Preschool Update: Mine

For those of you who don't know, the wonderful teacher who we thought was our answer to prayer to replace me fell through about three weeks before class started. I spent that three weeks searching hard for another teacher, tying up the phone lines asking for referrals, posting belated advertisements, and interviewing a few candidates. It was a little bit of a frustrating, frantic time. At the same time, of course, I was trying to present a calm, united front for the parents and families I was meeting and registering.

I struggled because I had really been praying faithfully for a substitute teacher since January. I fully expected God to answer that prayer - on my timing (which was April or May, when I started showing and wanted to be able to tell last year's parents who the teacher would be this year). I didn't expect God to be "disorganized" or "unprepared," waiting until after open houses and after the first day of class to make His choice of a teacher clear.

But His ways are not my ways, and His thoughts are not my thoughts. Maybe He knew that for me to open my eyes to His plan for a teacher it would take me feeling like I had exhausted all my options. He might very well have planned this from the beginnng and just waiting patiently for me to finally catch on and hear His voice.

So here it is: my assistant teacher from last year, Liz Jacobson, is acting as the lead teacher this year. She was a fantastic assistant last year, and I loved working with her. She is very warm and welcoming with the children, and they love her. We hired her a homeschooled high school junior to be her aide, and this girl is the oldest of 6 kids and very capable and mature.

Our registrations are down this year. Last year, we were full in both classes with 15 kids and 2 teachers. This year, we expected to be full at 18 kids and 3 teachers. (Again, maybe God knew again that we didn't need 3 teachers this year.) Right now we have 9 or 10 on Wednesday and 8 or 9 on Friday. So both are small classes, and they're filled with really sweet, easy kids. This is especially a blessing since Liz has no lead teacher experience. Last year we actually made enough money to pay for the church's new playground; this year, I think we're just over our break-even point.

After I taught the first day, Liz taught the same lesson to the Friday class. She did well enough that the second week (this week) I didn't even come in. She taught the lesson I had prepared to both classes, and starting next week, she'll prepare her own lessons from the curriculum we purchased last year. If we have more registrations, I'll keep working on hiring another teacher, but for right now, it looks like we're set and I am officially off-duty for preschool!