In 2012, I was a 17-year-old high school graduate with no clear direction in life. It was time to select a major at my local community college. I felt that being forced to make decisions about my future and career at such a young age was an insurmountable task. At 17, there’s no way you can know what you want to do for the rest of your life. I just knew that college was the ‘right’ thing to do.
My mother had run a home daycare center for several years when I was a teen, and I did what I could to help with the kids. In my church, I had been a volunteer in the nursery since I was 11 or 12. That was the one thing I knew how to do in life at 17 – take care of children.
So, inevitably, Early Childhood Education seemed like the best choice. After my first semester of school, I was able to land a teaching assistant job. Two years later, I graduated in Early Childhood Education, with two specializations in Infant/Toddler Care and School-Age Child Care. I was full of hopes and dreams about how to manage the perfect preschool classroom.
My dreams were quickly dashed as I discovered how low the pay is for teachers ($10/hr MAX with the two-year degree, $12/hr with the 4-year degree in my state), how long the hours were, the amount of planning required off the clock, having to pay for your own supplies, the demanding workload, strict regulations in the classroom that make getting any actual teaching done nearly impossible, the high turnover rate, the secret abuse in every center (no matter if it was a 5-star center that taught multiple languages, instruments and provided vegan, gluten-free and halal meals, or if it was the 3-star center where the kids ate ham sandwiches every day and the classrooms were always over the legal ratio of children to teachers), the unpaid continuing education requirements and more.
I knew that this career was the wrong choice, but I had a talent for it that felt important not to waste. When 2018 rolled around, however, I reached my breaking point and decided to say goodbye to childcare centers once and for all.
I worked in a fully accredited daycare center that was a converted house. The rooms of the house were used as classrooms. Incredibly small classrooms. I was hired on as the preschool teacher, my classroom being what was the living room of the house. My kids ranged from 3-5 years old. There was also a toddler room, an infant room, and an afterschool room. In total, there were about 50 kids in the daycare. And ONE bathroom with ONE toilet in it that all staff and children shared.
I later found out that the owner/director had her previous center closed for proven abuse, but the case went nowhere in court (spoiler: this is the norm for childcare abuse), so she was allowed to open a new center right next door under a very similar name. I would have not accepted the job had I known this, of course. Let’s say you witness a child being abused in daycare. You report it to DHHS, Department of Health and Human Services. They handle these sorts of accusations. They take your report, and then plan a surprise visit to the center. This can happen weeks to months after the abuse incident occurs. If they find no evidence of abuse during their visit (like, if every teacher is on their best behavior because a social services employee is standing in the classroom with them), then the report is resolved as the daycare having done no wrongdoing. It is nearly impossible to have abuse taken seriously in a daycare. And, as I mentioned above, I worked in all kinds of centers and saw abuse at every. Single. One. From teachers purposely tripping kids, to slapping, hitting, spanking, to scratching, to yanking their legs out from under them, to things like leaving infants out in the sun unattended, not allowing access to food, water or the restroom and threats of further harm if they tell their parents. And all these daycares are still open today.
Aside from the small classroom where injuries were constantly having because the children did not have enough space to play without tripping over another kid, I started to notice other red flags. I could write for days and days about all the horrible things that have happened in centers, especially this one, but I’ll focus on some of the most horrendous things.
We would go on these field trips – things like the splash pad, museums, movie theater, pretty fun stuff honestly. However, I had to pay for my own entrance at all these activities. Yep, that’s right. I was forking over $10-$20 per field trip because they would not pay my way in. When I asked about this, the director said she would start telling the children’s parents that the events cost more than they actually did, so that the leftover cash could pay for me.
On these field trips, I would not receive a lunch break. I was fine with this, until I noticed that my lunch break was still deducted from my paycheck even on days when I did not get a break. I raised this issue, and was told that going on a field trip WAS a break so it was still valid to have an hour deducted from my pay every trip. Yes, wrangling 13-15 children in 100-degree North Carolina heat was such a break.
Then, I would start getting off work later and later. Let’s say I was scheduled to leave at 4, I would have to stay until 4:30-5:30 most days. Again, I was an hourly worker, so I was fine with it. Until… I realized my checks were only paying me until 4. Yet another issue I took to the owner. She said since I was scheduled ‘til 4, I’d be paid until 4. I pointed out that she was the reason I had to stay late (a teacher would have to cover for me when I left, or else the children would be left alone in the classroom, ya know?) and that I would need someone to come cover my classroom exactly at 4 so I could leave. I would not stay extra hours for no pay. Surprise, surprise, I was forced to stay late every day. You may be thinking, why didn’t you just leave? Just leave the kids alone in the classroom to prove a point. Well, I could have gotten into SERIOUS legal trouble had I done that. Teachers must follow very strict laws or risk losing their credential and facing potential jail time.
One field trip, the van driver had been drinking a little bit and backed the van full of the children into a parked car. The director bought the kids McDonalds and told them they better not tell their parents. Another field trip, the van literally caught on fire going down an abandoned road with only cornfields for miles. There was a heat index of 115 degrees Fahrenheit that day. We had no water, food or sunscreen and the van couldn’t turn on so there was no AC. I had to line the kids up on the side of the highway in the sun. It took nearly 2 hours for someone to ‘rescue’ us, as the director did NOT permit us to accept help from anyone driving by, besides her (and she was back at the center, with a car that could only fit 3 other people at a time).
After 6 months, I was the longest-standing employee with every other teacher having quit and been replaced THREE times in my stint. This is fairly normal in childcare. Teaching assistants are paid minimum wage, but do equal work to the lead teachers. The regulatory to-do lists we must complete every day or risk losing our certification are so long and impossible to achieve in a workday.
One day, I witnessed her smack one of my children in the mouth. I told her I saw that. She told me that I saw nothing. This daycare DID have cameras. She erased the footage and made it clear I was not to tell anyone. I’m a mandated reporter, so that wasn’t going to fly with me. Spoiler: remember what I said about DHHS above? Yeah, they found no evidence of abuse so the center still operates today.
There’s so much more I could say, like about kids constantly urinating on themselves because they could not wait for the one single toilet serving 50-60 people to be free, like about the director smacking one of the teachers for turning the vacuum on during business hours, like the 3-hour unpaid parent-teacher conferences I was forced to host, like the 2-hour mandatory unpaid meetings once a month, like how the playground was just a paved concrete driveway where kids were constantly enduring head injuries, or the hiring teachers with criminal records under the table, but I’m going to wrap it up here, with what was the final straw. Children were constantly sick at this center, because there was not adequate cleaning. For three days, we did not have soap in the center. Children would use the bathroom and have to wash their hands with only water. I begged the director multiple times a day to run down to Dollar Tree and buy some soap. I would have done it myself, but I didn’t have a car and I already had to spend about 50% of each paycheck on lesson plan supplies. I did have access to hand sanitizer, so I would give each child some of that. Note, this is not allowed in daycare. You may give sanitizer outside on the playground, but it is not permitted indoors in place of handwashing. The director walked by and saw me dispensing sanitizer to the kids. She flew into a rage, yelling at me for violating regulation. I snapped and said that I wouldn’t if she would just buy soap like I had been begging for, for days. That was it for me. I finished my shift and quit.
I was able to report my lost wages (the field trips I paid for, the lunch breaks deducted from my check, the time I stayed over without pay) to the Department of Labor and ultimately get paid because I had been carefully tracking my exact hours each day. The other people who worked at the center were not so lucky. The director seemed to prey on women who were desperate: single parents, or not very intelligent, or in dire situations where they would tolerate the conditions and not know how to advocate for themselves. But, my story is commonplace in nearly every daycare center across North Carolina. Yes, even the 5-star center that you pay $400/week for. When you are considering a daycare for your child, make sure you ask about turnover rate, how well they pay the employees, who provides materials for the lesson plans, and turn to community reviews and opinions. Does a daycare center exist where employees and children are treated humanely? Yes, I’m sure of it. Have I, or anyone else that I know in the field, ever found a center like that? No.
If you’re considering entering the ECE career path, please protect your mental health, stand up for the children, and demand a living wage. If you are a parent considering placing your child in a daycare, please be VERY diligent.