiration in teaching all of us children the high values of respecting other people, working hard, and making life and career choices that would make us happy. She never pushed us but always told stories about her brothers having to walk a mile in the snow and having to put cardboard in their shoes when they had holes in them, and how she had to pick fruit and pack it in boxes. Life was hard back then—as the story goes—and we did have much to be thankful for. I think those stories of the past made me realize that we have to work for what we need, because no one was going to give it to us. My two uncles became doctors, and they worked hard to achieve a good life. Moral ethics developed early through stories, experiences, and great examples of human endurance from my family. This is where I got my values and work ethic. As told by my family, education is the key to success, and laughter comes forth on the outside, while the heart struggles with some obstacles in everyday living.

The Boy Who Became an Early-Childhood Educator: Reflections, Memories, and Future Thoughts About Our Field is written from a single man’s point of view on working in the woman-dominated field of child care. I kept a weekly journal for the last nine months while running my family child-care business. I felt that my life as a child-care professional had been filled with struggles of coping with people who had different views of what a man could or could not do. I had been stared at, spoken to rudely, and asked that constant question, Why are you working with children? The premise in writing this journal was that I didn’t want to forget the children I was working with, and also as a release of feelings about working in the child-care field. At the same time, I wanted educators and parents to be able to read about my life, thoughts, and day-to-day existence in working with young children. You will read about my daily routines with the children and how I felt about the day; my past experiences; and my thought-provoking questions for you, the reader. Though my days sound so repetitive at times, they were not, nor will any day be like the one that preceded it.

This is not a typical textbook but a view of some of the roles of the teacher, duties, thoughts, and questions for all of us as educators to think about. You will see the deeper layers of days of the children and the busy-ness of the provider in your current work as a teacher or even a parent.

My journal is not intended to offend anyone. The feelings I express are my own. I want to bring attention to the realities found by myself and by many other child-care providers who work with children each day. I hope to convey with my stories an understanding that child care is a profession and that the children and families we work with are important. May my honesty bring other child-care professionals to realize that they do an important job. We all have a book inside us. Write notes to remember the happy and the sad times of working with children. The children in your care will bring you much happiness if you let them. Cherish each day. For you will never know when you will be putting on your last diaper.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

If it were not for the parents of the children in my care, I would not have had anything to write about. Thanks for trusting in me. For the children whose lasting memories will be forever on these pages, my smiles go out to you.

I know that I will get myself in trouble if I forget to write an acknowledgment of gratitude to someone who has influenced my life. With this in mind, I’d like to thank the entire world, all those people I have talked with and been associated with and been close friends with, and all those people in the child-care profession. My heartfelt thanks for being here for me and influencing me as a person.

I have many mentors in the education field, teachers and professors whom I deeply appreciate for teaching me what early-childhood education is. So many to mention, but especially those at City College of San Francisco, San Francisco State University Extended Education ECE Department, and San Francisco State University Department of Elementary Education ECE Master’s Program. Special thanks to all the graduate students in my classes who helped me get through it all.

Special thanks to my family—Alvin (Jr.), Daniel (Hideki), Alice, and Bambi—who never told me that I should not go into working with young children; Kerri Dukas, who pushed me to do my best; Victoria Tolbert, for her support and humor; Nenette Capistrano, who gives me constant encouragement; Tish Dang, who has become my listening ear on Saturdays; Shelly Michelle Mascote, who helped me give the best of the best to the children in our care; and David Ward and Jane Yang, who helped me edit the minor imperfections of my writing but did not change my unique written expression.

INTRODUCTION

Before jumping into my journal, let me give you some vital information and background that may clarify for you the outline of this book and help you in understanding my thoughts and ideas. I used my journal as a reference and appendix for my master’s in education (early-childhood education) from San Francisco State University in 1998. My research was titled A Man Working in an Early-Childhood Setting, and the introduction went like this:

Life is made up of making decisions. I have made that decision in terms of my career and what I wanted to do with my waking hours. The question of choosing to work in the early-childhood field has become so personal, so time-consuming, and at times, I ponder the thoughts about another career and the why of working with children day to day. As I sit here struggling to put words to paper, I realized why it is so difficult for me to get into this field study. I have felt the pressures of working for so many years in the early-childhood field that I have become numb to the realities of being a man working in ECE (early-childhood education). Many of us face questions each day about why we have chosen to work with young children. Many of us are asked to explain the why, as I have experienced, have had to prove our abilities (verbally, in actions, and when observed working with children), and have been asked questions, such as Do you change diapers or Are you a nurturing person? The stares of the people on the street while I walk with the children, the constant threat that I might be accused of doing something inappropriate with the children, and the loneliness/isolation of no male support is part of being a male working with young children.

The completion of this field study was like closing a final chapter of one part of my life working with young children. The reality for me right now is to document my experiences, as this might serve as a forum for parents, child-care providers, and professionals working with young children to read about one man’s view of how it feels to have chosen a career that so few men work in. The importance of my work is also to document my personal experiences that might be valid for other men and women working in the ECE field and that they might see that we all share some commonalities in our work with young children.

The real insights the reader will discover are in my documentation of my last months working with young children in my family child-care. Here, one will feel my everyday struggles in providing care to young children in a way that brings the reader to a better understanding of why many people have chosen to work with young children and the road that has led me personally into another career path. My isolation from being able to talk with other men within the ECE field has given me many years of feeling that I am special, but not knowing that other men also had some of the same feelings while working with young children and their families made me think I was alone in the ECE field. I found out in my research that other men have some of the same feelings that I have experienced.

My maleness and my cultural upbringing did not offer me the attributes of revealing myself to others in discussing why I was working with children. I did not really see myself as someone different from the women I have worked with, and it was only later in my career that I realized I was working in a field that many men did not choose to pursue. The why question might be answered here and between the lines of my observations and questions.

This book is a self-reflection of one man’s experiences working with children, parents, and teachers. Other agents play an important part in my daily interactions at work: the general public (people on the streets), societal influences at work (how parents and teachers view men working with young children), my own personal desire to work with children, and the support systems I work with (professional organizations and educational institutions). All of my teaching up to now has been a mixture of both positive and negative experiences that have had an effect on who I am, how I think, and where I will be going. I am going to attempt to bring it all together for you, the reader. As I wrote in The Last Nine Months, I will write from where I am, where I have been, and what the future holds for me and the men who work with young children. Readers may draw their own conclusions about how to include more men in a particular program. At the same time, I hope that I have been able to give the reader a sense of how a man working in the ECE field feels. I have shared my thoughts on appropriate practices with children; professionalism; building a disposition for learning, caring, and giving; and taking care of yourself. I hope that you will share my thoughts and find similarities with your own life working with children.

How do I feel working with young children? Many of my thoughts about working with the children were highlighted in my field study. Here are some topics that you will find throughout my writing:

1. Working in an Early-Childhood Setting: acceptance from parents and teachers; past experiences, positive and negative; working with teachers; who is teaching our children?

2. Public Acceptance: perceptions of me as a child-care provider; people on the streets; reactions—body language, talk, etc.; assumptions; questions (Why are you doing this? Where is your wife?); stereotyping.

3. Self-Awareness: self-satisfaction and rewards; how people question me or how I might stereotype myself as a male working in the field; positive attitude; are men and women different working with children?; what it means to be a man working with children; isolation.

4. Working with Children: meeting the needs of children (such as routines); developing self-esteem with children; children’s explorations; interactions with children.

5. Working with Parents: acceptance; responsibility and care; trust; parent expectations.

6. Professionalism: working on child-care committees; recommendations to the field (licensing); making a difference; what keeps me going?; am I burnt out?; questions raised to teachers and parents.

7. Observations and Insights of the Children: the fun things we do; good practices with children.

8. The Future of the Children and Me: what will I be doing?; decisions of why I am leaving the direct care of children; the impact I am making with the children; closing the day care; retirement, money, and sacrifices made.

9. Leaving the Children: feelings; remembering the children.

10. Tired and Fatigued: doing too much; stress and what I do with it.

11. Caring for and Nurturing Children: learning how to do this; how I show I care for the children.

12. Nasty Facts: food and body.

By reading The Boy Who Became an Early-Childhood Educator, you, the reader should see many of the themes that run throughout my documentation. This was not my intent while writing but came out when I sat down, analyzed my work, and found that I did indeed have at least twelve themes running through my journal. The main point I brought out in my study and in my writing is that while I worked with the children, I always enjoyed our conversations and our daily routines of singing, dancing, exploring nature, reading books, outdoor activities, and many more things. Being with the children helped me realize that I could offer them so much in terms of their development. Meeting each of the children’s individual needs was something that I had to constantly work at, and it made my job exciting. Never did I really have a day where I did not look forward to having the children in my care. Even though my days were filled with busy work, it was also purposeful and meaningful to the children and families I served. My general attitude of giving, my learning to be nurturing, and my ability to question myself as a professional is a big part of my life.

In analyzing these themes, I did find that I have gained much strength in pursuing the ECE field, through the experiences of feeling uncomfortable, being left out, being talked about, and in some circles, not being accepted as part of the team. Closing my family day care was a decision that I had to think about for a long time. I realize now that I actually made many excuses about why I had to leave direct child-care work, and as the reader may note, leaving the children and closing the day care was not an easy decision. Though my caring for families and children was a large part of why I continued the day care for five years, my own biological clock of age played a part in my decision to leave the direct care of children. Worries about